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FTP Server Setup

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by myoung

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We want to be able to use network camera's to monitor school sites after hours and bought an AXIX 2129 camera for testing. I have setup an FTP server (IIS v4.0).

I can send create folders and send files via my IE5.5 browser, but cannot get the camera to write to the designated folder.

I have renamed the default FTP site to DOFTP and provided the camera the IP address, DNS server name and IP, but nothing gets written.

I have attempted contacting AXIS, but nothing has come of this.

3 replies

by joseph moore

I had a similar problem with some X10 cameras. Their file transfer software did not work for me at all! So, I had to "improvise." Now, I don't know if this will work for you exactly, but it might at least give you an idea of where to start.
The cameras I have generate a still picture once every 5 seconds. In the directory where the program that runs the cameras is loaded, it saves the still image as a .JPG file. For me, this file is called SNAPSHOT1.JPG
What I did was I set up a BAT file thatdid a few things:
1) I made a copy of SNAPSHOT1.JPG in the same directory and called it CAMERA.JPG
2) I then copy CAMERA.JPG onto my IIS server, in a shared upload directory.
3) I have the NT Resource Kit application SLEEP.EXE in the same programdirectory as the JPG file and the BAT file. In the BAT file, I run SLEEP 5. SLEEP.EXE will pause for the number of seconds you specify; so, the BAT file waits for 5 seconds.
4) I then have a GOTO statement that jumps to the beginning of the BAT file, jumping to 1).
5) On the IIS server, I have a web page that points to CAMERA.JPG in the upload directory. In the HTML coding on the web page, I have it auto-refresh the web page every 5 seconds. This way, an operator can just keep the web page open, and they get automated views from the camera, constantly being refreshed.
So, as a new picture is taken by my X10 camera, I publish it to my Intranet IIS web server for display on an auto-refreshing web page. I constantly overwrite the picture on the web server, so the web page always has the latest camera image.
So, here is what the BAT file I use looks like:

:start
copy snapshot1.jpg CAMERA.JPG
copy CAMERA.JPG p:\snapshot2.jpg
REM Camera PC has P: drive mapped to \\WEBSERVER\SHAREDUPLOADDIRECTORY
for /f "tokens=1-7 delims=: " %%i in ('now.exe') do set ARCHIVEDATE
copy CAMERA.JPG d:\picture\archive\cam2\%ARCHIVEDATE%CAM.jpg
cls
sleep 5
goto start
EXIT

by joseph moore

Ok.
There is also a section where I make a copy of CAMERA.JPG for archival purposes. I use the Resource Kit tool NOW.EXE to get the date and time. I then copy CAMERA.JPG to the local drive and rename this copy using the date and the time as the file name. This way, I can sort through the pictures if I ever needed to go back in time and see what happened.

Now, if your camera operating software makes a temp copy of the camera image, you could do something similar to this. You really don't need to use the program's FTP engine. You could just script the FTP commands in a BAT file. For me, I could use normal COPY commands over my NT network since the destination is an internal IIS server. It made it easier.

I hope this gives you some ideas.

by myoung

The problem i am having is that the camera is NOT writing anything and i cannot figure out why.

With IIS 4 and a FTP program i downloaded from TUCOWS (BFTPSERVER from BFTPSERVER.COM) i can login to the FTP server from my browser. But using what ithink are similar login information from the AXIS 2120 Admin tools, the camera is not registering as being logged in.

So i have no idea of what is happening. I can get the camera to submit pic's via SMTP, but not the FTP server.

Though he hasgood ideas, I would like to rate Joseph Moores answer, but i need more information... thanks

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