Reolink camera name being reset regularly

[Fred Taylor-Young]

One of my cameras, a Reolink RLC-410-5MP, keeps having its name reset every few days. If I reboot the Camect unit, the name is reset straight away once the system is back up and running, so I don't think it's an issue with the camera.

The other (UniFi) cameras I have don't have this issue.

At first I wondered if it was a conflict with an old name (I replaced a UniFi camera called "Drive" with this one and named it identically, but have since tried other names and have had the same thing occur.

Is this a known issue with Reolink cameras or should I report it from the UI with logs the next time I notice it's been renamed?

Cheers,

Fred

[CamectArup]

It's not a known issue. What is it getting reset to? (The name is stored on the camera, and it could be that the camera is losing it, or, if you have another system accessing the camera as well, perhaps the other system is changing it.) 

If this keeps happening, it would be best if you could submit TWO bug reports. Submit one right after changing the name to what you want it to be, just so we know if anything weird happening when setting the name. If you're able to immediately restart Camect and see the name get reset, then submit a second bug report right after restarting so we can attempt to get some information about why it reverted. 

In these bug reports, mention the camera id of the camera being affected, or mention both possible names for it. You can get the camera id by opening the camera settings and clicking the "i" next to "Camera Name". 

[Fred Taylor-Young]

It gets reset to the factory default of "Reolink camera". I've submitted the two bug reports just now, though I forgot to include the camera ID which is 1f0107bff2569c89d779. The camera in question has never been connected to any other NVR, nor is it used in a browser.

I did wonder if the camera was doing it itself but haven't been able to reproduce it by restarting the camera or tweaking the settings in its web interface.

Cheers,

Fred

[P Mallone]

I'm seeing this behavior also when I rebooted my camect device.

[CamectArup]

I haven't been able to reproduce this behavior on our test Reolink cameras so far, but I think it's happening due to a failure in how Camect tries to store the name on the camera itself. The problem described would occur if either: 

        1. The attempt to save the name to the camera silently fails -- i.e. the camera doesn't report any error, but doesn't store the name either  OR 

        2. The name is correctly stored, but when reconnecting to the camera (e.g. after a restart) Camect makes an error in interpreting the response and causes the name to be read back incorrectly. 

I'm thinking (2) is more likely, and could be dependent on the camera's firmware version where the response format might have changed. 

The name of the camera should be visible someplace in the Reolink UI if you sign in to the camera's web UI. So, after setting the name in Camect, I'm wondering if you guys could sign into your Reolink camera and see whether the name you set in Camect is visible on the camera. On our test cameras, the name is visible on the top page under settings, as "Camera Name" and also under Settings > System > Information as "Device Name".

If the name is set correctly in the camera -- and especially if the old name is still visible in the camera's UI after it changes back to "Reolink camera" in Camect, we'll know Camect is reading back the name incorrectly.  If that appears to be what's going on, please check what version of the Reolink firmware your camera has. This is also visible at Settings > System > Information.