There’s a lot of variation to cables and over a long distance you can get varying quality.
I wouldn’t recommend flat cables for POE at all. I wouldn’t even give a range estimate. They are commonly very small gauge. 28-32 AWG I think is common.
26AWG is a smaller size than 24AWG, and it would see performance issues sooner if that is the case here.
If your issue is indeed cabling with the POE cameras, which it sounds like it might be, generally I would recommend a Cat5e or better 24AWG cable.
Ok I will get some cat6 cables 24 AWG in 50 ft lengths(not sure why I bought 100ft in the first place) and then give it try and report back. Thank you. We WILL conquer this problem!!
Alright, I would absolutely replace the flat cable. I would recommend testing all the POE cams via a shorter cable connected to the switch or injector just to be sure you do not notice any issues on them. If they work normally in that case then I would replace all the 100ft cables.
If you do not need the full 100ft that’s even better and you are less impacted by gauge at 50ft.
Generally the longer the cable and the thinner the wire the less effective it can be with power transmission.
Good afternoon @jwcsurety . I replaced the 100 ft flat cable w a 50ft 24WG cat6. I also bought a new router, TP-link AX6000 w 8 gigabit ports.(I did not really care for the mesh network w the ASUS). I also changed my SSID. I now have the 726 and 826 going from router to a TP link POE switch and the 736 plugged into the router with a POE inverter. I pretty much deleted all the POE cameras and SVR from the account and re-added as well as re-paired the WIFI cameras w the new network.
With all that said, I can’t say with any certainty that any of that helped significantly. It may have, I just dont know for sure. I did some “testing” as I changed every parameter of the equation. But what I can say did help significantly, is changing the FPS rate for all the POE cameras from 30 to 15. For whatever reason, there is MUCH less “choppiness” to the videos, both LIVE and recorded. I have not done any significant testing as I just completed all this today, but I will continue to monitor. Another thing I observed was when I add the SVR back to the account, it introduced more “choppiness” to the videos. I removed it from the account for now so that I can just monitor the stability of the cameras at 15FPS. I will report back late week.
Thanks again for helping and Ill be in touch.
Thank you for your follow up and thorough testing. You will certainly avoid issues now and in the future replacing the flat cable, it’s just not well suited for POE generally.
That said, that does make sense dropping the FPS would improve saved video. You are significantly lowering the data being transmitted. Interesting that would have such an effect on Live though.
I’m curious if the Mesh router limited bandwidth on a device basis, and I am also now curious if the “Speed up remote connection” might resolve the issue if unchecked. This is found under Live View settings for the cameras in Alarm.com.
I unchecked the box you mentioned and unfortunately I did not see any noticeable improvement at this time. I will continue to monitor.
In terms of my old mesh router and my new one, I do not see anywhere that either is throttling my connection to any devices. I found in the web interface of each router where I can restrict bandwidth to a device but I have not placed any restrictions on any devices in my LAN.
I really spent time over the weekend trying to narrow things down even further during my trouble shooting. I will say without a doubt, one of the things I noticed and have noticed in the past when comparing the performance of the wifi cameras vs the POE, ALL of the POE cameras(3) have the “choppiness” issue while away from the LAN without exception. However, all my wifi cameras seem to function properly and I rarely notice any choppiness. Any ideas why that would be considering you would think ethernet connected devices should always perform better and more be more stable than devices on WIFI. I noticed the above mentioned on the old router and this new one.
Broadly speaking, “choppiness” seem to be an issue with POE while AWAY from the LAN. Again all my testing is conducted on an iPhone 13 Pro Max on iOS 15.1.1 on ATT’s cellular network? I am trying to track down an android device on verizon to test further.
In summary I see three possible concerns from my testing: iOS 15, ATT, POE.
Thoughts??
@jwcsurety good afternoon. Not sure if you sent some sort of command on your end but my two error messages with those cameras resolve themselves. Thank you.
I continued troubleshooting my POE cameras and I I think I may have figured something out. If you recall, you had said something about when I was away from my LAN that you thought it might have something to do with the bandwidth from either AT&T or my phone. You had me look in my LTE settings and I made a few adjustments but there was no change. In addition, I recently told you that by reducing from 30 FPS to 15 FPS seemed to help. With that information I started to play with the other settings in the “saved video” section on the website. I had my POE cameras set at “Full” resolution with “best”image quality and 15 frames per second. I played with the resolution and image quality section and found that if I set the resolution at “full” and the image quality at “good(lowest),” all of my POE cameras played live video almost normally. If I reduced the resolution even lower to “HD” and kept the other settings as above, there was never any choppiness in the video and it played fantastic, albeit grainier because it was not at “full”resolution. Soooooo, like you mentioned before, One would think that either my phone or AT&T is throttling my bandwidth, however, I have no problem playing 4K videos from YouTube or the like.
If you recall, all of my video issues began after I upgraded my phone to the iPhone 13 pro max and upgraded the operating system to iOS 15
On my LAN, the video at the highest settings plays correctly.
So with this information as I see it, I speculate there must be some problem between the new iOS operating system and ADC and ATT??
I am still trying to source another device like an android phone to test further.
Thoughts And any further suggestions?
So with this information as I see it, I speculate there must be some problem between the new iOS operating system and ADC and ATT??
Yeah, that’s possible. I’m not sure how the SVR would fit in there, but the same effect can certainly have multiple causes, especially data bottleneck. We may have circled back around to the likelihood that this is an OS or carrier triggered issue.
Originally you had reached out about saved video not playing smoothly on iOS 15 and an Alarm.com rep told me they were able to recreate that. I know there is an open ticket with ADC investigating that with Apple still.
I’m not able to recreate what you are describing on my own Android, but I do not have an apples to apples comparable setup, so it is hard to draw conclusions from that.
With that information I started to play with the other settings in the “saved video” section on the website. I had my POE cameras set at “Full” resolution with “best”image quality and 15 frames per second. I played with the resolution and image quality section and found that if I set the resolution at “full” and the image quality at “good(lowest),” all of my POE cameras played live video almost normally
You reference Live View improving, did the Saved videos play back normally when lowered settings were used? If both work better I would be inclined to believe that this is indeed a data bottleneck.
I have not connected the SVR back to the network yet as I was doing all this testing without it.
Saved video has seem to improve greatly. There are occasions though where the video will not playback correctly and is choppy however if I play it back two or three times in a row it seems to somehow resolve itself and play normally. Hope that makes sense.
Once I track down someone with an android device running on Verizon, I can see how the video behaves on that device and Network.
