icamSource 1.4.2 XP / IP Cam problems

[pkfrancis]

Hi - have read through a number of the threads on port forwarding etc but couldn't find exactly what I'm seeing. Sorry if I missed it!

If I run camsource 1.4.2 on my XP laptop I can access my USB webcam on the iPhone over either wifi or 3G with no problem.  When I run a separate instance on the same XP machine for an IP camera, I can see the feed in camsource but cannot view it on the iPhone via either wifi or 3G (I still see the USB feed but get the 'cannot connect to broker' message for the IP camera).  Have tried to change the port settings, set up port forwarding to the XP machine, rebooted a couple of times.  Same result.

Now here's the weird part.  When I run camsource 1.4.2 on my Macbook and try the same thing, both sources work perfectly and I can see the USB and IP camera feed on my iPhone with no problems!

Any ideas?  My public IP address from whatismyip.com is 202.124.74.217

Many thanks for any help - driving me crazy!

[Jay]

From the server logs, it looks like the iCamSource for the IP camera is connecting and disconnecting from the server repeatedly.  Does the iCamSource appear to be crashing?  Do you see an error message on the computer?  If so, what does the message say?

[pkfrancis]

The connecting and disconnecting could just be me testing - it doesn't appear to be crashing, on either the laptop or the iPhone.

[update .. ]  aha!, I moved the IP cam to connect directly to the 3G router rather than the wi-fi router and that was obviously the issue.  Seems like that extra hop was too much to deal with.  I can now see both the USB and IP cam from the XP laptop.

thanks for looking at the logs for me - appreciate that.  Hopefully all will stay stable!

[pkfrancis]

Looks like I spoke too soon.  The issue has returned.  Strange. Anyway, the message is "source connection error: one or more of the icamsources returned by the iCam Broker Serer could not be connected to"

[bit more .. the issue is flaky which means it's not a port forwarding issue.  Suspect it's my laptop hardware struggling (explains why it always works fine on the MacBook).  Will do more digging but it does seem to work in that technically it will operate so I don't think it's a s'ware issue - my problem here!]

[Jay]

How does it act if you only run the iCamSource for the IP camera?  If the CPU is struggling with two instances of iCamSource, it may behave better with one.  If you can run that one instance successfully, it might indicate that your guess is correct.

We have seen cases where IP cameras require high CPU usage because they are outputting high resolution MJPEG data.  Higher resolution MJPEG data just means more image processing is required for resizing, compression, motion detection, etc.   Check your IP camera settings, try to find out what resolution it's outputting.  Try to set it to 640x480 or lower (if possible).

[pkfrancis]

Yeah, I did just that and it does look like it's the laptop struggling with both cams.  With just the IP camera it seems to have stayed up a lot longer.  Will leave it running overnight and see how it goes.  Could be time for a new 'cam server' ;-)

[pkfrancis]

Just an update for anyone seeing similar issues (esp the dreaded ' cannot connect to broker' message).  It did seem that the laptop I was using as a cam server was struggling.  I had to drop the IP camera down to JPEG from MJPEG and it stayed alive all night.  When I had a look at the processor usage prior to doing that it was in the high 90s% which was a good indication of the problem.  Hope that helps someone else.