eero mesh system has a long-standing issue that causes problems with my system
I understand that WiFi is not ideal in terms of reliability for a SecuritySpy cam network...but also am not able to install CAT cable to cover a 2 acre property, so set up an eero mesh system.
I ended up with 7 cams and 8 eeros (1 hub, 7 distributed for best cam coverage.
When all the cams are connected to the closest eero, everything works fine, all 7 cams hum along with 10/10 FPS and provide nice, smooth video recordings.
If something happens to disturb a particular Cam/WiFi connection, the cam will automatically hop over to the next best WiFi connection. In most cases, that results in the frame rate dropping and the recording becoming jerky or dropping out altogether.
Unfortunately, when the preferred eero connection becomes available again, the cam does not automatically re-connect to the preferred eero, it keeps the connection with the less-than-optimal one it has switched to.
With 7 cams, one or the other of them goes to the "wrong" eero daily, or more often.
The fix is to re-boot the camera, which then re-establishes its connection with the eero providing the best signal. It gets tedious having to monitor the system for drop-offs, and then re-boot the camera to fix it.
I opened a support case with eero, asking if there's a way to assign a cam's MAC address to a particular eero.
While searching eero's website, I found a 6 year old discussion on this topic, and it appears I'm not the only one asking about it.
Unfortunately, in the 6 years that have elapsed since people first started asking about it, eero seems no closer to a solution now than they were back then.
I bring it up here just to let people know. I believe there are other WiFi solutions that provide this functionality, but will have to do more research before I can say how well they work.
Anyone else using WiFi for SS, please feel free to comment on your experience.
Comments
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Here's my workaround...
I had already located eero devices as close to each cam as possible, to offload the WiFi work to the eeros rather than having the cam's wifi do all the work. That worked OK, until that signal was interrupted and the cam connected with an eero further away, with a signal that wasn't as strong. It won't connect to the closer one again until it's re-booted.
I thought I'd just physically connect the cams to the eeros, but the eeros ethernet connections do not present themselves to the cams as being a LAN.
I had run into this with eeros going the other way with data, where an eero couldn't be used to connect to an iPhone hotspot to extend that network. In that case, using an Airport Express to extend the iPhone hotspot worked, and cabling the eero to the AE made the eero act as if it had a LAN connection, which it was then able to distribute to a full eero wifi network.
In this case, I set up an AE to wirelessly join the eero WLAN my cams are on, hardwired the cam to the AE, then turned the cam's wifi off. If you try to do that by just connecting the cam to the eero, it doesn't work, because the eero doesn't present itself to the cam as a LAN, and the cam won't let you turn off wifi if it doesn't sense it's connected to a LAN.
Once the cam has its wifi turned off, while still connected to the AE, it still works, and reports it's connected to a LAN.
Disconnecting it from the AE and plugging it into the eero, it continues to work, and the cam still says it's connected via LAN.
Interestingly, the eero appears unaware there's a cam connected to either one of its LAN ports.
I've only done this with 2 cams, so far, and will see how it holds over time. These 2 cams are the ones furthest out from the hub, and had been the ones most likely to randomly switch to worse connections. I bumped their frame rates up to 15 FPS, just to see how this connection would handle that. One cam is steady at 15 FPS, the other one (the furthest one) is mostly doing 12 to 13.
So, still not a wired system, but maybe less vulnerable to cams hopping to a worse connection and lagging or dropping out as a result.
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I heard back from eero support...they won't be of any help for fixing the wifi problem. They said...
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"There is not a way to force devices onto a particular eero, outside of connect said device to the eero via ethernet. If a device is connected to a different eero, it is then up to that device's roaming protocols to determine when, or even if, it will begin looking for alternate access points. Based on the behavior you are describing, it sounds like the camera either has no roaming protocols, or has extreme requirements."
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Connecting directly to the eeros seems to be working well. I now have 4 of my 7 cams connected that way, and they all are steady at 15 FPS, no errors and 100% uptime on my daily summary.
Reading between the lines on various threads on Reddit, and based on this message from eero support and my recent experience with the cams going to, then getting "stuck" on eeros with worse signals than the closest ones, the only way to keep the cam on the best eero is to make a physical connection to the nearest eero.
Once the data is successfully loaded into the eero mesh system, eero's internal wifi is doing a good job getting the data back to the Mac Mini.
