Dealer Portal Users now have access to a new tab titled "Camera Authentication."
Access the settings on a camera mounted to your Bridge:
The primary function of this feature is to allow the user to re-attempt a connection to a particular (likely problematic) device without having to remove the mounted channel. This function is similar to the "replace camera" function, but is designed to attempt to reconnect that same device after a change that caused undesired operations or a disconnect.
A real world scenario to utilize this function:
I logged in this morning to find my camera showing offline:
I see the camera is connected to the LAN and should still be accessible; I don't see what may have changed.
Accessing the "Authentication" tab, I attempt to connect to the camera using the credentials I believe to be correct:
The portal informs me that the account has been locked and there is a password issue that I will need to address at the camera web page.
I found the password had changed. I reset the camera to unlock the account and entered the verified credentials in the "Authentication" tab:
The camera provided me with a snapshot, so I clicked the update button.
And after proceeding though the mounting steps:
My camera is back online:
Other possible discoveries:
The portal returns an error that the device is not "pingable": it may have dropped off of the network.
A camera using Onvif drops offline, see if there is an API listed that may apply to your camera model, and attempt to connect using that API. If that works, but Onvif does not, the Onvif broadcast may be disabled or malfunctioning on your device.
You may also see the camera just reconnect correctly - the Bridge does set the stream and frame parameters for that device when connecting, if something changed in those, a simple re-connection could solve the issue alone.
Thanks for reading!