Problem with new Foscam Camera

[guyshahar]

Hi

I recently bought a Foscam F18918W camera direct from Foscam hoping for some decent technical support, as promised on their web-page. However, when I need help, there is no answer from the phone line, and the email id only respond with pre-scripted pages that don't answer my questions.... I hope someone here can help

I have 2 problems. I got the camera working fine through our home network, but then suddenly after a few days, the status light for the camera (using IE9 on Windows 7) started flashing red/green and beeping loudly. Recording starts automatically, and files are saved in small chunks (a few minutes each) to the default folder, and not to the record path that I had set to the desktop (which still shows as desktop on the settings). Does anyone know why this is happening and what I can do to stop it?

The second problem is probably bigger!! I want to be able to set up the camera to be able to watch it externally - outside our home network. My understanding of how to set this up is almost zero. I have picked up that you need to basically just set up "port forwarding" from the router. I have a BT Home Hub, and have tried to do this, but it doesn't work. The screen I get from the router settings page asks for 2 pieces of information - "game or application" and "device". I know I have selected the right device from the second field, but I have no idea what I need to select from the first field - there is a huge list of options, some of them look like names of applications, others look like protocols, and so on. I chose "http", but do not know whether this is right or not. Anyway, I can still not see the camera using the external ip address with ":80" stuck on the end (as it is port 80 that is being used for this). Can anyone help? Have I selected the wrong option from the router settings page? Are there any other steps that I should be following to make this happen?

(my ip address is not static, but that is another project for another day - for the moment, I am just looking to make it work with whatever the current ip address is).

Thanks a lot for any help.

Guy

[buellwinkle]

Check my blog site as I have an article on this. Also, when it says game or application, if you stuck with port 80 on your camera, then chose web server, that's the application that's port 80. If you changed it from port 80 to something else they usually have a way to add a game/application/service or whatever they call it (each router manufacturer tries to make it easier for you in their own special way, thereby making it harder.

As to support, all I can say is you are getting as good a support as you can expect. Wanting more is futile. Foscam is a great little entry level camera that gives people the justification they need to pay more the next time around. The best thing about Foscam is seeing the odd colors that grass & trees turns into, sometimes purple, gray, brown, pink it's awsome. The best time was when I had a jet black jacket on my couch and the camera displayed it as light blue.
_________________
For network camera articles and reviews, visit my blog at http://ipcamnetwork.wordpress.com

[Engineer]

I recently bought a Foscam IP Camera from www.ipcam-central.com and got a great customer support. I run into the exact problems as you, and they provided me prompt email support for free.
They also offer a paid remote installation service, which I did not need, but I am sure that a lot of people can use it.

Eng

[guyshahar]

Thank you BuellWinkle

I went onto your very interesting blog, and completed the steps for viewing the camera remotely. I unchecked DCHP and filled in the relevant details to get a constant local IP address (though I think it was already fixed, as I had bookmarked it, and it hasn't changed for a couple of weeks at least, since I bought it). I set up Port Forwarding on my router, according to your instructions, and selecting "Web Server (HTTP)" from the list of applications, as the camera is set to port 80. Then I got hold of my external IP address using whatsmyip.com, and pasted that into my browser, but no page could be found. I then tried this on my phone connected via 3G rather than my home network, and again, nothing could be found (it just said "504 Gateway Timeout". It still works on the local network.

Can you think why this might be?

[buellwinkle]

The #1 problem encountered is that people plug a router into a router which makes port forwarding impossible. This happens inadvertantly as DSL and Cable providers issue a simple single port router they call a cable or DSL modem but it's not and people add a wifi router to it making this dual firewall. The way around it is to make the WiFi router the authoritive router and turn off the router functionality in your cable/dsl modem.

