Skip to content
NovaVMS Manual

Camera shows a different IP address than before

Camera shows a different IP address than before

Symptom

On the Cameras page, a camera you installed yesterday now shows a different IP address than the one you wrote down during install. Or the camera cycles between two IPs day by day. NovaVMS occasionally marks it Offline for a minute, then rediscovers it at the new address and marks it Online again.

Likely causes

  1. DHCP lease expired and the router handed out a new address. Most consumer and small-office routers release leases after 24 hours or on router reboot.
  2. No static IP is set on the camera. The camera booted, asked DHCP for an address, and got whatever was free.
  3. Two devices briefly claimed the same IP (conflict). When DHCP resolves the conflict, one of them moves — sometimes the camera, sometimes the other device.

Fix

Pick one of the two options below. Either works; DHCP reservation is easier when you have many cameras, static IP is easier when you only have a few and want the camera to survive a router swap.

Option A — Reserve the IP by MAC address on your router

Most routers call this DHCP Reservation, Static DHCP, or Address Reservation.

  1. Find the camera’s MAC address. It’s on the label (sticker) on the back of the camera, or in the camera’s own web UI under Network or System Info.
  2. Log into your router.
  3. Open the DHCP reservation page (naming varies: on TP-Link it’s DHCP → Address Reservation, on Unifi it’s Client Devices → Fixed IP, on OpenWrt it’s Network → DHCP and DNS → Static Leases).
  4. Add a reservation: MAC address + the IP you want the camera to keep.
  5. Reboot the camera (or wait for the current lease to expire, up to 24 hours).

Option B — Set a static IP on the camera itself

  1. Open the camera’s own web UI (not NovaVMS — the camera’s IP in a browser).
  2. Sign in with the camera’s admin credentials.
  3. Go to Network → TCP/IP or Network → Basic (naming varies by brand).
  4. Switch the mode from DHCP to Static.
  5. Enter the IP, netmask, gateway, and DNS. Pick an IP outside your router’s DHCP pool to avoid future conflicts.
  6. Save. The camera reboots.

After either option — rediscover in NovaVMS

  1. Open Cameras in NovaVMS.
  2. On the camera’s row, click the overflow menu → Rediscover.
  3. Wait 60 seconds. NovaVMS picks up the new (or newly-fixed) IP.

Verify

  1. Reboot the camera. Within 60 seconds NovaVMS rediscovers it at the intended IP.
  2. The IP column on the Cameras page shows the expected address.
  3. 24 hours later, the IP column still shows the same address — the lease renewed without moving.
  4. Live view opens with no errors.

If none of this worked

Collect the camera’s MAC, the intended IP, and the current IP shown in NovaVMS. From the gateway host:

Terminal window
sudo journalctl -u novavms-gateway --since "10 minutes ago" | grep -i discover > camera-discover.log

Attach camera-discover.log, the router brand/model, and whether your network has multiple DHCP servers (one router plus one access point with DHCP enabled, for example) to a ticket at support.novalien.com.

See also: