Posts made by Crimp On_62210811129

You did a great job documenting this situation. I agree that both cameras should detect motion and record. Have you posed this question to support@reolink.com? In my experience, it takes some time to get a response from them (in Hong Kong), but they are pretty good.

Just AMAZING. Thanks for sharing the link to your live feed.

Way cool. And, you have "ant traps" under the hive to keep them away from the honey!

This may not affect you, but I had MAJOR problems with my RLC-410WS cameras recording constantly because the IR LED's would make any insect flying close to the lens look SO BRIGHT that it would trigger a motion event. I wound up mounting a separate IR light six feet away and covering up the IR LED's on my RLC camera. (I guess you can avoid that by setting the recording schedule to "never". NEVER MIND!)

This looks like a question for support@reolink.com, or maybe whoever put up the link that you followed.

Do you have the latest firmware? All of these cameras have the same basic hardware platform, with firmware specific to the camera model. (Reolink's "Support->Download" page)

These are pretty hefty devices to be attaching to a beehive. Is there not a tiny color spy camera that will wire into the Pi that will be controlling the light?

On the "Advanced" options page, under "Email", you can set the RLC camera to send an email notice that motion has been recorded and attach a picture. I am not aware of any method to FTP a single image. This will result in an email every 10 minutes (six per hour).

Frankly, I have no idea if the camera will shift from black & white to color mode before the image is collected. Do the bees care if it is dark or light inside the hive?

This may not be the right product for what you want to do.

My response was perhaps too short. I worked in computers and telecommunications and was responsible for installation of thousands of network outlets as we completely rewired a college campus two times. We also purchased (literally) thousands and thousands of Ethernet patch cords. In all those years, the ONLY time shielded cable was installed was when a contractor wiring a new building "got a good deal" on some shielded cable. We made him pull it all out and reinstall with unshielded cable that met the specifications.

Most Ethernet cable is not shielded. There is no need for shielding because of the "twist" in the pairs of wire.

Ironically, my old Argus battery cameras are NOT recording constantly. The "RLC" and "C1" cameras are build on a single hardware platform (IPC_3816M). They all got a new firmware release. I have been awaiting "progress" in a number of areas and installed the new firmware. Alas, this new development is disappointing.

So, different hardware platform. Almost everything is different between the RLC and battery models (motion sensing, LED control, underlying operating system, etc.).

I actually set my battery cameras to not email me about motion during the day because the constant pings were annoying. Ironically, I have them set to trigger only at night.

Installed the new firmware for RLC-410WS cameras on Feb 3. Starting the evening of Feb 3, and every night since then, my three cameras record almost constantly from about 11:45 at night until about 4:00am the next morning. Each motion file is about 102MB (two minutes). When I watch the motion files, I cannot see ANYTHING that resembled "motion." I am (sadly) fully aware that very small and very quick motions can trigger a recording. i.e. a tiny insect flying past the camera lens at night appears VERY bright because it is illuminated by the LED's. Even 1/2sec is enough. Rain drops falling past the eaves, etc. I am used to counting off five seconds and seeing that tiny flicker which set off the camera. With these recordings, I see NOTHING MOVE.

The only thing that has changed is the firmware. Has anyone else noticed a change in camera behavior? Reolink support obviously was not told to expect questions about the new firmware, so they have no advice except the standard "How to avoid..." I guess now I get to lower the sensitivity setting one notch each day until this behavior quits.

Very annoying.

Reolink's Cloud Service was added for customers who want recordings to be protected. Recordings on an SDCard inside the camera would be lost if someone physically removed the camera. If someone is going to burglarize or vandalize a home, they certainly would not be shy about stealing cameras. Customers with battery cameras clamored for Reolink to create a Cloud Service similar to that of Netgear's Arlo.

Before the Cloud Service was created (and still), Reolink cameras can be accessed through a mobile phone app. The key is that the camera has to be defined correctly in Reolink's data center by the UID. If you are having trouble accessing camera feeds, I suggest contacting support@reolink.com.

You definitely have a problem that needs support. I just installed the latest Windows Client (my machine runs Windows 7). Same interface as before: icons in same place. descriptive labels under each. When I open an icon, same labels and entry boxes as before. (see screen shot below)

Client.jpg

To confirm: The icons in the Settings box are arranged differently than before, and when you click on one of the icons it brings up a box with no labels? Can you post a picture of one of them? (I am thinking about updating, and I still have the previous install file to go back to. But, it looks like waiting for a fix might be prudent.)

Have you contacted support@reolink.com about this? My experience is that they respond reliably and (given the time difference between here and Hong Kong) fairly promptly. I do not know if they actually monitor this community forum.

I would email support@reolink.com The techs monitor that. I do not know if Reolink techs monitor this community forum.

I suspect changing firmware to keep an Argus camera "always on" when connected to electric power (not solar panel) is a non-trivial programming task. There is a very good chance that the electronics inside the Argus line are entirely different than the RLC line of cameras and the software also entirely different. This delay between an event starting and recording plagues battery cameras that are three times the cost of Argus. I had thought about doing one of the "hacks" to bring constant power to my Argus cameras and realized there was no point. I bought a couple to see how they work, and find them cute as hell. But not buying any more.

