MV72 Intermittent Camera

[JM26]

Hi all,

We have a camera which only works intermittently.

It has been working fine for a number of years now but all of sudden it now goes offline, sometimes for a couple of minutes, sometimes for days at a time.

Yesterday, it came back online, but another camera went off. We unplugged the camera which had gone off (different to the camera in question) and reconnected it again. This then brought the camera back online but upon coming back into work this morning, the original camera which we were having issues with has gone offline again, around 8 hours after the original camera had come back online.

Now, I understand that this might be a great coincidence that another camera had gone off and the other had come back online but this has got me thinking could it possibly be a license issue. I've only been in my new role a couple of weeks so not entirely sure how many licenses we have for these cameras.

The only things that I can think of which would be causing this is the following;

1. Faulty camera
2. Faulty caballing
3. License issue

When I look on the camera logs, I can see that all of the cameras did a firmware update the night that the original camera came back online, this got me thinking that the firmware update may have fixed the issue, and broke the other camera, but the original has since gone off again.

It also says in the event logs "heater status change" when the camera comes back online. Is this the internal heater coming back online?

What is also worth noting is that the original camera in question still records, even when it is offline, but you cannot access it via the Meraki console as it is showing as "offline". You are however able to view the recording off the camera during the times it was offline, once the camera is back online. This makes me think that it is a caballing issue but I cannot understand why this would be happening so intermittently.

The only other thing I can think of is if the camera its self is faulty. Like I say, the camera has been up for a couple of years now but it is in such a position where you cannot get to it without a cherry picker. We are going to recrimp the cable and replace the camera next week but just wanted to check to see if anyone has seen this issue before and knows a fix?

Thanks in advance!

[Ryan_Miles]

Licensing would not affect a Camera working or not. At most, if you were over provisioned on licensing it would initiate a 30 day grace period to correct your license count. 

To me this sounds like an IP connectivity issue. Bad cabling, underlying networking issues, DHCP/DNS problem, etc.

I think your best option would be to open a Support case so an Engineer can look into it.

[JM26]

Thank you very much for your input.

[FernandoHVoIP]

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Yesterday, it came back online, but another camera went off.

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Sounds like a PoE budget issue to me. If you can reproduce the problem I would grab logs of the port of the switch and check them.

If the logs simply indicate a disconnection, then it could be a cable/camera side issue. Replacing the cables sounds like a good start. 

[JM26]

Thank you very much, I have requested logs to have a look at this.

[Alejandro_F]

Hi JM26,

If the faulty camera is still recording when going offline is a sign the camera is working, the problem is at the uplink when the camera is attempting to reach out to the Meraki Cloud.
I would recommend first check the cabling, bring the camera down if possible and connect it directly to a switch with a single cable.
Also, check the connection from the camera to the firewall. Leave a continuous ping running from a device on the LAN to the MV. 

[JM26]

Thank you. I had the same through process myself in regards to the camera still working as it is recording, even when showing as offline.

Will try the continuous ping to see the results. Thank you.

[PhilipDAth]

If you have a Meraki switch try using the cable test tool on the port going to the MV.

https://documentation.meraki.com/MS/Monitoring_and_Reporting/Using_the_Cable_Test_Live_tool 

[JM26]

Thank you. Will give this a go.

[JM26]

Hi all,

Thank you very much for your replies on this. I am going to spend some time testing your suggested solutions. I've attached a print screen of the camera going off this weekend. As you can see it drops for 6 minutes, then comes back online, then drops for another 2 minutes, and comes back online again. I am also able to view the recordings of when the camera is "offline" now that the camera is back online again.