I’m trying to find a way to programmatically determine if a camera is down/not communicating. I mean what, specifically, is the management client looking at when determining whether to show a play symbol for a camera or a warning sign that has a “connection broken” tooltip. I’ve searched the database and item properties for cameras and have had no luck so far. Thanks!
Try to have a look at the Status Viewer sample.
Yep this is definitely what I’m after, thanks again. A related question: does “connection broken” simply mean that the camera failed a ping, or is there some other failure state where a camera can respond to pings but still be considered to have a broken connection? The reason I’m asking is that I may not need to bother looking at camera status in milestone if I can see the same thing with a ping sweep.
“Connection Broken” is the phrase in Smart Client and the phrase has some other failure states, it could be cameras fail a ping, also could be cameras cannot deliver image (even if you can ping them) or, could be any other reasons.
If you test following scenario with Status Viewer sample, then you will see a different message in the sample.
- Start the Status Viewer sample,
- Take out a LAN cable from a camera,
- See the camera’s status in the sample and you will see “Not Responding”.
This indicates “Not Responding” converts to “Connection Broken” in Smart Client.
Excellent, thank you both.
This appears to be what I’m looking for, as long as I’m able to use it in a plugin. Thanks!