iPhone fails to connect to second generic camera

[twink]

I can run multiple iCamSources using different brands of cameras and watch them at the same time from my iPhone.  But when I try to watch two generic identical cameras, iCam on the iPhone takes about 30 seconds to connect to the first camera and then after a minute says that it was unable to connect to the other one. I have the current drivers and am running XP SP3.

Both iCamSource instances show two "USB Video Device" in the Video Source control that are identical. I have to guess as to which camera I am starting. I presume that this may be confusing the iPhone app as well.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Stefan]

Did you install drivers specific to the webcams on your computer? "USB Video Device" is usually the generic name that windows assigns to webcams it is unfamiliar with, and the default drivers that Windows assigns to them have been problematic in the past.

Do the preview videos on both iCamSources work when you start them? Or do you have problems running both iCamSources at the same time? iCam shouldn't be concerned with specific video source used by the iCamSource as long as the iCamSource is able to sufficiently capture the stream.

What is the CPU usage of your computer when running two iCamSources, both when idle (no iCam connections) and after iCam connects? It might be that your computer cannot handle both iCamSources capturing and processing video at the same time.

[twink]

The generic cameras do not have any drivers of their own. They are Agama V-1325R infra-red cameras and they use UVP and and the vendor boasts that you can avoid the hassle of installing drivers.

CPU load is small and I have been running several different cameras on this machine. The preview videos both are working fine.

But since posting, I think  might be pushing the USB power limits. When running multiple different cameras earlier, they were on shorter connections. I now am running from USB to Cat5 and then back to USB. Both of the USB to Cat5 and back use some power. When I turned the audio off on both cameras, I got a connection to the iPhone.

I need to add a powered USB hub and retest, I might be OK. Will post again after doing that. Thanks

[twink]

OK, Never mind. With a powered USB hub, I seem to be fine now.

I do use about 50% cpu on this single core computer with 2 cameras running. With your soon to be released iCam 2.0, I think a lot of users will begin to run into cpu issues as they go beyond 4 cameras.

Not sure how you prioritize your enhancements, but it would be nice to have either a frames per second setting or a cpu throttle setting. With FPS, I could specify, say 3 FPS and see how much cpu I was using and adjust up or down until I got to the correct cpu usage. Or if you gave a cpu throttle setting, I could say 20% of cpu and see how many FPS I was getting.

In my old setup, prior to iCam, I used to record 2 frames per second, which was plenty for security purposes.

Thanks for the help.

[OUAnthony]

If you can change the video size settings to 640X480, icamsource won't have to process the images as much...so I'm pretty sure it should lower CPU usage.

[Stefan]

twink - The majority of the CPU usage has to do with the capturing of the USB / FireWire / Built-In video as well as the Motion Detection processing.

As a user adds more USB cameras they're also going to run into USB bus power limitations, as you did. The ability to connect to more than 4 cameras at a time from a single computer is really targeted at people who are using a number of network IP cameras. The % CPU usage required by the iCamSource to capture network IP camera streams in MUCH lower than that of USB webcams.

In the 2.0 version of the iCamSource we have introduced a "Perform Motion Detection" processing setting that allows you to adjust how frequently the iCamSource checks for motion from the input. We have also allowed you to turn it off completely to further reduce the % CPU usage.

An example: On my 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mac mini with 1 GB of RAM I am running the latest 2.0 iCamSource BETA connecting to 3 network IP cameras. With Motion Detection turned off, it uses around 4% of the CPU. With Motion Detection on but at the lowest frequency, it alternates between 8% and 15% CPU. With the frequency at the max, it is at around 35%. You can adjust the frequency settings (or even turn it off completely) separately for each camera.

Also, with network IP cameras, adjusting the frame rate, image dimensions, and compression quality will also affect the CPU usage of the iCamSource.