Engineering student, lab project. We monitor a water tank and pump shed at the far end of our field site with sensors that already go to Hermetry. Now the lab wants a live camera of the shed on the same dashboard.
The camera is an IP camera with PoE. Problem one: the shed is about 180 m from the building with the network, and I know Ethernet is 100 m. Problem two: I don’t know how Hermetry gets the video at all. Is it uploaded somewhere, does the camera push it, does it need to be on the same network? I tried adding it with its local address 192.168.1.64 and got refused.
Couldn’t you use Wi-Fi for the camera? 180 m is far but with a good antenna maybe.
Did almost exactly this for a gate camera at my uncle’s farm.
Cable: 100 m is per segment. Options, cheapest first: a PoE extender halfway (needs a spot to mount it, some are powered by the PoE itself), a small outdoor switch halfway with power, or two fibre media converters with a fibre run, which also kills any lightning worries between buildings. Kevin’s Wi-Fi idea works as a point-to-point bridge with two directional units, not with the camera’s own Wi-Fi.
Hermetry side, the refusal is expected. The cloud connects to the camera, so it has to be reachable at a public host name or IP, or through a Hermetry Edge on the site network (the platform then gets to it over Edge’s encrypted connection, no port forward). A private address like 192.168.x on its own is refused. Without an Edge box: forward the camera’s HTTP and RTSP ports on your router, allow only the platform’s addresses through the firewall, and add it with a view-only camera user, not admin. Then Devices > New device > Camera or recorder, test the connection, and put it on the board.
Check the stream codec. It’s H.264 only, no audio. A lot of new cameras default to H.265 and you’ll get a black tile. Live view stores nothing, it pulls video only while someone watches, and each minute somebody watches counts toward the plan’s camera minutes. If you put it on a wall screen all day that adds up. Limits on Camera limits and privacy.
Fibre media converters it was, the lab had a spare run. Port forward restricted to the platform addresses, view-only user, and Aisha called it, the camera was on H.265 by default and the tile stayed black until I switched the main stream to H.264. It’s on the board next to the tank level now. Kevin, the Wi-Fi was plan B.
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