Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

QVR Pro, QVR Pro Client, QVR Center and Surveillance Station
cactusplant
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Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

Post by cactusplant »

Hi,

For some reason, my QVR pro keeps dropping my camera feed, as seen here: https://i.imgur.com/v5xqkVK.png
I've checked my routers wifi status page and it shows that my camera has been connected on the network for the past 135 Hours and that It currently has a full signal while QVR is displaying it as disconnected. What could be the cause?

I also can't seem to get events to be captured. I went out to empty the bins and close the gate but It captured no events. Here is my event manager: https://i.imgur.com/kwAwVdw.png what could be the cause of this?

I really want to get my system running properly, just cant seem to iron out the last little issues.
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storageman
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Re: Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

Post by storageman »

Not an expert of SS/QVR but more info would help?
Firmware and version of QVR.
Is the camera on wifi?
Is the camera approved?
Is the camera on static address?
So you can't now ping it?
Is the address in the router the same as the address in QVR?
AlastairStevenson
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Re: Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

Post by AlastairStevenson »

I've checked my routers wifi status page and it shows that my camera has been connected on the network for the past 135 Hours and that It currently has a full signal while QVR is displaying it as disconnected. What could be the cause?
Despite that - the cause will be that the camera is connected via WiFi.
WiFi is a notoriously unreliable way to hook the video stream of a surveillance camera, it's very prone to disconnections / reconnections, despite apparently good signal strength.
Suggestion - temporarily use a wired connection from the camera and see if the disconnections drop to zero.
I also can't seem to get events to be captured.
This will be down to the motion detection configuration in the camera.
All QVR Pro does is react to any motion events that the camera sends to it by taking the action that you have configured.
Some cameras are better at motion detection that others, but even the quality brands can miss incidents you'd think should be covered.

The best setup is to use continuous recording, with motion events marked, then you get the best of both arrangements.
TS-431+ for storage and media and a bunch of IP cams under Surveillance Station. TVS-473 as files backup and QVR Pro.
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storageman
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Re: Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

Post by storageman »

AlastairStevenson wrote:
I've checked my routers wifi status page and it shows that my camera has been connected on the network for the past 135 Hours and that It currently has a full signal while QVR is displaying it as disconnected. What could be the cause?
Despite that - the cause will be that the camera is connected via WiFi.
WiFi is a notoriously unreliable way to hook the video stream of a surveillance camera, it's very prone to disconnections / reconnections, despite apparently good signal strength.
Suggestion - temporarily use a wired connection from the camera and see if the disconnections drop to zero.
I also can't seem to get events to be captured.
This will be down to the motion detection configuration in the camera.
All QVR Pro does is react to any motion events that the camera sends to it by taking the action that you have configured.
Some cameras are better at motion detection that others, but even the quality brands can miss incidents you'd think should be covered.

The best setup is to use continuous recording, with motion events marked, then you get the best of both arrangements.
I wasn't going to say don't use Wifi but those were my thoughts!
Doesn't continuous recording defeat the purpose of motion dedication space saving?
AlastairStevenson
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Re: Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

Post by AlastairStevenson »

Doesn't continuous recording defeat the purpose of motion dedication space saving?
Sure, if it's space saving you are after.
But if it's an effective surveillance system you're after, space is not that expensive.
TS-431+ for storage and media and a bunch of IP cams under Surveillance Station. TVS-473 as files backup and QVR Pro.
cactusplant
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Re: Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

Post by cactusplant »

AlastairStevenson wrote:
I've checked my routers wifi status page and it shows that my camera has been connected on the network for the past 135 Hours and that It currently has a full signal while QVR is displaying it as disconnected. What could be the cause?
Despite that - the cause will be that the camera is connected via WiFi.
WiFi is a notoriously unreliable way to hook the video stream of a surveillance camera, it's very prone to disconnections / reconnections, despite apparently good signal strength.
Suggestion - temporarily use a wired connection from the camera and see if the disconnections drop to zero.
I also can't seem to get events to be captured.
This will be down to the motion detection configuration in the camera.
All QVR Pro does is react to any motion events that the camera sends to it by taking the action that you have configured.
Some cameras are better at motion detection that others, but even the quality brands can miss incidents you'd think should be covered.

