ZoneMinder Forums

I have a cheap Wansview W3 camera. Got it working on zm 1.30.4 (Linux Mint 8.2) with a wired connection. For someone in the future (probably me) the connection setup form zm is: user:pwd@IP_ADDRESS/live/ch0 There is some suggestion in the docs that ch1 and ch2 should work as well, but not for me.

So far, it all seems to working just fine.

Now, is it possible to ditch the cable and do this over wifi? I did a brief test with an android phone and the connection seems to be there (but the response was quite awful).

I really don't understand this wifi device stuff, but I'm assuming that there needs to be some kind of an application on the receiving end? I unplugged the cable and attempted to connect via the lan address, but (expectedly) that fails.

So, what am I missing

Couple things.

The Wifi interface on a camera won't be the same as the wired one, so it won't have the same IP. If the wired interface was active, it might not have retrieved *any* IP.

You need to find out what the IP is of the wireless interface of the camera (Fing on an android phone is great for this), and repoint the monitor at that IP.

In the unlikely, but not impossible event the camera does assign the same IP, the switch in the middle may take up to 60 seconds, sometimes more, to time out the ARP entry that says what MAC address points to that IP -- or the Linux box might -- so you might not connect immediately even if the IP is the same.

Thanks. This is interesting info.

I figured it'd be a different IP address, but could not figure out what that was. I tried looking a my router's "connected devices" list (WRT 54GL running Tomato) but that wasn't helpful. I'll try Fing next time). I ended up sending the camera, a Wansview POS back. Gotta find another one now.

It isn't inconceivable that if the camera was powered up connected wired, it didn't enable the wireless interface, or that someone shut it off in the controls, and you'll need to correct that and or reboot the camera.