Webcam may be fixed

[Robert Schultz]

Over the past few weeks the makerspace webcam has been a bit glitchy. Unplugging it and plugging it back in seemed to fix it but then a few hours or days later it would stop uploading any new images.

I think I may have gotten it fixed for good, but no promises. It was using a static IP before, so we could more easily connect to it if we needed to. I don't think the router had this IP assigned though, so it's possible it was handing out that IP via DHCP to a different device, thus booting the camera off the network. This would explain all the problems we've been seeing with the camera, especially since I have verified that it was still recording video to the SD card during this time, it just wasn't able to upload images over the net.

The camera is now set to just get an IP via DHCP and this should hopefully fix it :)

PS: If you need to connect to the camera to download video files or do other admin tasks, you can do an NMAP scan for the admin port (written on the masking tape attached to the wire of the camera) and you can find the correct current camera IP address that way.

[Nicholas Amrich]

Hmm, looks like it went out again yesterday @ 5 in the morning.  I'll reset it if I stop by today.

[Robert Schultz]

Aye it appears to have died again. Darn. I double checked the FTP log on the server side, and nothing odd. It just stopped uploading images.

I'm out of ideas as to what may be wrong, especially since it worked fine for like a year before starting to glitch out recently.

So if anyone wants to log into the camera and poke around the settings and see if they see anything, go for it. Username/password/port is written on the power wire to the cam and you can find the IP by doing a NMAP scan on the network.

[Nicholas Amrich]

I reset it, checked it once or twice while I was at the space and it was working fine.  I didn't have a chance to look at the settings or play around with the software.  Strangely, the last image it uploaded was me checking the webcam on my phone one last time as I'm about to leave.  Since I shut the lights off right after this, I wonder if it's power related.  Perhaps the power brick is not rated high enough, and the IR lights kicking on is enough to drop the voltage and bug out the camera sometimes?  It could also be network/software related, since I was on the space wifi with my phone...  Need to test some ideas, maybe on Tuesday.