IP2M-842 experiences

[nicholso67]

Bought a new unit from Home Depot two weeks ago. It's been good for identifying the animals that are bothering/messing in our yard. Night motion detection range is not as far as I expected, so I needed to move the camera closer to the problem areas than first planned. Luckily I didn't screw this and install straight away - and it's still not installed after two weeks as it's no longer beside the house, and getting permanent power there is another project for later.

To get the most out of the product you need to be pretty skilled at networking and FTP set up.

I have pretty good WiFi strength at the device, IP2M-842 settings report 74% WiFi strength, which I guess should be good enough (?), however some file corruption (1080p videos that end unexpectedly, videos named as "dav_" that stop early, photos that have solid blocks of black or green) that I guess are due to network traffic problems. So far the most complete videos are 640x480 resolution. I think I set the video quality settings too high, and am still experimenting with all that.

Briefly I tried a different new router Linksys EA6900 which made file corruption problems worse, very jerky video and little video saved despite lots of email snapshots, so went back to the Asus AC-68U (TM-AC1900) which works better with this product - both routers tested at identical location, and both are "high-end" dual-band AC enabled routers. I thought WiFi was more consistent between vendors after ten years, but clearly not.

The IP2M-842 logs are handy but could diagnose some of these file corruption issues better (Low network bandwidth? unexpected video file end? WiFi strength? ). I struggled with FTP settings at first, but found the destination folder needs to have the same name as the hard drive (not a sub-folder) connected to my Asus router via USB. It works now.

Just now I don't expect to return the device, though I have thought about it - may still return if file corruption continues.