View Camera Mac Address

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Robin

• December 10, 2020 15:00

The ability to see the camera/device MAC address in the System Overview tab.

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• Official comment

  

  Obseron Support

  • May 07, 2021 12:25

  Hey Robin,

  You can now find this feature from the new Obseron 2.18 version.

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  Obseron Support

  • December 11, 2020 11:31

  Hey Robin,

  What would be the reasons to be able to see these inside the software? MAC addresses are not used anywhere inside the software and very rarely outside of it either.

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  Robin

  • December 11, 2020 14:11

  It's mainly for troubleshooting. You obviously could check the system's ARP table, run an IP scan or any other various way to find it. But I work with multiple companies with varying levels of access to their networks. I also work with multiple installers who know Obseron and the hardware inside and out, but have very little networking or Linux knowledge.

  At least 3 times in the past week our installers have been asked for MAC addresses from manufacturers and companies' IT departments for troubleshooting drop-offs, speed issues and just trying to figure out the manufacturer of a camera 50ft in the air while offsite a few hours away and only access to the web interface. A couple of the times could have been solved by the companies' IT departments actually being willing to work with us - taking the IP address we give them and looking up the MAC. But that's the service industry for you.

  There are also the times that someone onsite decides to plug another device in and take over the IP that is currently in use by a camera. We get the complaint that our cameras aren't staying connected. Having a last known MAC address could help save a lot of time.

  So, maybe instead of the MAC address shown only inside the System Overview tab, we could have it shown in the camera's configuration area near the IP info in the web interface. And it could only update if you press the connect or reconnect button AND it actually connects.

  Sorry if this seems like a rant...

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  Obseron Support

  • December 16, 2020 06:58

  Hey,

  Thank you for a detailed explanation.

  We'll look into implementing MAC addresses into the software in a way you described. At a quick glance, the best way would be getting the MAC addresses linked to camera IPs in ARP table, as most cameras do not provide their addresses in any other way, so this limits the feature to work only within the same subnet the recorder is in.

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  Robin

  • December 16, 2020 14:34
  • Edited

  That's exactly what I was thinking with the ARP table. Having a couple of checks in place before the MAC updates would be a good fail-safe for the situations where there is a duplicate IP on the network. Rather than have it automatically update every so often, have it only update if the connect/reconnect button is pressed AND a connection is successful.

  Also, the camera discovery only works on the main subnet anyway, so that would be okay.

  Thanks for your support!

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