I have an NV4116-A2 NVR and 9 Amcrest cameras. I installed it all 8 months ago and it has worked fine since then. That was until yesterday when 3 of my cameras dropped offline on the NVR. I can ping them. I can log into their WebUI's and see them and modify them without issue. All the cameras are on the same network segment and are set up DHCP and assigned fixed IP's so they do not change. I deleted them from the listing in the NVR and tried to rediscover them, but no. I factory reset the NVR and lost 6 of the 9 and had to manually input them. Only 3 of those 6 came back online with a manual setup. No settings have been changed in the cameras. They have been power cycled by unplugging them from the POE switch (also Amcrest) and no change - still visible from UI but not on the NVR. I have no idea at all why they will not connect to the NVR or why they won't show up in the list. Spent all day today exhausting every option I had and can't find a solution in the forum posts.
Any direction to look is greatly appreciated.
Cameras used to show up on NVR
Re: Cameras used to show up on NVR
Hello and Welcome to the forum..
Sorry to hear about the issues. I am not sure what cameras you are working with, I know you said they were Amcrest just don't know of they are High voltage or low voltage types. Problem is what you are talking about seems like it could be one of many things. However without knowing what or how something is or was working now compared to before makes it really hard to understand for sure...
I am going to guess that your system might have same damaged circuits inside the camera. Problem is the issues I am thinking about would more then likely be POE power related and not camera discovery. I do know there is a problem that can happen from using CCA cabling. This can cause the camera to damage 1 side of the circuit and allow the system to only connect if the camera was plugged in using different type of POE and or using 12v power with normal ethernet.
So looking at your NVR when you go to your Camera page are you saying that after removing the camera from the Bottom part *Connected camera area* that the camera never comes back into the top search area? Like looking at the picture below of my 32ch 5series POE NVR..
Sorry to hear about the issues. I am not sure what cameras you are working with, I know you said they were Amcrest just don't know of they are High voltage or low voltage types. Problem is what you are talking about seems like it could be one of many things. However without knowing what or how something is or was working now compared to before makes it really hard to understand for sure...
I am going to guess that your system might have same damaged circuits inside the camera. Problem is the issues I am thinking about would more then likely be POE power related and not camera discovery. I do know there is a problem that can happen from using CCA cabling. This can cause the camera to damage 1 side of the circuit and allow the system to only connect if the camera was plugged in using different type of POE and or using 12v power with normal ethernet.
So looking at your NVR when you go to your Camera page are you saying that after removing the camera from the Bottom part *Connected camera area* that the camera never comes back into the top search area? Like looking at the picture below of my 32ch 5series POE NVR..
- Screenshot (1588).png (121.56 KiB) Viewed 182 times
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waituntilthebeep
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Re: Cameras used to show up on NVR
I fixed the issue and it had nothing to do with the cameras but I will explain the fix *just in case* it is helpful to someone else that is troubleshooting a camera issue like what I dealt with because it looked like a camera or NVR problem.
To answer your questions - The two camera's I was troubleshooting are an 5MP dome camera and an IP8M-2899EW-AI 4k PTZ camera. Both were previously configured and just flat stopped connecting to the NVR. I could log into their IP and see them fine from their UI but they would not show up in the top window of the NVR so that I could assign them a channel. They are set up for DHCP IP assignment and they would communicate with my DHCP server and get their appropriate IP and could be viewed in a web page - meaning they were on the network and **should** be seen by the NVR.
I am a network guy so this was super odd to me. Stuff either connects or doesn't 98% of the time. I checked every cable with a tester, swapped ports on the Amcrest unmanaged POE switch to test for a bad port (odd chance of failure but always part of testing). I spent two days in between snow storms trying different things and what it ended up being was a power inserter for the network bridge to that area of the property.
In case it's helpful (but more than likely way more complicated than any networks most users will have in their environment) I have the main network, in this case the house and shop and connected to that is a wifi bridge. That bridge wirelessly connects to a receiver about a half mile away on the property. That receiver goes into a network box that houses the Amcrest POE switch and a Unifi wifi puck that provides wifi to that area and I plug both the POE cameras and the wifi puck into that POE switch. So LAN > Bridge > Bridge Receiver (powered by a power inserter) > POE Switch > 2 cameras and a wifi A/P.
The power inserter was doing something dumb and messing up the data stream through it. Shouldn't be a problem as there is no smart tech to get in the way, just basic circuitry. SO everything was getting power to work and JUST enough data was getting through to make troubleshooting complicated. I changed the power inserter and it finally all came back online. Odds of that kind of failure? Extremely low. But just my luck. Glad to know it wasn't a problem with any of the Amcrest gear as this is the first problem I have EVER had with Amcrest stuff.
Thank you for your response and willingness to assist.
To answer your questions - The two camera's I was troubleshooting are an 5MP dome camera and an IP8M-2899EW-AI 4k PTZ camera. Both were previously configured and just flat stopped connecting to the NVR. I could log into their IP and see them fine from their UI but they would not show up in the top window of the NVR so that I could assign them a channel. They are set up for DHCP IP assignment and they would communicate with my DHCP server and get their appropriate IP and could be viewed in a web page - meaning they were on the network and **should** be seen by the NVR.
I am a network guy so this was super odd to me. Stuff either connects or doesn't 98% of the time. I checked every cable with a tester, swapped ports on the Amcrest unmanaged POE switch to test for a bad port (odd chance of failure but always part of testing). I spent two days in between snow storms trying different things and what it ended up being was a power inserter for the network bridge to that area of the property.
In case it's helpful (but more than likely way more complicated than any networks most users will have in their environment) I have the main network, in this case the house and shop and connected to that is a wifi bridge. That bridge wirelessly connects to a receiver about a half mile away on the property. That receiver goes into a network box that houses the Amcrest POE switch and a Unifi wifi puck that provides wifi to that area and I plug both the POE cameras and the wifi puck into that POE switch. So LAN > Bridge > Bridge Receiver (powered by a power inserter) > POE Switch > 2 cameras and a wifi A/P.
The power inserter was doing something dumb and messing up the data stream through it. Shouldn't be a problem as there is no smart tech to get in the way, just basic circuitry. SO everything was getting power to work and JUST enough data was getting through to make troubleshooting complicated. I changed the power inserter and it finally all came back online. Odds of that kind of failure? Extremely low. But just my luck. Glad to know it wasn't a problem with any of the Amcrest gear as this is the first problem I have EVER had with Amcrest stuff.
Thank you for your response and willingness to assist.