Posts made by Snaffs_236818799935657

Thanks for that.
Appreciate your help and advice

Excellent, thanks a lot for that. Did what you say and it worked.
This is on a PC connected to the same home network (via ethernet) as the Reolink NVR.
Playback with 1 window was ok, though the video sort of paused for a split second every 2 seconds ish.
If I had all 4 channels playing, it was very obvious each window was updated a bit at a time in sequence.
I presume this is normal and what you'd expect?

Update:

Have managed to get the Reolink desktop and mobile app to access my NVR.
Just ironing out a few issues, as for the past few weeks i've had two Reolink 5mp camera's with just SD cards in.
These camera's are now no longer in use.

I appear to have a problem with the playback of my new cameras connected to my NVR.
In the Windows desktop app. I go into the Playback area, and try a search and this pop-up keeps appearing.

I may be being stupid, but I don't understand what it wants me to do. It says to drag something somewhere, but despite trying I can't seem to make anything work.


reolink-playback.png

Thank you Cynthia for the super quick reply

I shall try that a little later as, right now, as It type this.... I'm fitting the Four Camera's which came with the kit up around my home.
I tested it, and made sure working with just 1 camera indoors this morning to get it working direct from the NVR before I went any further (always good to test)
Planning to get four more 4K B800 camera's to add to this, to bring total to eight

Will see if I can get it all running via the Windows/Android clients a little later.

Oh a side note: OMG.... It's Soooo Soooo hot today

Just setting up my brand new 4K Reolink NVR today.
Have the NVR all set up and running fine.
But of course I wish to be able to view and operate the NVR from my Windows 10 PC.

I typed in the IP Address and HTTP Port into my web browser, which brought up the Reolink Login page.
I logged in, and now it says I need "Flash" from Adobe. And has a adobe-flash icon in the middle of the screen to take me to the download page to get it.

But this download-icon does not work, and if I go to Adobe's website I can't find any official place to get the Flash player from.
So I'm stuck.
And they say, Flash is having no more security updates from end of this year anyway.

How do I get around this please?

Having bought a new Reolink NVR and 4K Camera's, but not installed it yet. I have a question.

On the back of the NVR unit, there are Monitor and Mouse connections, so you can directly operate your system from the NVR itself, using the User Interface built into the NVR Unit.

Is this better, doing it this way (better user interface?) or some other advantage.
Than logging into your NVR via a computers web browser on your home network instead?

Is the User Interface different?
Any benefits or drawbacks?

Any chance of an answer to my question as I have now purchased various items and don't wish to unpack some items if they won't work.

The current/latest RLN8-410 NVR

How many 4K 8mp D800 cameras can you connect to it?

Can it handle eight of these 8mp 4K cameras or only four of them, and the other four have to be 5mp cameras?

I've just placed an order for the following Reolink kit

1 x 8-CH PoE NVR RLN8-410
4 x 4K 8MP camera D800

So it's a 8 channel NVR with Four 4K cameras supplied.

Am I correct in thinking you cannot connect any more 4K camera's to this, such as the D800

But you can connect a further Four 5mp camera's to this, such as the RLC-520-5MP

Thanks

Thank you Cynthia for your reply to my question.
It's much appreciated.

If you can ever be in a position to accept feedback which finds it's way back to the devs.
It would be nice if there was the option to make LOW a higher quality.

When playing back recordings on your phone, High/Clear can be a struggle and unreliable to play back.
However Low is such a massive step down in quality for playback.

It would be nice to see something in-between.
Like you can have balanced for live viewing. Perhaps something like Balanced quality for mobile playback

I've not seen this mentioned anywhere so would like clarification.

In the Reolink software, you can set the two quality levels (which are called different things, clear, high, fluent, low etc)
Don't think it really helps using different names for the same things, but hey....
Basically you have High and Low. Low is 640x480 and a smaller selection of bitrates and FPS, whereas high or course is for the quality video.

