Questions during security system monitoring

[Maintstjohns]

   I was monitoring the 6 cameras at my church and they were constantly going off air. I shutdown the app and re-started to get the live feed back, but shortly afterward they would go off air again. The issue could probably be related to the strength of the wifi signal fluctuating. I wonder if it was fluctuating because there was an unusually high number of people in church.

   Also, would there be a benefit in buying a power supply for each camera, so the cameras would have a constant level of power.

   Thank you.

[DannyBearAgain]

Generally people are a great at absorbing wifi, also people usually carry mobile devices that also search for wifi signals so could cause wifi interference. Ask them to switch to airplane mode may help.

Externally powering the cameras will reduce the need to recharge batteries but will not generally improve wifi signals.

[DannyBearAgain]

Also if you were monitoring the cameras with the webpage app you will likely need a higher end pc with video hardware acceleration enabled to handle multiple camera streaming.

[StephenB]

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@Maintstjohns wrote:

   I was monitoring the 6 cameras at my church and they were constantly going off air. I shutdown the app and re-started to get the live feed back, but shortly afterward they would go off air again. The issue could probably be related to the strength of the wifi signal fluctuating. I wonder if it was fluctuating because there was an unusually high number of people in church.

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It could certainly be due to the parishioners.  @DannyBearAgain's "people absorb wifi" explanation is possible if enough people are blocking the signal path to the router or access points.  If the wifi access points are in the ceiling, then this isn't all that likely.  

I am thinking it is more likely that too many people are using the wifi at the same time.  This could be congesting either the wifi access points or the internet connection itself.

Attendance is likely higher than usual, due to Easter.  So it would also be good to know if this is happening regularly during services.

Also, I am wondering if the service was being livestreamed.  The livestreaming would also take up internet bandwidth, so might be part of the puzzle.

Were you in the church when this was happening?  Or were you monitoring from a remote location?

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@Maintstjohns wrote:

   Also, would there be a benefit in buying a power supply for each camera, so the cameras would have a constant level of power.

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I don't think this would affect the off-line symptom.  But keeping the cameras powered would eliminate the need to take them down to recharge, which would be a convenience.

If the issue is wifi congestion, and not internet congestion, then getting a smarthub might help.  It would connect to the church router over ethernet, and create a closed wifi system for the cameras. 

I say "might help" because the base wifi can't be extended.  If the church uses wifi access points or wifi extenders to provide service to the entire building, then you'd probably need multiple smarthubs - which would be expensive.  It'd be better to use the money to upgrade the church wifi and internet.
 

[Maintstjohns]

You guys are incredibly helpful and I appreciate it very much...

1. Yes, it was our Easter service and we had 3X the number of people we normally have.

2. Yes, we were live streaming at the same time.

3. This was the 1st time we were monitoring the cameras using a laptop. Prior to this we were using cell phones.

4. I was in the Nave with the rest of the parishioners, but furthest from the router.

It will be very interesting to see the performance this coming Sunday when we will be back to our typical attendance.

I'll respond once I have that information.

Many thanks StephenB and DannyBearAgain.

Best regards,

Chris

[DannyBearAgain]

Can you describe further what you observed using the laptop, had you observed the issue went away when the church emptied?

[Maintstjohns]

   I got frustrated and shut the laptop down on Sunday.

   I'll go to the church tomorrow with no one around and see if I have any issues.

Thanks,

Chris

[Maintstjohns]

 I was hoping the amount of people absorbing a great amount of the bandwidth on Easter Sunday would be the cause of our problem. It wasn't.

1.  Yesterday, I accessed the app with the laptop. The most critical camera, (Pro 2 @ front door) was continually going off line before there were more than 10 people in the church.

2. I moved the laptop to the office where it was 7' from the router and there was no change in performance.

3. The problems were the same using the app on my cell phone.

This week I plan to see if there are the same performance issues with the Essential cameras as well as the Pro 2. During the service I was more concerned with the front door camera and didn't take the time to monitor the other cameras.

All suggestions gratefully accepted.

Thank you,

Chris

PS Once I click the arrow on picture the camera is showing should it stay live or will it switch to standby after a period of time?

