Not really viral / marketing or in anyway related to the usual posts on this site but as I couldn’t find a fix no matter how hard a Googled, I thought I’d post up a quicky on here to see if I can help out any other fellow strugglers.
The issue was quite simple, I bough the camera above. Set it up wired on my network and all worked fine. Set it up for wireless access and the whole thing spat the dummy.
Quick fix for this is two fold.
(1) You have to know that the camera has two MAC IDs and therefore it’s got two IP addressees. The first when it’s connected locally, the second for when it’s connected wirelessly.
So for example, if you plug the camera into the router and it tells you it’s got the IP of 192.168.0.5, then connect up up for wireless access, chances are it’s now got the IP address of 192.168.0.6
It doesn’t mention this in the manual
The second part, the bit I was stumped on was that when I connected the camera wirelessly, the router could see it’s mac ID ok but the IP address in the ‘Attached Devices’ list was only showing up as a series of diamonds and question marks.
I didn’t have a clue what that meant. It also meant that the camera wasn’t connecting correctly to the wireless and therefore I was unable to use it unless it was locally wired. Sort of defeating the purpose!
Long and already dull story short, my router was configured to only allow certain IP addresses to connect. I don’t remember setting this up but I must have done as it was all local devices like the Apple Time Capsule etc.
All I had to do was go to Setup – Wireless Settings – Wireless Station Access List and turn Access Control Off.
Once this was done I refreshed the Attached Device listing and sure enough the camera was there with it’s new wireless IP address.
I included this IP back in the Wireless Station Access list, turned the Access Control back on and that was it!
It’s worth pointing out that I also swapped the camera from DHCP to a the static IP once the router has assigned one. That way I’ll not get any probs should I switch the camera off and move it’s position etc.
Once that was done the rest was plain sailing. In fact I’ve gone ahead and ordered a second one.
Hope someone out there finds this useful as I couldn’t find any reference to a Sky Router not recognising a wireless device, instead only showing the diamonds and question marks. This, by the way, indicated an encrypted IP address, that’s what made me think to check the WSAL in the first place!
By the way if you’re thinking about getting the Foscam FI8918W, I highly recommend it. £60 ish off Amazon. The image quality is pretty good. The FTP / Mailing of images collected from the Motion Detection are a doodle to setup and very sensitive. Plus the Infrared camera is really great. It even works well for outside access over my horrible slow internet connection ( I live in the sticks!). All in, I can’t see how you can get much better for the price.