Does altering these settings, just change the quality that you see when playing back recordings/alerts from within the app.
Or does it actually affect the quality of the saved files on the SD card which you can download to your PC hard drive from the camera?

If someone could clarify this please.

Just wanted to say, I can see it took about 18 months from the Dark Theme request here to actually make it into the App.
But I'm very pleased it did, and a BIG thank you for the Reolink App Developers for listening and making this a reality.

Just wanted to add a further update as I believe I have fixed this.
I went into the Reolink app and deleted both cameras.
Added them both in again, with ADMIN and their individual passwords.
And looks like it's all stable again. Closed and re-opened the app a couple of times, and went to the playback area and no crashes.
Fingers crossed it appears to be fixed.
No idea why, but hey..........

Bit weird, and I know it's probably not easy to answer, but I thought I'm ask anyway

The Reolink app on my android phone has never crashed since using it over the last week. Rock solid.
Yesterday I upgraded the firmware on both of my RLC-420 camera's.
After doing this, and re-setting passwords/settings. I was VERY pleased to see, in the Reolink app, there are actually tiny thumbnail images of 'alert/recordings' which is a superb improvement.
That was last night, up to say midnight, all was upgraded and working fine.

Overnight my cameras did their automatic default reboot.

This morning I go to open the app, and live view is fine, but when I click on the alert/recordings, the little thumbnails don't get created, and a few seconds later the app crashes.
If I try and re-open it, and do the same, it crashes again.

Just wondering if something has happened in the system? Or something I can try to stop this?
The Windows client still works fine. And as I say the android app works fine until you go the the alert/recordings area.

Any ideas much appreciated.

==== UPDATE ====

After typing the above, I went into my phone/app settings and deleted the CACHE related to this app, sadly this did not make any difference.
I also went into the app and rebooted both cameras. Sadly this did not make any difference either.

To clarify. When I open the app, select a camera and press the PLAYBACK icon at the bottom, the playback screen appears, but the little thumbnails of each event are not generated, they stay little blank squares, and after a few seconds, the app goes back to the main view. If I try a second time to go into the playback area, then after a few seconds the app totally crashes.

Very sad, as always worked up until this morning.

I have RLC-420-5mp camera's with Hardware Version: IPC_51516M5M

I have a few issues, and hoped perhaps the latest firmware may improve my problem.
My current firmware is: v2.0.0.448_19061408

Looking on this page:
https://support.reolink.com/hc/en-us/articles/900001840826-07-10-2020-Firmware-for-Reolink-IP-Cameras-IPC-51316M-

It says: "Note: If your camera's hardware version does not begin with IPC_51516M, please wait for the new firmware release."

So that's great, this means the firmware shown is for my camera

However, when I look at the actual files to download it says:

RLC-420 65_20071001 IPC_51316M

So I'm confused as they seem to contradict each other.
Is this some typo/mistake on this web page?

And can you clarify what the correct one is?
Thanks

Thank you Cynthia for the reply.

The problem is the same, whether I attempt to play back the recording via a Windows 10 PC, using the Reolink client, connected via wired ethernet on the same network as the cameras, or if I use the Reolink App on my Android 10 SmartPhone.

The result is the same. If I attempt to play back on either device as "Fluent" then the saved recording with play fine (albeit very low quality)
If I change to "Clear" within the playback area of the apps, then it just moves to the start of the recording, and stops. Refusing to play it.

I'm still doing some testing, by reducing the frames/sec setting, and the bandwidth setting.
With the settings all on the default's (2560x1920 30 fps 6144 max kbps) I have this problem.

So far I think I can eliminate the problem by lowering the frame rate (fps) or the bandwith (kbps) but I've not done enough testing to see how low they need to be for the recordings to be reliable.

Just to note about contacting via email.
I'm happy to do this, and explain everything, but I will not allow them to log-in and operate my PC remotely, for security/privacy reasons.
I mention this, as I had a small, totally unrelated issue some time ago with a indoor wifi cam and they insisted they would not take any action unless they had access to my PC, which for me is unacceptable.

