R6250 - Problems trying to set up a group of security cameras and smartphone using Netgear's wifi

[Retired_Member]

Please repost this if it is in the wrong router type. I don't know if my router is a Nighthawk, I assume not.

I set up my router's two wifi networks (2.4 & 5G) and connected my Pixel 2XL smartphone to it on the 5G about two years ago and all was fine.

I recently started to build a wifi security network using Amcrest cameras, two outdoor IP3M-943's and three indoor IP2M-841's.

I managed to get all the cameras to connect to the 2.4G wifi. I had to jump through some hoops to get the outdoor cameras to connect at all but that is a long story. It is still part of this problem and I hope to explain here though.

The first hurdle could be the last if I could understand why it works, or, actually, doesn't work.

If I try to connect my outdoor cameras to the smartphone they are not found by the cameras software. Basically, the same software on my computer sees them fine after I configured them to connect to the 2.4G network. The cameras are not 5G capable.

The problem has its first stumbling block when I first try to connect the cameras to the router. They are not seen at all. If I shut off the SSD broadcast for the 5G, the router won't go into WPS and says so. I ended up using some utility level camera software to manually enter the camera's name and IP information and then they got connected. This does not work for getting them to be seen by the smartphone though. The smartphone app is not flexible enough to find some stuff connected to the 2.4G wifi since the smartphone is on the 5G wifi.

First question, why won't the router go into WPS when the 5G SSD broadcast is turned off? The broadcast is still on for the 2.4G band, shouldn't that be able to do WPS?

Second question. Since my phone is 5G capable, I assume it should be backwards compatible to 2.4G, but if I turn off the 5G broadcast I don't even see the 2.4G broadcast listed so I can try to connect the outdoor cameras while the phone is on their same network.

All the cameras are on and working from my computer and the three indoor cameras are working from the smartphone too. I just cannot get the smartphone to see the outdoor cameras to add them to the configuration nor can I get the phone on the 2.4G band to see IF that might work.

Any ideas or explanations for why it doesn't work? Any tests or tricks I can try before physically mounting the cameras in what will be a hard to reach spot?

[Retired_Member · Accepted solution]

OK, I did not find a way to get the WPS of the router to work in 2.4G, nor did I find a way to get my smartphone to connect to the router in 2.4G mode but it doesn't matter now.

I found a command in a greyed out box on the smartphone app for the two cameras which I had to manually add to my router and that command let me manually add the last two cameras to my smartphone and access them with the app through the router even though they are not on the same speed protocol.

So, I'm going to mark this as solved although it is technically a workaround but I'm happy with it.

[Retired_Member · Accepted solution]

OK, I did not find a way to get the WPS of the router to work in 2.4G, nor did I find a way to get my smartphone to connect to the router in 2.4G mode but it doesn't matter now.

I found a command in a greyed out box on the smartphone app for the two cameras which I had to manually add to my router and that command let me manually add the last two cameras to my smartphone and access them with the app through the router even though they are not on the same speed protocol.

So, I'm going to mark this as solved although it is technically a workaround but I'm happy with it.