Frozen camera

[Goalieed]

Hi. I'm running the release version of Icam source. Today my camera built into the laptop didn't detect any motion when my wife walked by it, but the other (USB) webcamera did. I had my wife stand in front of the laptop (camera light is on) but the camera seems to have "frozen" and didn't show her.

I'm running this under xp with an Dell 9 netbook specifically for this task. Any ideas on how I can detect or prevent this problem in the future?

[SKJM Support]

Has your camera frozen like this before? There could be a number of different reason why your camera would freeze. Unfortunately, unless this is a frequently recurring issue it may be hard to track. Please let us know if your camera continues to freeze up.

[Goalieed]

Will do I restarted the system and let windows perform all the updates. I also upgraded to the beta software.

[SKJM Support]

Thank you for your post. Hope that resolves the issue. Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

[Goalieed]

The issue happened again. Same symptom, the internal laptop camera picture froze using the built in webcam, but the other USB camera continues to function normally. This was using the beta release of Icam source and I checked but no updated driver was available for the internal Dell mini 9 webcamera under xp. Curiously The light on the camera remains on, but when I switched the source to the working external camera and then back to the internal one, instead of a picture of the webcamera output there was just a grey screen where the image should be. The iPhone, however, continued displaying the static picture.

All sleep setting are turned off for the computer.

What's the next step in fixing this?  I'm frustrates as I want to use it for security.

[OUAnthony]

Goalieed,

I had similar issues with a built-in camera freezing up occasionally. I think it was a hardware issue, but I'm not 100%...it's been a while (that computer is no longer working). Anyway, what you could do is write a simple batch file to kill icamsource, wait about 4 seconds, then rerun icamsource. Then schedule it to run hourly. If you look through my previous posts, you can find directions for it. It's obviously not an ideal solution, but it is a work around that should get you up and running fairly painlessly, if you can't find an actual solution to the freezing.

[OUAnthony]

Something else to consider....if you find that only icamsource causes the camera to freeze (in other words, you've used different software to access video over a long period of time with no freezing), you can try using ManyCam to clone the camera...this might result in a more stable image feed. I can't remember the version of ManyCam that you will need, but it is NOT one of the new releases. Again, one of my previous posts addresses which version to use.

P.S. When my camera froze, it had generally been going for hours (at the least) and motion made it freeze...when it went from normal background to someone walking in front of the camera, etc.

[Goalieed]

I tried updating the bios to the latest version, but didn't help.  I may try the workaround, but is there any logs or tracing I can send to support so they can fix this issue?

[Goalieed]

I'm trying to implement the workaround, but it sure want easy. Xp home version doesn't have the taskkill program to shut down Icam (only available on the pro edition) and then for whatever reason my clean installed pc didn't have the scheduling service running. I found a freeware replacement for task kill, fought xp for a long time with the batch file and such, and think it is finally running (time will tell).

Add an "periodic auto restart" of a particular web camera to my list of requests though.

[OUAnthony]

Wow...didn't realize taskkill wasn't included in all versions of XP+. That sucks man...sorry you had so much grief. It does seem like an auto-restart option on a per-camera basis would be pretty cool, and seems like it would be easy to implement (to a non-programmer). Hopefully they will consider that. I'm sure others have experienced a USB camera locking up on them.

[Goalieed]

I'm now having all kinds of errors in accessing the cameras since I set up the 1 hour restart. Would you mind sharing your batch file you use so I can see any differences?  I'm getting source connection errors and my CPU usage seems to have pegged at 100%.

[OUAnthony]

Sorry for the delay...went on vacation and just got back. This is a message that I sent to someone...it contains the code I used in my batch file back when I needed it. Some of it might not relate to you:



taskkill /f /im icamsource.exe
ping 1.1.1.1 -n 1 -w 5000 > nul
c:
cd \
cd "C:\Program Files\iCamSource\"
iCamSource.exe

The /f in taskkill forces the icamsource to exit (in case it hangs). The ping command is actually not pinging anything...it's actually pausing the batch file for 5000 milliseconds (adjust this as desired...but make sure not to go below the minimum amount of time it takes for Windows to kill icamsource in the first place.

Other iCam users have posted on the forums similar issues to yours...video freezing up. The SKJM guys responded to those people that their video feed is probably becoming corrupted (likely due to quality of network connection). Before you go the batch file route, here are some things you might check:

1) Do you have the firmware of all IP cams updated? If USB cameras, do you have the drivers updated, and do you have the cameras plugged directly into a USB port (not a USB hub)? And do you have Windows updates installed?

2) For IP cameras, have you attempted changing the feed (in icamsource) from mjpeg to jpeg mode? Jpeg mode is recommended if IP cameras are freezing.

3) If using wireless IP cameras, have you checked the signal quality? Low quality connections are more likely to cause corrupted mjpeg stream.