If that's not the case, for example you have an all in one DSL/Cable modem/router, then the next thing to check is if you can ping the IP address that shows up on whatsmyip.org (in a cmd window, enter ping x.x.x.x and it should respond with the time it took),

If you post your screenshot of the firewall setting screens that may help.
_________________
For network camera articles and reviews, visit my blog at http://ipcamnetwork.wordpress.com

[guyshahar]

Thanks Bullwinkle

I do have an all-in-one router, but interestingly, when I pinged the IP address that I got from whatsmyip.com, it showed a 100% loss of data.....!!! Why would this be? Screenshot is here - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51552937/Ping.png

The settings screen of my firewall seems to show that the camera has full access. Screenshot is here - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51552937/Firewall%20Screen.png

(Sorry, can't work out how to attach files to this post.....)

How can I move forward???

Thanks again

Guy

[guyshahar]

....and this screenshot (probably what you were asking about in the first place) seems to show that Port 80 is open to my network and to the internet - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51552937/Firewall.png - yet there is still no response when I ping the IP address....

[buellwinkle]

I don't understand, that screenshot looks like McAffee Internet security running on your PC.

The way it works is you have a router, it's a link between the outside world and your home network. You define the IP address and port of the camera in your router configuration so that when an incoming request comes in on your WAN address and that port, it knows to send it to the camera. This has nothing at all to do with your PC other than you can use a PC to configure the router, usually by entering the gateway IP address on your browser (if you run ipconfig on your command/dos window it will tell you the gateway address, see sample below, mine would be 192.168.0.1 so I would browse http://192.168.0.1 to configure the router)

c:\user\me> ipconfig

Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : gateway.2wire.net
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.2
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
_________________
For network camera articles and reviews, visit my blog at http://ipcamnetwork.wordpress.com

[guyshahar]

OK - apologies, I am not technical, and sort of scrabbling around in the dark on this....

This is the screenshot you may be after. It is from the router configuration page, and shows the firewall settings for the router. It seems to be allowing outgoing traffic (I was reluctant to allow incoming traffic in case that let something untoward in....)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51552937/Hub%20Firewall.bmp

[guyshahar]

Sorry - correct link is - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51552937/Hub%20Firewall.png

[guyshahar]

Perhaps this will help also - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51552937/Port%20Forwarding%20Config.PNG

[buellwinkle]

Routers keep tables internally of connections that sometimes get jumbled, even on $5,000 routers. It could be that the name you chose is no longer associated with that IP address, that's why I recomend using a fixed IP address (like 192.168.1.50) on the camera and then specifying that address in the port forwarding for your router.
_________________
For network camera articles and reviews, visit my blog at http://ipcamnetwork.wordpress.com

[guyshahar]

Thanks again BullWinkle

I had followed your instructions on your blog and assigned an IP address of 192.168.1.93. Now, this always takes me to the camera's sign-on screen.

I went on to the router config and found the device, allocated it the "Web Server (HTTP)" option, and set it for port forwarding.

Are you saying that it might somehow be associated with a different IP address as far as the router is concerned, and that is why it is not showing on my network's external IP address? If so, what can be done about that? There doesn't seem to be any way in my router's port-forwarding options to specify an IP address. I have found an option to add a new applicaiton, but do not understand how to use the screen. Screenshot is here - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/51552937/New%20Application.PNG. Any thoughts?

[buellwinkle]

Can't see the screenshot from that link, maybe dropbox hasn't synced it yet. But yes, instead of the Linux 2.4.20.... put in the 192.168.1.93 and I'm suprised it doesn't let you type an ip address in, never seen that before.

What I would do is go to youtube.com and search for bt home hub port forwarding and watch a few videos. The one that I watched showed that you can type anything you want for the ip address.
_________________
For network camera articles and reviews, visit my blog at http://ipcamnetwork.wordpress.com

[adam718]

If you are able to view the camera locally, but not over the internet there are 2 possible problems. The first is that you have a configuration issue, this does not seem likely from the images you sent. The more likely scenario is that port 80 is blocked from your ISP. Try changing it to port 8000 on the camera and the router. I suggest using Security Monitor Pro, in addition to broadcasting over the internet for multiple cameras, it has many more features - http://www.deskshare.com/video-surveillance-software.aspx