[StephenB]

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@Maintstjohns wrote:

PS Once I click the arrow on picture the camera is showing should it stay live or will it switch to standby after a period of time?

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The stream will stop after a while (30 minutes I think).

If the base station near the router?  Are the essentials also connected to the base?  Or are they connected to the church wifi?

[Maintstjohns]

All the cameras are connected to the church wifi.

Thank you,

Chris

[StephenB]

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@Maintstjohns wrote:

All the cameras are connected to the church wifi.

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You said one camera was a Pro 2 earlier.  A Pro 2 has to be connected to a base (via a closed wifi network created by the base).  So either you aren't quite understanding the question, or you don't have a Pro 2.  So it would be helpful to confirm the camera model(s).

Assuming it is actually an Essential, try testing the wifi speed near the front door location with your phone (using the Ookla speedtest app), and let us know what the upload and download speeds are.

[Maintstjohns]

I'm sorry for causing all the confusion.

We have 3 Pro 2s with a hub and 2 Essentials connected through wifi.

I ran speed tests on the 2 cameras furthest from the router.

                                         Ookla test                                                   Verizon Speed test              

Essential     28.8 (download)   4.96 (upload)                           313 (download)  314 (upload)

Pro 2            No reading. Tried 3X                                                25 (download)   0 (upload)

Unless you guys have a better idea, I'm going to have Verizon come out and analyze our system (while streaming) and make recommendations.

I appreciate your help.

Best regards,

Chris 

[DannyBearAgain]

@Maintstjohns ,

What is the physical distance between the local wifi router and the arlo Base station. Arlo recommendation is 6ft or more.

[RegularJoe]

  I and another member of this group have already described the problem you're experiencing previously. Try to watch more than a few streaming cams, and they'd start buffering... 

  We couldn't stream more than two cameras at a time via desktop/web.

  Watching them over the app/phone... could watch all of them at once.

I performed a test using the commercially available "Internet speed test" that is available on line viz google search. I think the brand name test I used was "Ookla"... not that it makes any difference in this instance.

  With a split screen on my desktop...I would bring up the speed test and get it ready to start on one half of the screen... then bring up the Arlo web page on the other half and start streaming a camera, then two...then tried a third.... all the while performing that speed test.

  What it showed me was that the speed test results of upload/download numbers all dropped markedly as I started streaming the third camera over the web application.

  I could watch all 9 cameras at the same time over my phone... and run the speed test on my desktop while I was doing that.. and the upload/download numbers never faltered.

  So, I don't know what the technical answer is to the problem....all I know is I can livestream every camera while using the phone app, but only 2 will stream without buffering on the desktop.

[StephenB · Accepted solution]

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@Maintstjohns wrote:

I ran speed tests on the 2 cameras furthest from the router.

                                         Ookla test                                                   Verizon Speed test              

Essential     28.8 (download)   4.96 (upload)                           313 (download)  314 (upload)

Pro 2            No reading. Tried 3X                                                25 (download)   0 (upload)

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So basically no upload bandwidth available at the Pro 2.  And upload bandwidth is what you need to make recordings and livestream.

The Pro 2 connects to the hub, not your wifi.  But if the hub is located close to your verizon router, then it is likely that the hub is also too far from the Pro 2 to get a good signal.

So Verizon won't be able to help with the Pro 2 (because the wifi network it uses is created by the hub).  But if they can improve the church wifi network performance, then you could swap the Pro 2 with one of the Essentials.

FWIW, my own church (like most) is too large to get good wifi coverage throughout the building from a single router.  We have a couple of APs (access points) that are connected to a power-over-ethernet switch.  Other options are to use a wifi mesh solution (Netgear, Orbi, Google Mesh, etc), or to add a wifi extender or two.

[Maintstjohns]

Thank you for your advice. I didn't make it easy for you, but you hung in there.

Best regards,

Chris

[Maintstjohns]

I'll try streaming just a couple of cameras this Sunday and see what happens.

Thank you for your advice.

Best regards,

Chris

[Maintstjohns]

About 1'. They are on the same shelf.

I'll move the hub.

Thank you.

Best regards,

Chris