{"id":1214,"date":"2011-06-13T20:58:20","date_gmt":"2011-06-14T01:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/1214"},"modified":"2011-06-13T20:58:20","modified_gmt":"2011-06-14T01:58:20","slug":"setup-for-the-asante-voyagerip-cameras-wireless-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wiredprairie.us\/blog\/index.php\/archives\/1214","title":{"rendered":"Setup for the Asante VoyagerIP Cameras: Wireless Woes"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I recently purchased two new IP cameras from Amazon<\/a>. The Asante Voyager I and Asante Voyager II. They\u2019re both good cameras with lots of bells and whistles, and a decent amount of configuration options that should satisfy both the geeks and a non-geek. <\/p>\n

The reason I\u2019m posting this is to potentially help any other new users of these cameras that may be having a similar problem.<\/p>\n

Setup was very simple, until a snag with wifi setup.<\/p>\n

To begin, you\u2019ll plug-in the device to an Ethernet jack (yes, you\u2019ll need one of those!)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a utility shipped on the included disk or available for download<\/a> to help discover the IP address of the camera. It\u2019s ugly as sin (or maybe uglier?), but effective (or you can use your router if you\u2019d like to find the camera):<\/p>\n

\"SNAGHTML2a1768ec\"<\/p>\n

(As I\u2019ve already got the camera up, you\u2019ll see something slightly different)<\/p>\n

A double click on the corresponding camera launches the default web browser to the address of the camera. You\u2019ll need the default username and password to access the web site which is provided in the documentation. If you\u2019re running IE, it will prompt to install an ActiveX control that provides a much more \u201clive\u201d experience than you\u2019ll get if you go with the QuickTime option (which is what other browsers seem to use by default). I hate ActiveX control installs like this, but this one really does make the experience better. <\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

(The shot above is of our kitchen, it\u2019s quite dark and the camera is in \u201cnight\u201d mode with IR illumination. You\u2019d not be able to identify a stranger in the image, but you could make out a person or a pet easily enough).<\/p>\n

Next, to the network link:<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

Next, I clicked on wireless in the left side:<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

After a few moments, the list of wireless access points is displayed in the top. I selected one of the options and the SSID field is automatically filled in below. <\/p>\n

Click [Next Step].<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s where the major frustration occurred. The authentication settings.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

After spending SEVERAL hours experimenting and grumbling a LOT in my den, I gave up. I could not get it to work. After countless failures with our household wireless access points (we\u2019ve got 3), I dug out my old Apple Airport Express so that I could try lots of things without messing up all of the wireless devices in the house.<\/p>\n

Failures. I rebooted that Airport Express about 4 gagillion times.<\/p>\n

I wrote support at Asante and for the most part, they did try very hard to help (and quite rapidly). They tried to replicate what I was experiencing, but couldn\u2019t seem to duplicate the problem my setup was experiencing: \u201ccan not connect.\u201d It was very frustrating. (Hey, and they even called and stayed late to help! Thanks Roger!)<\/p>\n

Without encryption, things worked fine, but with it on, nothing repeatable. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what I learned:<\/p>\n

Because of the crappy way that the web page transmits the password from the web browser to the device, don\u2019t expect symbols to work with only a few exceptions: ! works, * probably works, and a few others. I lost a number of hours to that issue before I spelunked and debugged my way through the JavaScript code to discover what it was not doing with my password that I had expected (encoding it). So, stick with alphanumerics and a few basic symbols and you should be OK. Do not use colon, ampersand, slash, backslash, percent, @, \u2026 and probably more. Furthermore, passwords of great length (> 16?) may not work. That I can\u2019t explain, but it happened to me that they did not work even with only letters.<\/p>\n

Also, if you\u2019ve got a wireless access device that supports WPA\/WPA2 Personal \u2026 <\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

Be sure to use WPA-PSK and TKIP. You\u2019ll likely have MUCH greater success. I could not get WPA2 to work, period.<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/p>\n

With the changes above:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Password for wifi network simplified<\/li>\n
  2. WPA and TKIP<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Everything works like a charm. Both cameras are now setup and being monitored (I\u2019m still using Blue Iris<\/a>, which I\u2019d highly recommend \u2013 <\/strong>it works really well (I\u2019ve got it running on Windows Home Server 2011, has lots of great features and should be priced at least twice what he\u2019s asking!).<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Note that this camera is also manufactured as several other labels:<\/p>\n