"Unable to connect"

[David Sinclair]

I have a bunch of disabled cameras, since I have too many to display at once.

If I enable a previously disabled camera, it displays "Enabling..." for about 30 seconds, then "Unable to connect".  I've tried several cameras.  Viewing them in another app, they are functional, and they did work when first adding them to Camect.

I just tried restarting the Camect box, which did make it appear.  That shouldn't be necessary, though.

After restarting, I tried enabling another camera, and it took a couple of minutes to go from "Enabling..." to "Unable to connect".

[CamectArup]

If the cameras are there and working, this usually occurs when it's not possible to connect to the camera quickly enough. Leave the enabled camera alone for a few minutes and it should come online. How long it takes to connect depends on how long it takes to scan your network and find the camera again. (Since most people use DHCP we don't just assume that the camera is at the previous IP address.) 

You can also try clicking the "look for cameras" link below the set of cameras to see if that will help. 

[David Sinclair]

Hmm.  You may recall that it took several hours (days, really) to find all of my cameras, for some reason.  So it might be a long wait.

(In my case I do have fixed IP address for each camera, but I realize that is uncommon.)

I've just re-enabled another camera, and clicked "look for cameras", so I'll see how long it takes to appear.  "Look for cameras" just finished, without connecting to it.  I'll keep waiting....

[CamectArup]

Oh, I had forgotten that that was you. Well, that would explain why the cameras don't come back in any reasonable amount of time. 

If you want you could add them manually, and in that case they'll be associated with a fixed ip address (from the URL you specify) and should come back reasonably quickly after being enabled. 

[David Sinclair]

Interesting tip; I'll keep that in mind.  Rebooting the unit works as a workaround.  Hopefully you can figure out why it took so long to find them in the first place, since that could affect other people.

(FYI: still hasn't connected.)

[Sean Geary]

Not sure if this helps but I also have fixed IP addresses on my cameras and they were not found during setup. When I entered in the rtsp address each corresponding cameras was immediately found - showing up in my home twice. I've since deleted the manual entry.

[CamectArup]

Just from that, hard to tell. How long did you wait before you decided to add them manually? Is your network set up with all devices in one subnet or do you have something more complicated with multiple subnets and/or multiple routers involved? Also, are the missing cameras wired or WiFi? 

[Sean Geary]

I waited just under 2 hours. It was odd that I entered the stream address and then the camera was immediately found.  

The setup probably isn't typical for a house but I suspect not uncommon here.  I have one switch (UniFi Switch 16 POE) and both cameras are connected to single wifi access point (Unifi Nano HD) on with a dedicated WLAN for iot devices.

[ZzyzxOh]

I might have something to add, but time will tell.

My home router is placed behind my ISP router so I can manage my own equipment more effectively. My home router provides Domain Name Services (DNS) for the equipment within the house such as Cameras, Printers and User Devices.

When I add a Cameras to the Network, I go to the Router and locate the camera in the DHCP Leases section of the Router. I then click on the option to make the Dynamic IP Address a Static IP Address. This will prevent the actual address from rolling over time and also make sure the device can be accessed by name if your internal router is your first DNS provider.

The discovery of my cameras was in most cases very prompt. Any delays in camera discovery that I saw were due to weak Wi-Fi coverage to the position of the specific camera. Placing a static IP in the device is not a scalable approach because at some point you are likely to assign the same address and wonder what is wrong. Using the Router DHCP-DNS approach allows the Router itself to manage the mappings and Routers will not assign duplicates.

Good luck.

[Kurtis Berger]

I'm experiencing something similar. Just got my Camect today. It quickly found my cameras (Amcrest), and it accepted my credentials. Now it says "Unable to connect".  Disabling/re-enabling the cameras, and "look for cameras", hasn't helped.  Any ideas?

[CamectArup]

Hi Kurtis, 

     What model(s) of Amcrest camera do you have? Are they new cameras, or were you using them before with something else? 

      Also, did you ever get to the point you were actually seeing video from your cameras -- or did you mean the cameras were detected, asked you for a password, and, after asking you for a password the went straight to "unable to connect" that you mentioned? 

Also, at the moment, if you inspect the username and password in the camera settings, are the values correct? Are they still saying "unable to connect" at the moment? 

