PoE Reolink Doorbell recording froze / lost 14 seconds after someone held a small device near it - any ideas?
Hi everyone,
I had a strange incident today with my Reolink PoE Doorbell and wanted to ask the community what you think might have happened.
A person came to the front of our house and appeared to hold some small electronic-looking device / object close to the doorbell camera. I have footage from another camera showing him doing this.
The first time he tried it, nothing obvious happened. The second time, right when he moved the device/object close to the doorbell, the Reolink doorbell recording seems to have frozen / failed.
The strange part:
- This is a PoE doorbell, not Wi-Fi.
- Another camera recorded the doorbell ringing, so the event definitely happened.
- In the Reolink recording, the timestamp goes from around 21:35:44 to 21:35:58.
- There is basically a missing/frozen section of about 14 seconds.
- It shows a single frame with the later timestamp, then continues normally.
- The person was very close to the lens/doorbell when it happened.
At first I wondered about Wi-Fi jamming, but since this is PoE, that seems less likely. Could this have been:
- IR/lens blinding causing the camera/encoder to glitch?
- Some kind of strong light/IR device?
- Physical tampering with the doorbell?
- Anything else?
As I am using the Reolink app to remotely access the cameras, I can't get to NVR logs (I believe) as I am not there right now. I have been using this doorbell for the past 3 years if not more without issues like this.
Has anyone seen a Reolink PoE doorbell lose/freeze around 10–15 seconds of recording when someone puts something very close to it?
Any ideas what the person might have been using, or what I should check next?
Thanks.
EDIT:
https://reddit.com/link/1unkgmd/video/jibfgxp37ebh1/player
Added Video from the Doorbell.
There is no SD card in the Doorbell, so I can use only what NVR recorded.
The second try when it froze the Doorbell rang, that is why the person probably left that quickly, but still, not sure if that meant they were successful finding what they needed or just a coincidence that they touched it themselves.