[All cameras] What to do if the camera cannot be found on the network using Shepherd

VIVOTEK Shepherd is a tool that allow you to find all the cameras in your network. If you found that after connecting the camera to a switch/router you can see the green LED blinking (network LED) but you are unable to find it in the Shepherd, please check the following:

1. Check your PC network configurations:

Be sure that the PC used to access the camera is in the same LAN (Local Area Network). If the PC is connected to a different network (WAN) it won’t be able to connect to it.

The camera uses a broadcasting protocol that will tell the other devices in the network that its “alive”. If the PC is not in the same network as the camera it won’t be able to receive this broadcast signals, therefore you won’t be able to access the camera.

2. Check that there are no communication issues with the tools

If the green LED seems normal and you still cannot find the camera with the Shepherd, perhaps the communications between the software and the device is being blocked (antivirus or Windows defender protection).

In this situation you can use the Windows console to find all the devices connected to the network (this function is not blocked by antivirus).

Please follow the next steps to find the camera using the command console:

(1) Keep the Shepherd open. They will assign a 169.254.X.X IP to the PC and allow you to find the camera’s alias IP (hardware IP).

(2) Open the Microsoft Windows console and type the “arp -a” command. This will let you find all the devices connected to the network.

Then, using the camera MAC find the Alias IP of the camera.

Go to the camera configurations, Network > General Settings and click on the “Use fixed IP address”, this will show the internal IP configured into the camera:

You can also check the configured IP in the camera Parameters:

Note: You can manually change the camera IP to match the same subnet used by the PC, after that you should be able to see the camera in the Shepherd.

3. Reset camera to factory defaults:

By resetting the camera to defaults you can delete any configurations that may be causing the communication issues. To reset the camera to defaults please follow the next steps:

(1) Press and hold down the reset button for 10 seconds, the camera LEDs will start blinking rapidly
(2) The camera will reboot (LED will stop blinking), after rebooting it will begin the reset process (LED start blinking again). 
(3) Wait until the camera finish resetting. After 1~2 minute the process will be over.
(2) Use Shepherd to search the camera again.

If the above solutions could not resolve the issue, the camera may be malfunctioning (hardware) and you will need to send it for repairs.