Sad to see no support help so far

Just as an update, I'm trying to experiment with dropping frame-rates and bit-rates.
But should I need to do that?

Is there some limitation within the camera cpu? about having trouble writing/reading to a MicroSD card at certain settings, or should it easily be able to cope with even the highest settings you can select?

And/Or depended on speed of MicroSD card?

Does anyone know how many MB/s the camera will produce from the 5MP/High/Clear setting on the default values?
I can test (on my PC) how fast the cards and handle read/write speeds for comparison.

I need to know, as right now, not being able to rely on a recording makes the camera worthless.

I have a couple of RLC-420 cameras attached to a new POE switch.
My problem is, I can't view or even download 5mp/High/Clear alert recordings correctly which happen during the daytime.

If I try and playback on my phone (on home wifi) or on my PC (on wired home network)
When set to "Fluent/Low" it plays the Alert Recording correctly & will save to my phone or PC correctly.

If however I change the setting to 5mp/High/Clear then it will either play back just the 1st few seconds of a 1 minute clip, then stop.
Or it will just say "Loading Stream" for about 15 seconds, and never even start to play.

On some clips it will play back the 1st few seconds of a 1 min recording before stopping, and I try to download the clip, it will only download these 1st few seconds also.

The weird thing is, during the nigh-time (dark) it will play back and save 5mp/High/Clear fine.
But it will not do so during the daytime

I have tried both a Sandisk Ultra and a Samsung Evo microSD card and makes no difference.
It's not my network speed, as I plugged an even more demanding camera into the same POE switch and that works fine.

Any advice please, as they are unusable to me if they cannot display/save 5mp quality.
Thank you.

Yes, indeed. My model has the option to leave on automatic, which I imagine is what most people would use, or you can manually set it to be off all the time.
What just seemed odd was that, when the camera was set to not record anything, the lights still went on/off depending on light level.
I suppose it may just be independent of the camera recording, but it LOOKS like the camera is still working when you think it's not.

I think customers of indoor cams would appreciate an "Off" control in the app, and also an explanation in the manual explaining what off means.

It seems a little strange that things like this, are not considered.
Hopefully things will improve in this respect.

Thanks for the great answer.
I don't wish to appear paranoid! it's simply questions about privacy at home.
I always use good long complex passwords so not worried about that. However I suppose I am always a tiny bit concerned that the app created for the camera's that connects to the internet, has your WiFi and Password information in it.
So you are putting your trust totally in what the app does with this private data.

I wish I was clever enough to be able to monitor network traffic to see if video was not being sent out.

What puzzled me a lot was, I did try the option of setting the recording to be off at a certain time.
Then puzzled why the IR lights came on, when it got dark, despite it supposed to be not recording.

I have suggested, and it's been taken on board that perhaps in a future update an obvious power off control may be in the app.

All this said, I will say how impressed I am with this little camera. It's not perfect, and the app has a few issues, but really it's superb for what it costs.

I may go full Reolink for outdoor home camera's in the future. When the weather is better

Thank you so much for the reply.
I have some TP Link indoor camera's that I am considering returning and replacing with Reolink ones, simply down to image quality (Reolink audio quality is way worse, but I guess video is more important)
the TP Link app, have a very obvious OFF button which seems to kill the camera and stops it from recording anything.
The Reolink cameras and App have no such function.
I have been talking to reolink and their tech support said if I wanted to be sure the camera's were not reordering me at home the only option was to unplug them.
A honest answer, if still a pretty poor one.
I have requested they consider an OFF control in the app, as, whilst it's not really an issue for outdoor camera's. For indoor ones, privacy should be a priority and users should be able to easily turn off camera's.
I'm ok as long as video is not being viewed by anyone.
Not that I'm doing anything secret, but of course, we all wish to feel private inside our own homes.