Perhaps the eero's design intent is more focussed on delivering high download speeds than upload speeds, and better at delivering download content to roaming devices in the mesh, rather than delivering upload content from stationary devices.
That would mean eero is just not that good at maintaining a wifi connection with a stationary device that needs to upload a lot of data.
Which is about what their tech support said.
Anyway, it looks like physically connecting the cams to the eero fixes the problem, and does not require a lot of time or money to accomplish.
Only one cam in my system, the Dahua doorbell, lacks an ethernet interface.
I'm not sure yet if this is true, but it seems the 3 cams, including that Dahua, that are still on the eero wifi have had better wifi connections since I switched the other 4 cams to being physically connected.
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Good to hear you have found a partial solution with the direct connections. We have seen similar problems with mesh systems - the more nodes you have, the more complex the system is, and the less reliable the connections can be. Have you looked into perhaps implementing a powerline network instead (a network over the existing power cables in the property)? This can be reliable, provided you stick to the installation limits recommended by the manufacturer in terms of layout and distance.
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There are significant differences between US and UK household electrical circuitry. My understanding is that a typical home in the UK might have as few as two circuits, one upstairs and one downstairs, Our house has a main panel with about 30 circuits, and two sub-panels with another 10 circuits. Some of the cams I have are powered by a sub-panel that's probably 250 wire-feet from the main panel, and the cams are another 50 feet beyond that. One of them uses an extension cord for the final power run. The power line signal would have to travel a total distance of almost 400 wire-feet from the router to the cam, and pass through 3 circuit breakers. There are a lot of big things drawing power from the system, a planer with dust collector, big band saw, and many fans and hand tools, all of which can cause interference. From what I understand about these devices, those factors would probably result in a very poor signal.
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My WiFi network's looking pretty good!
SUMMARY
- 7 of 7 cameras currently online
- 168 movie files recorded in total
- 0 image files recorded in total
- 133 GB of data recorded in total
- 100.0% software uptime
- 12% average CPU usage
- Normal memory pressure
CAMERAS
Network camera:
- 24 movie files recorded
- 0 image files recorded
- 21.6 GB of data recorded
- 0 errors
- 100.0% camera uptime
Network camera 1:
- 24 movie files recorded
- 0 image files recorded
- 23.1 GB of data recorded
- 0 errors
- 100.0% camera uptime
PTZ2:
- 24 movie files recorded
- 0 image files recorded
- 33.1 GB of data recorded
- 0 errors
- 100.0% camera uptime
Network camera 2:
- 24 movie files recorded
- 0 image files recorded
- 15.8 GB of data recorded
- 0 errors
- 100.0% camera uptime
Network camera 3:
- 24 movie files recorded
- 0 image files recorded
- 12.5 GB of data recorded
- 0 errors
- 100.0% camera uptime
Network camera 4:
- 24 movie files recorded
- 0 image files recorded
- 17.2 GB of data recorded
- 0 errors
- 100.0% camera uptime
PTZ1:
- 24 movie files recorded
- 0 image files recorded
- 10.5 GB of data recorded
- 0 errors
- 100.0% camera uptime
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Yes it sounds like you are right that the powerline network wouldn't work well in your situation. These are good for smaller buildings with fewer circuits and less interference.
Good uptime reported in your latest status report! Did you make any changes?
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The four cams I have physically connected to eero devices all have 0 errors and 100% uptime for the last 7 days. They are using eero WiFi only, not the cam's onboard WiFi. These are the cams furthest from the server and had been the least reliable when using their onboard WiFi. The PTZ function is less laggy using this WiFi arrangement, too.
I have plans to connect the two remaining ethernet capable cams directly to the ethernet network.
The one remaining cam is the Dahua doorbell, which does not have ethernet capability.
I put an eero within 5 feet of it, so it has a good connection (unless it decides to hop to a worse connection). That cam has 0, 1 or 2 errors daily with 99.9-100% uptime.
The Mac Mini M2 is operating at 10-11% of processor capacity, and I just replaced my 1TB storage SSD with a 4TB SSD.
I'm very happy with this setup, and will be adding more cams in the months to come.
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I am using Unifi Dream Router and UI U6 Long-Range.
You can assign device to an access point. But I didn't have to. After 1 night the system automatically assign equipment to the best access point.
They also have mesh solutions.