The best setup is to use continuous recording, with motion events marked, then you get the best of both arrangements.
At the moment I cant run any Ethernet as apparently, it will look unsightly. So I'll wait until the office is moved before I do so and see how it works. I was planning on having motion detection events saved for 30 days and then constant recording for 1-2 days. I'm having the directory uploaded to my google drive for redundancy, but I was slightly concerned about drive wear from constant recording. Is it really as bad as people say? Should I be using a "CCTV" HDD instead of my generic ones im using currently?
AlastairStevenson
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Re: Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

Post by AlastairStevenson »

I was slightly concerned about drive wear from constant recording. Is it really as bad as people say?
I've not seen mention of drive wear from constant recording.
Should I be using a "CCTV" HDD instead of my generic ones im using currently?
If by 'generic' you mean a drive aimed at desktop use, that's a bad choice. A NAS drive would be the best choice, followed by a 'surveillance' drive if you can define what activity occurs where. NAS and Surveillance drives are designed for continuous service.
Desktop drives, those that used to be marketed as 'green', are quite unsuitable for environments with intermittent but frequent use where the 'green' design has a quick idle spin-down timeout.
The harshest thing you can do to a drive is a stop / start cycle, which if it spins down a lot contributes to a wear-out early failure.
TS-431+ for storage and media and a bunch of IP cams under Surveillance Station. TVS-473 as files backup and QVR Pro.
pyrotech1620
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Re: Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

Post by pyrotech1620 »

My guess is you upgraded to QVR Pro 1.1.0.0. I have the same issues which didnt happen in the previous version. The event is being triggered but whatever changes QNAP made to help with the indexing broke the end event trigger. So what is happening is an event is triggered and the recording does not stop (or emails/alerts if they turned on) and randomly anywhere between 1-24+ hours another event will actually make it to the end point. It has completely made event recording/alerts useless. The issue was reported to QNAP the week it came out and they have failed to provide an update on a fix, failed to reach out for testing/etc, and their Product Manager never provided the tech support team with the previous qpkg of QVR Pro. To be honest i have always felt that surveillance station and now QVR pro are little side projects and they really dont care about them. The lack of support for these apps is so bad.
marcpilou
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Re: Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

Post by marcpilou »

same here, I Open ticket on that and no response from QNAP support team yet
mikus
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Re: Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

Post by mikus »

Version 1.1.1.0 solves this problem. I received it from QNAP Support. But there is another problem with the Player :).
caravanboy
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Re: Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

Post by caravanboy »

I made a significant breakthrough last night with a workaround for issues that sound very similar to the ones on this thread. I'm on the latest QVRPro (1.1.1.0 I think). Apologies for the long post but for my conclusion on how to work-around just read the bold bit below.

In a nutshell, I did this:
* Added an extra camera, setup in-camera motion event on the new camera.
* Added the new QVRPro motion detection on 2 old cameras
* All worked fine for a few days testing
* Things started to go wrong when I deleted, renamed, re-added, experimented with single/multi ONVIF ProfileS streams, event configs that kind of thing.

I got to a point where I thought the new camera or cable was faulty and took it down and put the old one back. However, I could not get the old one to record at all, no matter what I did. The camera was fine and I could talk direct to its internal s/w. I copied the QVRPro config of the other identical untouched old camera (which was still working) but that made no difference, I tried deleting, re-adding, stopping/starting QVRPro, restarting the NAS, adding duplicates, for hours. What I would see was that I could ping the camera but then every (15ish) seconds it would stop responding. QVRPro constantly said “Connecting”.

I also recalled I had an old installation of Surveillance Station running that was setup for just this one old camera that now didn’t work. That also just showed “Connecting”. However, as soon as I stopped QVRPro then the old SS one started working and the camera pinged continuously without issue. So, I’d established that it was QVRPro that was upsetting the camera in some way.

I had a wild theory that maybe internally QVRPro identified the camera data by IP address so I changed the old camera’s IP address. I noticed that I could now get the camera to initially connect and show “Idle” but it did not start recording regardless of settings. Also, if I then tried to edit the camera config the authentication “Test” button would always fail from that point on and you couldn’t change Stream details as it would say it couldn’t connect to the camera, and then the status would stay at “Connecting” forever. This was repeatable if I deleted and re-added the camera – the initial authentication test would pass, I could choose “Single Stream” mode and add it, go to Idle, but then errors if I edited after that.

