Security Spy Closed Camera Connections

creativebush

I've got 2 Foscam cameras that periodically go offline for some reason. Usually Security Spy just shows them as unavailable and when I go unplug them and plug them back in Security Spy reconnects to them and all is well for awhile. This latest time it happened, Security Spy wouldn't reconnect to them and after further investigation the "Camera Enable" checkbox had been unchecked, YIKES! Is there a security hole in the web server that someone can deactivate my cameras remotely? I have re-enabled the 2 cameras and they are working again as expected but I'm REALLY concerned on how they could have been deactivated by themselves. I've not seen this behavior before.

Checking the logs it looks like there were some "out of memory" errors and when I had logged into the machine Security spy had crashed but I have it set to automatically restart. I also see this frequently. I'm guessing the Foscam cams cause Security Spy to crash because of the constant attempts at a reconnection, but I've never seen them get deactivated by themselves.

Thanks,
Paul

Ben

Hi Paul,

When certain errors occur when trying to initialise a camera, SecuritySpy will automatically disable that camera. This only happens in certain unusual cases. And in fact we have already reviewed this and modified this behaviour for the next update of SecuritySpy (out soon), where it will never automatically disable any camera: it will continually try to reconnect to the camera until it comes back online. So I don't think this is a security flaw, and upgrading to the new version when it is available should prevent this from happening again.

Basically though it sounds like the unreliability of the cameras is causing your problems. All I can really suggest is to check you have the latest firmware installed on your cameras, or stick to cameras on our official list of supported cameras. If however you suspect some problem with SecuritySpy, please feel free to email us your error log and/or crash logs and we will take a closer look.

Hope this helps.

creativebush

Thanks for the reply Ben, that makes me feel better.

I agree these Foscam HD cameras are a pain and cause a lot of problems. I've now got them plugged into Belkin Wemo plugs so I can remotely power cycle them. I may even setup a power cycle schedule so they get rebooted periodically.

Thanks again for your help and awesome software!

Paul

tlutrick

Ben,

I too have started seeing "out of memory" errors on my Hikvision cameras, but after searching and finding this post, I'll hang on for the next update. My cameras firmware is up to date, so not sure about the relation.

Ben

@tlutrick - if you would like us to check your settings to see if there is anything we can suggest, please open SecuritySpy and press the space bar three times in a row. A file called "SecuritySpy Debug Info" will appear on your desktop - email this to us and we'll take a look.