Amcrest Shield Wifi cameras (IPM-HX1) - Connectivity drop, high ping latency

[meissen]

Hi all,

I purchased two Amcrest Shield wifi cameras off Amazon and since then have been struggling to get them to work. Both cameras are connected to Blue Iris and are constantly dropping with a "No Signal" error message.

When I ping both of these Shield cameras I'm seeing ping responses in the 1500ms+ and a bunch of dropped pings. If I ping other wifi cameras from my laptop I'm getting 20ms-200ms responses. It's specifically these two Shield cameras that I have the problem with.

I thought it was a WiFi signal issue so I swapped the camera with a Foscam 8910 camera which I've never had issues with. I put the Shield camera where the 8910 was but alas - No signal and high latency pings while the 8910 works flawlessly where the Shield used to be. It doesn't matter how close or how far from the access point the Shield camera is - it drops. And then the camera drops, it's generally both Shield cameras at the same time.

I updated both of the cameras' firmware to the latest listed on Amcrest's website - seemed to help for a few days but then it's right back to the same issue.

I have Netgear Orbi mesh system with very good wifi signal strength around the cameras. The one camera is ~10 feet away from the access point yet still says no signal.

I've contacted Amcrest support and Carlos has been a HUGE help, but alas all the tricks we try doesn't seem to fix it. We've tried setting Static IP instead of DHCP, he tweaked some of the streaming settings so it wasn't as bandwidth hungry, I even added Untangle firewall to my network and configured the firewall to block all incoming/outgoing connections to the camera through the WAN interface so the camera can only communicate internally (thinking maybe it was getting DDOS'ed...).

I'm at a total loss. Do these cameras just have a crappy wifi antenna on them or what?

[entresec]

I'm experiencing this same problem. Running an IPM-HX1B camera that I've had for 6 months with Blue Iris. Just recently it's started to drop connection and never regain via Wi-fi. I have had to reboot multiple times, or try to plugin with an eth cable first for it to come back up.

I have tried a firmware upgrade, setting static ip on the camera, and changing the wireless channel (6 -> 11) to get this to work.

When the connection goes out, sometimes the camera light changes to red and other times it stays green. The result being the same though in that I can't access via web portal or ping the camera.

Checking the logs of the camera nets no explanation.