Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[enidone]

So I'm trying to set up my DCS-920 to write to my desktop via FTP, since it won't email to Gmail.

I duly downloaded and installed FileZilla. I created a username and password for the camera and gave it read/write rights to E:\movies.

I am behind a firewall and use two routers, an Actiontec and a Vizio (Verizon FIOS). Since this is my LAN, I would think that wouldn't matter, but I am not very knowledgeable about networking.

ipconfig tells me that my desktop is IP 192.168.1.21. The camera is .22.

I opened the camera's admin interface, entered 192.168.1.21 for hostname, 21 for port number, correct user name & password from FileZilla.

I also tried e:\movies and /e/movies/ for path. I can't find very good information on how to translate Windows path names to UNIX equivalents so I don't know what to enter here.

Also clueless about whether I should use "passive" or "active" FTP.

I tried a test upload and I naturally get the informative "Invalid FTP settings" error.

Can anyone help?

Thanks.

[Mackerel]

Have you got a firewall on the PC? I know that is a rhetorical question, but still...

You (might) need to open a port on your software firewall on the PC, via a new rule. Read the documentation of the firewall you use (you do use a firewall on the PC, right?), and it should explain how to open a port from a remote IP-address (your camera) doing FTP into your PC.
Safe setting is that you only open the port for that camera... You never know.

By default your FTP software has a 'base' address where stuff is put to if you do not specify a path, and you could put it in a sub-folder, but for initial testing leave the folder-part empty, and it would go in the 'root' area of the FTP service, as it is configured inside that FTP (Filezilla). Baby-steps...

And passive vs active ftp is the way the connection is set up. Normally for your setup use passive, which means the camera initiates connection and control... At least that is how I always understood it.
But for comparison you could Google it, there must be gazillions of sites explaining it better than I would.

[enidone]

Mackerel, thanks for your informative reply.

I will try what you suggested. I guess it surprises me a little because I was using Vitamin D software to monitor the cameras for a while and I didn't have to do anything with the firewall - but maybe the Vitamin D handles that on its own. Not sure how since I'm not using Windows Firewall.

I might eventually move everything to a Linux box, so I might get some more options in terms of camera management software. It blows me away that these cameras won't mail to gmail.

I don't suppose the D-Link View (which I didn't install) offers any other options for transfer & storage of images?

[Mackerel]

What! No firewall? Oops... You love living dangerously? Just kidding  

D-Link D-ViewCam is nice, but not so professionally looking as Vitamin-D, but then again, it -is- free.

I also do not understand why webmail is not supported in the camera, but does Gmail not have a pop3/smtp component you can use?

Please look at http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13287

You should be able to get the camera's working better via FTP to a Linux box, but make sure you do activate the Linix firewall (ip-tables or some other)... But the default setup is not that much different, compared to using Filezilla...