Camera going off line
GC-V4GB, external battery on solar panel, brand new Sandisk 16gb class 10 Sd card, bounces between 4 and 5 bars of signal. Has a history of dropping off line for a day, or two, or sometimes even three. The last two nights and into morning, it has stopped sending status updates, and scheduled events. I always thought it was a Verizon thing, but It has done it in two different locations and I have a new Ghost in the old location that is NOT doing it, so I don't think it is an issue with a loss of cell service. This is the camera that I did an OTA firmware update a month or so back and it bricked. I returned it to Spartan, and they said they backfed power to it (I'm not really sure what that means), flashed the newest firmware and returned. I'm not sure that something else isn't going on here.
Any suggestions?
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It made it's 10:AM scheduled pic, it's set to video a,d pic, and there is a 16 gap between the last pic and this pic, so 8 pics didn't get sent. I did change it to power save on. So we'll see what happens.
What exactly does power save do when it is off that would cause this kind of behavior? If it were on and doing something like this I could understand it more.
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Power save off leaves the camera connected to the network. My theory is that Verizon sees that device always connected and doesn't like it so boots it off for a period of time. I have no solid proof of this, it's just a theory but turning power save on has eliminated the issues you're seeing with other users.
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Went off line again last night. It made the 8:00PM status report, missed the 3:00AM status report, the 7:00AM scheduled pic, and the 8:00AM scheduled pic. No pics during the night, and this camera ALWAYS has something going on at night (raccoons, at the very least). Not sure where to go from here.
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Steve, if you want to email me your portal log in info I can take a look at things for you. Email is johnny.lockburner@spartancamera.com
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Another thought...how would this camera act if the external battery we’re going bad? I’m thinking it would show something other than P5, but it’s not taking any pictures at night, so there’s that. Camera goes down when the sun goes down, comes back when it has enough daylight for the solar panel to put a little charge in the battery. Any thoughts? I’m heading out to check it on Thursday, and I do have an extra battery. I’m gonna take my multimteter and check voltage, too.
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That external setup that you have should power the camera all through the night but at some point if it wasn't I would have thought that the internal batteries should have shown you a P3 or P1 on the info strip on the pics. The only thing that might possibly be causing the issues is if you have lithium in the camera and they are dead but still a higher voltage than what the external is charging up to.
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I’m running rechargeable internals.
The 6V 42ah battery should power it for a long time on its own, provided it hasn’t gone south. The external battery is close to two years old, so age and deterioration was my concern.
Guess I’ll bring it home with me and test it. We’ve got just as good signal at home as where the camera is.
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Well, it appears that this just MIGHT be a SD card problem. I thought I had put one of the new SD cards in this camera but when I got it home, it's an older card. I got it home last night late ,so I didn't have time to mess with it until tonight. Turned it on and it just sat there "searching for signal". Popped in a 32g Sandisk that I used for a couple of years on my 3g cam, and it found a full 5 bars of signal. Gonna see if it keeps sending status reports tonight. Time to order a new SD card (or two or three, I like to have spares).
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I bought a 5 pack of class 10 80 speed on Amazon last night. Since I'm not going to be able to put this camera back out for a couple of weeks, I'm gonna leave the 32 gb card in it for a few days, then go back to the original card again and see what happens. It hit every status report last night.
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I'm beginning to believe Johnny's statement that the V4GB's are picky about the SD card. I took the old 32GB card out yesterday afternoon and popped in the 16GB card that had been in it previously. It finally got a signal, but it took a long time. I popped a brand new 16GB card (all Class 10 80 speed cards) in, formatted it, and turned the camera on. It hit it's 3:00AM status report, but missed the 7:00AM report. It's set up in my garage right now, so I know when people are going and coming, and I KNOW it missed at least one time that my wife and grandson left the house this morning. I'm gonna leave it as is for now and see what it does over the next few days. Probably going to go back to the 32GB card, it doesn't seem to have problems with it.
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Stick it in the camera and see if it works....
In theory, you might want to change the IMEI/MEID on the account to that of your new camera. However, you never know whether they'll decide to charge an activation fee (even though this is a replacement for the other one) so it may be better to just see if things work without you doing anything.
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Please email IMEI/MEID to Elizabeth.Swoope@spartancamera.com. I'll see what I can find out but it may not be today.
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