Foscam motion sensor not working

Other Devices & Integrations Door Locks & Sensors
#1

Hi,

I am having 2 Foscam FI8918W with my Vera lite (with the most recently firmware updated)and having problem with configuring the camera motion sensor to work.

referring to blogs and the posts, i believe have done all required but still not able to get the sensor work

I have all required in place in the camera advanced tab

  • IP
    -Mac
    -Vera address
    -device_file = D_DigitalSecurityCamera2.xml
    -impl_file = I_FoscamPTZ.xml
    -Ontime = 60

the camera is working fine with video showed up, preset working, pan & tilt running.
also tried to remove the “motion detect armed” by login into the camera configuration it self.

help is much appreciated. thanks

#2

Do you have your Vera secured? The new plugin does not work if “secure this vera” is set to yes.

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,11027.msg78708/topicseen.html#msg78708

#3

[quote=“woodchild, post:1, topic:172337”]- IP
-Mac
-Vera address
-device_file = D_DigitalSecurityCamera2.xml
-impl_file = I_FoscamPTZ.xml
-Ontime = 60

the camera is working fine with video showed up, preset working, pan & tilt running.
also tried to remove the “motion detect armed” by login into the camera configuration it self.[/quote]

Try changing your “ontime” variable back to the default of 1200 (i.e. 20 minutes). I know the plug-in initially wouldn’t recognize values below 20 minutes for this variable and it was causing the motion sensor on Vera to stay tripped forever.

Also, make sure the motion dectection on the camera itself is turned on (I might be reading it wrong but it sounds like you turned it off). The camera pushes the motion alarm status to Vera versus Vera pulling the alarm status from the camera.

#4

just removed the “secure this vera”, and as well reset “ontime” variable back to 1200 but still did not work.

also turned back the motion detection on the camera itself but still no luck.

#5

Try changing your ‘device_file’ to D_DigitalSecurityCamera1.xml. I use this file over D_DigitalSecurityCamera2.xml because many mobile apps for Vera like iVera and automator.app don’t show the camera when you try to view it through the app.

Another suggestion I’ve seen is to change the ‘configuredMD’ value from “2” to “1”. When you set it to “1”, hit save, and then the value should automatically reset the value to “2”, but it should “reset” the motion sensor in a way. I forget what the values actually stand for but this has helped some people on these forums get the motion sensor working for them.

#6

A long shot. Try to get only one camera to work first. Then connect the other to the network.

#7

I’m having the same problem. Can’t get the motion detect to work on my foscams. Changing ConfiguredMD to 1 throws an error “Can’t configure camera” and it doesn’t reset to 2. So something ain’t right with either the camera config or the motion sensor config. I feel like I’ve tried everything. Anyone have any other ideas? Using latest firmware on UI5

#8

Yup, I’ve got the exact same problem…everything else related to the camera seems to work, just vera not detecting movement. Camera UI indicates movement, but not getting pushed/read by Vera correctly. Using a vera 2 fyi.

#9

Are you using DHCP on your router? If so, check the Vera IP address in the camera’s advanced settings to see if it matches your Vera’s current IP. The current foscam plug-in for Vera sets the IP address at install time. If the Vera unit’s IP address changes (via DHCP or manually), you’ll need to go in and update this address manually in the camera’s advanced settings. You may have to change ConfiguredMD setting to 0, save the changes and then reloaded LUUP just to be safe.

mcvflorin is workign on an update to the plug-in that addresses this issue.

#10

[quote=“woodchild, post:1, topic:172337”]Hi,

I am having 2 Foscam FI8918W with my Vera lite (with the most recently firmware updated)and having problem with configuring the camera motion sensor to work.

referring to blogs and the posts, i believe have done all required but still not able to get the sensor work

I have all required in place in the camera advanced tab

  • IP
    -Mac
    -Vera address
    -device_file = D_DigitalSecurityCamera2.xml
    -impl_file = I_FoscamPTZ.xml
    -Ontime = 60

the camera is working fine with video showed up, preset working, pan & tilt running.
also tried to remove the “motion detect armed” by login into the camera configuration it self.

help is much appreciated. thanks [/quote]

I am also having the same problem…

Don
#11

Did you check the Vera’s IP address with the one in the camera’s advanced tab?

#12

I found I had to have the Camera IP address and port number to make it work.

#13

I believe my vera’s ip had changed, so once I isolated that as the issue, simple to fix. I also found this link to be very useful…it shows all parameters being sent from the camera to vera. You can take the alarm_http_url value and paste in a browser and run it to see if it responds with “OK”. That’s when I realized where the problem was. http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/get_params.cgi …substitute xxx for your IP address of your camera. As soon as I corrected and reloaded the get_params.cgi page, the sensor immediately kicked over to motion detected, so that’s pretty useful as a testing tool.

#14

Just found out my issue regarding motion detection on my Foscam cameras:

I couldn’t get vera to set my camera’s variables correctly (alarm_http and alarm_http_url), no matter what I did. So I looked into the Foscam IP Camera App code and tried to activate it manually using the URL in the following form:

http://<camera_ip>/set_alarm.cgi?motion_armed=1&http=1&http_url=http%3A%2F%2F<vera_ip>%3A3480%2Fdata_request%3Fid%3Dlr_foscam_tripped%26sensor_id%3D<sensor_id>&user=&pwd=

No sucess there. So I captured the URL from the camera’s control page and voil?: got my variables set and motion detection is now working perfectly:

http://<camera_ip>/set_alarm.cgi?user=&pwd=&motion_armed=1&input_armed=0&motion_sensitivity=5&iolinkage=0&mail=0&upload_interval=0&schedule_enable=0&schedule_sun_0=0&schedule_sun_1=0&schedule_sun_2=0&schedule_mon_0=0&schedule_mon_1=0&schedule_mon_2=0&schedule_tue_0=0&schedule_tue_1=0&schedule_tue_2=0&schedule_wed_0=0&schedule_wed_1=0&schedule_wed_2=0&schedule_thu_0=0&schedule_thu_1=0&schedule_thu_2=0&schedule_fri_0=0&schedule_fri_1=0&schedule_fri_2=0&schedule_sat_0=0&schedule_sat_1=0&schedule_sat_2=0&http=1&http_url=http%3A%2F%2F<vera_ip>%3A3480%2Fdata_request%3Fid%3Dlr_foscam_tripped%26sensor_id%3D<sensor_id>

It looks like Foscam firmware expects all these parameters to work correctly. I tried to remove one by one and found out that every single one is required in order to succeed.

I hope this info can help someone.

#15

Do you mind telling me where you changed this setting? What line of the code? I just set up my 8910W but it’s not even giving me some of the variables needed under advanced for motion detection.