Camera Health Check (CHC) is an automated camera test feature that checks to ensure your cameras are online and functioning.

What does CHC do?

  • When enabled CHC will periodically run a network test on your camera to ensure it can be accessed
  • The test is very similar to the Network Test that's run when you first added your camera
  • If there's a test failure, you will be notified by mobile or email notification, depending on your preference
  • After a camera fails a test, the user will also be notified when it passes the next test
  • If a number of tests fail a final failure message will be sent and you won't receive any further notices

Note: CHC runs a test of your camera approximately every 10 mins. It's important to note that the time of a CHC failure will most likely not indicate the exact time. Use your timeline to see when the recording actually stopped.

How to enable CHC

CHC is automatically enabled. If you wish to be notified when a test fails you can simply add CHC to your notification list (along with Motion Detection). By selecting this option a notification will be sent to your mobile app and to the email provided under the My Account -> Settings -> Notifications.

Failed test and notifications

When a CHC test fails, a notification will be sent by email or to your mobile app. The camera will then be assigned an "Alert" state to indicate there's a failed test. 

The camera can be removed from this state by:

  • A successful CHC test (on the next scheduled test), or
  • A successful manual retest, which can be run by selecting Edit Camera -> Test Connection. 

Once either of these two tests pass, the camera will return to its normal healthy state. Note: It can take a few minutes before it clears the alert.

A user will also be notified when a camera in failed state passes the next automated health check.

Types of notifications

<Camera Name> is Offline - Your camera is no longer functioning properly. It doesn't necessarily mean everything stopped working. Either the Live View stopped working and/or the motion events are not coming in. A list of reasons will be given in the notification.

<Camera Name> is Online - No action required here. We ran another test and the camera is back in working order.

<Camera Name> is Unstable - This notification is only for cameras that are in continuous record mode. We identified that the stream is unstable.

Reasons

In every notification you'll get a list of "reasons" for the failure. Different reasons include:

  • Camera connection - The cloud connection is failing. Typically a power or internet issue
  • Continuous stream unstable/failed - The continuous stream is cutting out too often
  • HTTP port forwarding - HTTP port used is no longer open
  • RTSP port forwarding - RTSP port used is no longer open
  • Username/password - Credentials are no longer working
  • Camera High Bitrate - Generic cameras only, they are using a bitrate that is too high. We stop the camera from streaming.
  • Analysis Limit - You've reached the AI limit

Tip: Not all camera's behave the same when a max bitrate is set, you may need to limit the camera even lower than 1280kbps. The frame rate should also be kept at or below 15 (10 is recommended).

Camera Health Check History

In addition to what you see with each camera in the Timeline, you also get a history of all events for every device.

This is a great way to monitor the health of any device and might give you clues to issues such as the internet connection and bandwidth.