My breakthrough came when I noticed that all streams defaulted to being named “Stream 1”. I wondered if there was a bug related to re-use of stream names. So, I re-added the camera but on the initial config I chose a new stream name “XStream”. It all worked and connected and started recording!!! Although there is another minor bug that you don’t see the new stream name on the “Recording” tab during config until after you’ve saved the config and re-edit to view the details. And the camera config summary list also only ever shows an ordinal stream number regardless of stream name. Using that approach I could then delete, play with stream config (including ones that didn’t work, even though my old camera seemed to report that it supported that resolution) and then get them working again, in the worst case, by deleting and re-adding the camera with a new unique stream name.

On a related not, I also re-added the new camera (that QVRPro will only support for Motion events from the Camera, not with the new QVRPro detection as the resolution is too high) and tried to setup motion detection. It didn’t seem to work after 30 mins of playing with in-camera config and waving my hand etc, so I gave up and went to bed. Oddly it seemed to magically start working through the night though as at 6am it detected me walking past and worked fine after that. This must be another bug – perhaps related to the one someone mentioned earlier about broken events and times.

I later spotted the QVRPro “re-index” feature and wondered if that would have made all my earlier issues go away? If a re-index is needed it should tell you. It would be a poor excuse to have the system behave as I describe above not tell you if it knew that indexes were now invalid.
P2WRTMR
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Re: Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

Post by P2WRTMR »

Im having the same issue. My system is all hardwired and events dont record. I spent a few hours on phone with support today and still waiting to hear back on this.
fabriziorizzo
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Re: Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

Post by fabriziorizzo »

caravanboy wrote: Tue Sep 04, 2018 4:53 pm ... I also re-added the new camera (that QVRPro will only support for Motion events from the Camera, not with the new QVRPro detection as the resolution is too high) and tried to setup motion detection.
Where are the specs on what the new QVRPro motion detection feature supports in terms of stream resolution?
I get the typically vague error message:

Code: Select all

None of the stream(s) from this camera are is [sic] available for motion detection.  You need to set the stream resolution between CIF and full HD.  To configre the settings, go to Camera Settings.
Camera settings : Stream1 is configured for 1080p 24fps 4M bps

The camera, a Foscam FI9961EP, is configured with 2 streams:
Main Stream: "HD Mode", 1080p 4Mbps 24fps, keyframe interval: 24, CBR
Sub Stream: "HD Mode", 720p, 2Mbps, 10fps, keyframe interval: 15, VBR

What about all this isn't "HD" enough for QVR Pro 1.1.2.0?
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Fabrizio
TVS-1282T (Intel I7-6700 @ 3.4GHz, 32GB RAM, 8x 16TB Seagate Exos ST16000NM001G RAID-6, 4x 960GB Corsair Force LE SSD RAID-10, 2x Samsung 512GB M.2 Flash RAID1 cache, 40gbps bonded eth0+1+2+3)
caravanboy
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Re: Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

Post by caravanboy »

That does seem odd. I recall seeing the message during experimentation and it was because my camera's resolution was too high for QVRPro's native motion detection - it wouldn't be able to process the very high-resolution frames quickly enough unless it was <= Full HD. However, from your info above it does look as though it should work as your main stream is 1080p.

I ended up configuring my camera's own built-in motion detection and then QVRPro uses those events to trigger motion recording.
fabriziorizzo
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Re: Frequent disconnections in QVR and motion detection not working

Post by fabriziorizzo »

Hmmm, crap. No easy answer then... foscam’s motion detection config on this cam is really basic and was hoping for better with Qnap’s. Yea, I know, nutz, right?
I’ll try lowering size and frame rate (separately) to see if there is indeed a [braindead] limitation...

Any idea if Qnap actually publishes a proper manual for QVR PRO? the in-app help is as useless as their UI/UX design.

Thanks for the quick response.

Cheers!
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Fabrizio
TVS-1282T (Intel I7-6700 @ 3.4GHz, 32GB RAM, 8x 16TB Seagate Exos ST16000NM001G RAID-6, 4x 960GB Corsair Force LE SSD RAID-10, 2x Samsung 512GB M.2 Flash RAID1 cache, 40gbps bonded eth0+1+2+3)
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