It is no surprise to me that Reolink is using Amazon Web Services as their cloud platform. Most of the Internet of Things devices that I own seem to use Amazon or one other cloud service. It might be worth considering that EVERY Internet service that does anything at all has "open ports" (email and HTTP/HTTPS being the most common but there are lots more). The majority nowadays seem to use encrypted data paths.

My initial thought is that companies have chosen this design because the hole through the firewall is "one way". i.e. the devices opens a port to a specific IP address. I do not know any method to query a router from the outside and discover that these pathways exist. Messages can come in only from that specific IP. I guess they could hack AWS, in which case I imagine they would go after web commerce sites first, rather than consumer cameras.

Of course, if you get the cameras hooked up to your ZoneMinder, then you can block AWS and security of your VPN is the main risk. My guess is the camera will function without connecting to Reolink's cloud.

Good Luck!

By design, Reolink cameras register their UID with Reolink's cloud service. This is how the Apple and Android apps "find" the cameras. I queried my router "open ports" table and found that all 5 of my Reolink cameras maintain open connections to 54.210.7.156 (Amazon Web Services). My guess is if you block that IP, (1) you will eliminate the security hole, but (2) your Reolink apps will no longer be able to view your cameras when not at home. (That's where ZoneMinder comes in? Or, if you run a VPN, I guess you could use the HTTP/HTTPS capability.)

My cameras have the sound turned off. (no help there, sorry)

I have no experience with ZoneMinder. The "Hardware Compatibility List" does not include Reolink. I am a bit confused, because that list mentions cameras that are ONVIF compliant. Reolink C1 cameras support RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol), which is the example used in the ZoneMinder User Guide. (ONVIF vs. RTSP? Here, you are WAY ahead of me.) When I do a port scan on one of my Reolink cameras (sorry, not a C1) I find HTTP, HTTPS, and Port 554 (rtsp). VLC Media Player streams from my Reolink cameras, so their implementation of RTSP seems to work.

The Reolink Windows client reports using port 9000. I have no idea what that's all about.

Reolink cameras support FTP, but not FTPD (server). My cameras FTP motion files TO my FTP server just fine.

I don't know that any of this is helpful. Good Luck!

I am not an expert, but I do have a couple of questions:

1. Is your PC Windows or Mac? (you said the magic word "iPhone")
2. When you set up the camera by plugging in an ethernet cable, you said it was working.
Did that include finding your WiFi router?
And, you tested it by unplugging the ethernet cable, rebooting, and the PC client could still find it?
3. Did you "add" the camera by UID or IP address?
The smartphone app is intended to connect to the camera by asking the Reolink cloud server,
"where is this camera?" and the server knows because the camera has connected to Reolink and said where
it lives on the Internet.
This may be critical, because one of the things the PC client and the NVR do is broadcast a query on the
local subnet asking, "if there are any Reolink cameras out there, please check in."
4. When you write, "sent a letter", you mean emailed support@reolink.com?

Don't know if any of these questions make sense, or will be helpful.

My other question is, "are you SURE that the Reolink NVR will work with battery cameras? (solar power comes under the general heading of "battery.") I may be incorrect, but my sense is that the NVR is designed to continuously collect whatever the camera is viewing. Since battery cameras would run dry in only a day if left on continuously, there is not much point in connecting them to an NVR. I would check that out by directing a question to support@reolink.com.

I have listed this as a request to Reolink for a LONG time. I doubt that programming can do much about clouds or trees moving shadows around, or foliage moving in the wind. They detect how many pixels have changed, and if we lower the sensitivity enough to ignore those events, we'll miss almost everything. I deal with some of this by masking parts of the picture, but have learned to live with it. When the camera changes modes, however, is TOTALLY something the programmer can detect and accommodate. This is just lazy, OR Reolink has to take whatever firmware their supplier produces and the supplier isn't interested.

I also find it unfortunate that the cameras which are NOT able to turn off their IR LEDs switch to black and white mode when the LEDs come on, even if there is enough light to record in color. I have an Argus mounted close to a RLC-410WS. I have disabled the LEDs on the Argus and mounted a separate IR illuminator several feet away. This solves the "bugs drawn to the LEDs problem." Since I cannot turn off the LEDs on the 410, I covered them with tape. When the separate IR illuminator turns on, the Argus continues to record in color until the ambient light totally fades, but the 410 switches to black and white when it turns on its own LEDs (that I have covered and aren't doing anything useful). So, exactly same lighting, but Argus is color and 410 is black & white.

I, also, assign static IP addresses to all my Reolink cameras using the DNS table in my router. (I have Netgear, but I am 90% certain that all modern routers have the same ability.) I do not configure the camera itself with a fixed IP. I let the camera use DHCP to ask for an IP, and it always get the IP I want it to have. If, for some reason, I want to change the IP, I have only to update the router table rather than unmount the camera and plug in an ethernet cable.

Since The Argus cameras are designed from the outset to conserve battery life, my guess is the answer is going to come back, "sorry, no". I do not have access to technical information, but I would not be confident that the solar power unit will produce enough energy to keep the camera running constantly all night. As an example, there are lots of solar powered garden lights, where the solar panels are supposed to keep the light running all night. None of them last that long. And, while there may be more than 12 hours of daylight in the summer, there is a lot less daylight in the winter. It also might depend on whether you want the IR illumination at night when it is recording 24/7. That burns considerable battery.

Anyway, what an interesting questions. I'll be fascinated to see what Reolink says.