Hello everyone,
I am using a setup with 28 Prime 13 cameras. They are connected via Cat6 cables to 2 Gigabit switches that can provide 384 W PoE each. According to the documentation, this setup should be fine. Still, I am frequently having problems with random cameras disconnecting, often disturbing calibration as calibration is aborted when a camera disconnects. Also, cameras that disconnect and reconnect after calibration tend to show up in the origin, making it necessary to reload the calibration. I am using Motive Body 2.3.0 Final.
What is the issue? Are more than 24 ethernet cameras unsupported?
When using Google to search for an answer, I noticed there once was a hint in the documentation specifically for setups with high camera counts. It has been removed from the documentation though as that section only appears in the Google results and not on the page. It read: "High Camera Counts: For setting up more than 24 Prime series cameras, we recommend using a 10 Gigabit uplink switch and connecting it to the host PC via an ..."
I do not have a 10 Gigabit uplink switch but I also do not see why that should be required, as the amount of data transfered is way lower when using object mode only.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Problems when using more than 24 cameras
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ChemnitzScientist
- Posts: 5
- Joined: Tue Jul 11, 2023 11:56 am
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MatthewSilveira
- NaturalPoint Employee
- Posts: 5
- Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2024 3:42 pm
Re: Problems when using more than 24 cameras
The Prime 13 cameras will pull about 15.5W each, so your power allocation is not the issue, unless certain ports are allowed more power than others.
If you are using two network switches for your cameras, they should be fed into a third aggregate switch. What is happening is that the cameras that are connected to the network switch that is running directly to your computer are going to be able to transmit data faster than the cameras that need to make a hop up to the network where the connection is. The ideal setup would be having all of the cameras 1 hop away, feeding into the aggregation switch.
A 10GB uplink is recommended, but that all depends on what kind of data that you are capturing. This could be an issue if you are seeing dropped frames, but not the cameras disconnecting.
Check the settings on your network switches to see if there are ports that are set to cap power.
Then try running an aggregation network switch.
Try and keep track of the specific serial numbers of the cameras that are disconnecting, if it is one or two cameras that are constantly having a problem, you might need to replace those cameras.
If you are using two network switches for your cameras, they should be fed into a third aggregate switch. What is happening is that the cameras that are connected to the network switch that is running directly to your computer are going to be able to transmit data faster than the cameras that need to make a hop up to the network where the connection is. The ideal setup would be having all of the cameras 1 hop away, feeding into the aggregation switch.
A 10GB uplink is recommended, but that all depends on what kind of data that you are capturing. This could be an issue if you are seeing dropped frames, but not the cameras disconnecting.
Check the settings on your network switches to see if there are ports that are set to cap power.
Then try running an aggregation network switch.
Try and keep track of the specific serial numbers of the cameras that are disconnecting, if it is one or two cameras that are constantly having a problem, you might need to replace those cameras.