Monitor Nest Cameras

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tonydi
Junior Member
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Mar 20, 2018 1:37 pm

Monitor Nest Cameras

Post by tonydi »

I've been using the check ping command to keep an eye on my Nest cameras which have been losing their wifi connections. I get a ton of notifications even though the cameras are still up because I think they're so busy processing the large data stream they're sending to Nest, responding to pings become a low or no priority.

Is there some better way to monitor them?

Thanks,
Tony
miket
Junior Member
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Feb 01, 2021 6:38 am

Re: Monitor Nest Cameras

Post by miket »

Funnily enough, the main reason I set up NEMS on a Raspberry Pi was to monitor our Nest Cameras to try to understand why two of them disconnect occasionally; these are connected to a TP-Link Wifi Powerline Extender in our garage.

I've seen a similar issue with multiple ping failures even though the devices seem to be working normally - but this is with our Nest Learning Thermostats rather than the Nest Cameras. NEMS is reporting that these are frequently down (due to ping timing out). I'm not sure whether it is normal behaviour (e.g. the thermostats "sleeping" periodically), since there are no apparent problems.

My solution was to create a new host template with the check interval set to 60 mins and retry interval set to 15 mins. This has vastly reduced the number of warnings. I've also posted on the Nest Community to try and find out if this is normal behaviour.

The Nest Cameras on the other hand have reported no disconnections since I started monitoring. I'm wondering if this is because I'm pinging the Wifi Powerline Extender every 5 mins and thus keeping it awake. (The extender has a power-save mode, which I disabled a while ago, and this made a great improvement in the number of camera disconnections.)

Hope this is of some help.
tonydi
Junior Member
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue Mar 20, 2018 1:37 pm

Re: Monitor Nest Cameras

Post by tonydi »

Mike, your thoughts on this mirror some of mine. In my case I'm tracking the cameras because they are actually stopping recording. I'm a beta tester for a major networking company and the latest routers seem to cause fits with the Nest cameras. My Nest thermostat may also be having issues but it's not apparent like the camera situation is and, frankly, if the thermostat were to lose connectivity a handful of times a day I wouldn't be that concerned. And if it was, the only way to tell would be to constantly monitor the screen.

At least with the cameras I have a history to look back on. As you saw, many times when NEMS is reporting a camera is down the camera is still recording. That's why I'm wondering if it's just ignoring the pings when the camera is super busy doing its job. Still, I need something more immediate than trying to remember to check history because I need to run some debug scripts while the issue is happening, thus the need for NEMS.

So hopefully there's a better test that will show me the real state of the camera than the ping does.

And your comment about pinging the extender is the same one I have about pinging the router itself. Am I masking some wifi issue with these routers by constantly poking it?
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