My problem.
Teenager staying up all night playing online games.
Scheduled blocking of IP/MAC addresses using DD-WRT worked fine for awhile, but after a few weeks the schedule seems to go a drift, even though DD-WRT still shows the correct time and is synced over NTP, I tried this solution several times over a 18 months period, and it does this consistently.
So I configured a daily scheduled job to switch off the RF transmitter (WiFi) at 01:00hrs and turn it on again at 06:00hrs, this worked great as it turns off the WiFi, but leaving the router/firewall still doing its job, and saves a bit of energy.
What I hadn’t figured on was the way the Foscam FI8908W IP camera handles this, when the WiFi comes back on the Foscam fails to reconnect, which I believe in not how it should work and is sloppy implementation of the WiFi standards. The only way to make camera start is to unplug and re-plug the power cord.
So, I start getting my hands dirty, and try out a few things.
First I set a static IP within the camera GUI config page, and had the aforementioned issues – I read somewhere about using static IP assigned from the router so I next did this.I assigned a static IP using its MAC address within the DHCP lease range, in effect, I set a reservation up for it, turned off DHCP within the camera GUI, it worked, but still got issues with camera not reconnecting. As a side note, you don’t have to set static IP’s outside your DHCP scope, it is neater to do so, but just saying, you don’t have too.
I can safely say, that if your router can reserve and IP via MAC address, you CAN assigned a static IP WITHIN your DHCP scope and the Foscam camera will play along with this.
However, all of this did not fix the camera reconnecting issue. But I have found a fix and this it.
Basically, the Foscam doesn’t play nicely when using AES, it works fine until you lose WiFi connectivity, so I changed it to TKIP, configured DD-WRT to play with TKIP, and it now works without issue, the WiFi turns off & on at night and the camera is reconnecting without issue.
Previously I was using WPA2/AES for everything, and yes, I’m aware that this is a retro-grade step from security view, but there is nothing that sensitive on my home network, and TKIP will suffice for now.
So, my advice for using a Foscam FI8908W over WiFi, with scheduled job of turning the WiFi on & off, using DD-WRT is:
- Assign the camera a static IP using a reservation on your router
- Turn off DHCP on the camera, configure networking manually
- Set camera to use WPA/Personal, TKIP
- Set router to use TKIP
IT Vomit! 
Works like a charm!
Thanks for your efforts and great write-up!
Glad it worked for you! I only have a single camera working on WiFi now, I ended up wiring much of the house with CAT5E, and the cameras have been rock solid ever since.
Thank you. Im from Brazil and i was crazy trying to make this work. With TKIP the cameras works fine, but with the other kind of wi-fi it was not reconnecting after power outage or router reboot!
Yep, it drove me crazy too, glad it helped you out, and good luck with the football world cup!
My 8904 Foscam camera was working fine with WPA2(TKIP+AES) …until I recentely upgraded my browser to the new Linksys WRT 1900 AC. Since then, the camera is indeed loosing the ability to reconnect after any router change-of-configuration/reboot. Very ennoying.
I am going to give a try to the “TKIP” trick but it is rather worrying because if it fails …I will have to take a ladder, a swredriver with a notebook and a physical Ethernet cable in order to reestablish proper settings. Seomthing I would prefer to avoid…
It worked 🙂
Yep, these Foscam cameras can be tricky, and the weird thing is, which I discovered researching the various issues, is that AES is more resilient to weaker signal and interference, so you would think it would be the other way around.
I feel for you I have spent many hours up a ladder, with a smartphone/laptop.