Shortly after moving to our current property, we decided to install a camera outside in order to keep an eye on things. We started with one camera to see how it would work. It worked quite well, so we installed a second, then a third... eventually we got up to six cameras looking out at various parts of the property.
By the time I got to six cameras I started noticing some odd behaviour. Image we've just had a power blip, so all the cameras are now coming back on from having been off. Most of the time everything works just fine, as expected. But sometimes at least one of the six cameras will just not work. So I'd get the ladder out, go visit the camera... and its lights are on and it appears to be running. Put the ladder away, return back to my desk, try to ping the camera... nothing. I can't ping the camera, it's not reachable. Or maybe it is, but only one out of every 20 pings gets a reply with terrible latency (in the order of seconds). So I go back out there and try power-cycling just that one camera. Still no improvement. Out of ideas, I move on to other things, and for the next couple days that camera simply doesn't work... but then it does! For no discernible reason a camera that was powered on but wasn't on the network for days/weeks suddenly shows up. At this point either all the cameras are working just fine, or, now that one of them has come back online, a different one stops working.
This sort of dance of having most but not all the cameras online will sometimes last for days or even weeks, but eventually, given enough time, they will all eventually work and everything will be fine... until the next power blip. Then we start the whole process over again.
I don't know what is causing this problem. Is it an issue related to the specific product? Is it related to distance? Maybe it's related to the fact that my house has a metal roof, the barn is entirely clad in metal? Maybe it is related to my router? The weather? The phase of the moon? The specific device that doesn't work at any one time is, apparently random. Sometimes it is one of the closer devices, sometimes it is the furthest one. Sometimes the bad device is against the barn, other times it isn't. There is no one device that is more often than not the one that isn't working. Distance and sheets of metal don't seem to be the culprits. Maybe two (or more) devices are trying to use the same channel and aren't able to detect the issue and try a different channel? But if that is the case wouldn't two devices stop working instead of one?
Even
before buying a single camera, it had always been my goal to run
ethernet around the property. I have never been overly fond of WiFi, and
had wanted to run ethernet regardless. But now that I was having these
issues, it did help speed up my plans to run wire. Eventually I did get
around to running some ethernet to some areas. With that little bit in
place, I was able to take 3 of my cameras off WiFi and have them on
wired ethernet. Since that update I haven't had a single connectivity
issue with any of my remaining 3 WiFi cameras. Interestingly enough the 3
that are now
wired are the 3 that are closest to the house, the ones that are still
on WiFi are the 3 that are by the barn and furthest away. So the biggest
problem seems to have been... the number of devices? Six was too many?
Does that make sense?
I look forward to the day when I can
turn off the WiFi radio for my IoT/security network and just rely on
wired networking for all its communication.
