IP Camera wireless issue

AIUI, you need to give it a different IP for wifi, than for wired. And is the camera compatible with whatever wifi security you have on your router?

FWIW - I had the same experience with a generic lan/wireless camera from ebay - seemed the only way to get it to work 'wirelessly' was to boot it with the LAN cable connected, then keep the power on & unplug the LAN (which kind of defeats the object of having it wireless....)

Never did get to the bottom of it - it's intended use was to find out what was raiding our storage area by the woodpile - turned out to be magpies rather than rats... - but, having proved that, I've not used it since..

Not a lot of help, I know - but you're not alone! Adrian

Mentalguy2k8 has brought this to us :

Yes it is compatible with the encryption, but I'm testing it with 'none'.

Is the camera wifi IP determined by the camera itself? If so, it may be requesting an IP address from the router that's "outside" your current network's IP range, or an IP that's aleady in use.

There's a good article here:

Are you using MAC address filtering on your router? If so, try switching it off.

The camera can scan and find my wireless access point and I can then select the AP/ set it to use it, I just cannot see the camera listed in my connected devices of my router and obviously also cannot use it.

Which was what got me thinking along th lines of it might have a different IP and MAC for the wireless side.

My WiFi access point needs several web page buttons pressing and a reboot before it allows a new MAC address access. Before the reboot it lies about how it is configured...

Why not just use DHCP? At least for testing, you may find once it's been given an address that address will be effectively static.

I'd expect the ethernet port and the WiFi radio to have different MACs and be happier with different IP address's. Can you interogate your access point to see what other devices are out there and possibly discover/check the cameras WiFi MAC address?

AlanC explained :

I just beat you too it :-)

Yes I was using MAC filtering and the reason it wasn't able to connect, was that it was the wrong MAC code entered in the filter. I had entered the only MAC code reported by the units software, but the wireless side used a different code. There were no codes on the box, not inside and none on the camera either, but the wireless code showed up as soon as I turned access control off.

You say you have given it a dedicated IP address. How ? Have you simply plugged an address in at the camera end ? Does the router know ? I have had weird behaviour when I set an IP address in the client, and the router is configured for DHCP.

Have you tried it leaving the camera setup blank, and letting the router provide the IP address ?

FWIW I prefer fixing IP addresses to individual machines to be done by the router. I suspect some routers have a security wonk which prevents them from communicating with devices they haven't issued the IP address to.

Thanks, all sorted now - it did have a separate MAC for the wifi and it was my routers MAC filtering preventing it connecting.

Slightly OT, but can anyone recommend a good IP camera? I have two Linksys WVC54GCA's in Italy which work pretty well, but the quality of the picture could be better.

Actually, I have problems viewing them with a browser (Firefox or IE) but see the pictures well with VideoLAN/VLC .

Incidentally, I'm pretty sure these cameras have the same MAC address for WiFi and ethernet. You set them up by connecting with ethernet, and then removing the ethernet cable and re-starting the camera.

Interestingly, I had one camera looking out of a window down a street, and the Carabinieri asked me to remove it, presumably because a neighbour thought it was spying on them. This camera has a bright blue light which I have been unable to turn off.

Bluetack something over the light perhaps?

The one I bought seems not too bad so far for a cheapy - Aldi on special offer last week at around £50, but they had a few left which were reduced to £43. Its 640x480 good enough to recognise those you know, but not quite good enough for identifying strange faces - for that you need HD.

When triggered by movement, it can FTP the photos up to a website and HTTP. Includes a free DDNS service, if it is on a none fixed IP. Rather strangely, if alarmed and only sometimes - it might send you an email and all it sends is the direct IP address to the camera, nothing more. It offers three levels of access via its webpage - full admin, operate the camera only, or only view the cameras picture. It includes Android access too. The image system seems quite sensitive, it remains on usable colour even down to street lighting levels, whereas our other wired colour camera just shows complete blackness.

It is also supposed to be able to use or be compatible with some other software, but I have not yet explored that.

I did try something like that, but the light was surprisingly intense, and shone (slightly) through or around whatever I tried. In any case, the camera itself would have been visible if one knew where to look, so I decided discretion was the better part of valour, and moved the 2 cameras to other windows in the house, which don't look out on neighbours.