[Kurtis Berger]

The cameras Amcrest IP8M-2493E in a working system, and are visible/functional using the Amcrest NVR.  I haven't seen video yet in the Camect interface -- they went straight from credentials to "connection dropped", and it now says "unable to connect".  The credentials are correct, and it does still currently say "Unable to connect".

I've since also tried manually adding them, with similar results.

[CamectArup]

When you tried adding manually, what camera type did you use? 

If you tried with type "Amcrest/Dahua" and entered the IP, please also try with type "Stream URL" and use the URL:

      rtsp://USERNAME:PASSWORD@IPADDRESS/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0

With USERNAME, PASSWORD, and IPADDRESS filled in. 

If that works, please also try once more using Stream URL with 

      rtsp://IPADDRESS/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0

and see what happens. It should prompt you for a password (just like after auto-detection) and I'm curious to see if it will work after you enter the credentials. 

If the first version works and the second does not, then right after doing the second one, please use "Report Bug" from the profile pic dropdown at the top right and check the checkboxes to include logs and settings from your device so that we can get an idea of what happened and hopefully fix whatever prevents the autodetected version from working. 

[CamectArup]

P.S. Even if neither of the two suggestions work, please use Report Bug after trying them so we can see what happened. Thanks. 

[Kurtis Berger]

I have identified the issue. In my case, the password had a "+" (plus) symbol. When I changed the password to remove the +, it started working immediately. Only the "rtsp" connection method worked. The others (still configured) changed their error to "incorrect username or password". I change the password on the other entries; but they continue to show "incorrect username or password". Re-adding them via add-camera using "http" results in "unable to connect".  

So this seems to be two issues: This camera only connects via the manual "rtsp" method, and the rtsp method isn't supporting a "+" in the password.

[CamectArup]

Thanks very much for the time you spent to figure this out, and for the bug report you've submitted. 

If you're okay helping us to gather a little bit more information to try to make the auto-detected cameras work, would you mind enabling one of the non-functioning auto-detected cameras for a few days? If you don't mind doing that. we'll set a few flags on our end to make it gather more data about what's going wrong and ask you to use Report Bug again later. 

[Kurtis Berger]

I've enabled all of the other cameras. Unfortunately, I had several in various states, and can no longer tell what method was used for the ones currently setup. But you're welcome to the logs!  Hopefully it still has value for you.

What's really interesting: One... no, now three of the entries ("cameras") just started working.  I suspect these were the ones I manually configured using "http" before you had me try the "rtsp" option; and I suspect the "+" in the password was causing the issue on these as well.

[CamectArup]

So all of the automatically-detected cameras are working now? 

If so, thatmakes sense .... Amcrest cameras will lock you out if you get the password wrong too many times. If the "+" was being handled incorrectly, it would have been considered an incorrect password, and could have caused the cameras to lock out access for a while even after the password is corrected. Now that enough time has elapsed, the cameras are willing to accept the connection again, allowing the automatically-detected cameras to work. 

[Kurtis Berger]

That seems to make sense.  One interesting item: It didn't let me change the password in the auto-detected cameras.  This meant I couldn't change the password on those to troubleshoot.  

Now, how do I delete (not just disable) the erroneous and duplicate cameras?

[CamectArup]

To delete a camera first disable it, then click "show XX disabled cameras" below the display of cameras, and then delete the disabled camera using the trash can icon in the title bar. 

This only works for manually-added cameras. If an auto-detected device is still present on the network, deleting it will cause it to be redetected and redisplayed. For those, you need to simply leave them disabled. 

Re: Not being able to change the password. It sounds like that might be a bug. I've ordered the camera you have and I'll try to reproduce the issue. It won't let you change the password if it thinks the camera is accepting the password you already have. I might need to get some additional info from you if I fail to reproduce it. 

[Kurtis Berger]

Thanks for the help. I'm happy to provide any info I can.

[CamectArup]

Thanks Kurtis ... If you visit your Amcrest camera's web interface, and go to setup > information > version  could you share what the "Software Version" line says? 

[Kurtis Berger]

Software Version2.460.AC01.0.R, Build Date: 2017-11-02

WEB Version3.2.1.474688

ONVIF Version16.12(V2.3.1.458331)

[CamectArup]

We were able to reproduce the problem, and it's all tied to odd side-effects of having a + in the password. We'll fix it soon. Thanks. 

[Kurtis Berger]

That's great! Thank you.