As the name implies, this camera is a network device, not just a simple video camera: it doesn’t have a HDMI or other video port, so you can’t just view it on a computer or TV display.

This means that it sits at a particular IP address and sends a video stream in an internet format which has to be decoded in a computer before it can be displayed.  The video stream can be decoded either with the dedicated Reolink App or in an ordinary web browser.  My testing shows that the App is better, providing less delay and more functionality.

I want to use a laptop for hosting the App.  Normally I could just connect the camera to my LAN, login to the App via my WiFi connection and view the camera.  However, I want to use this in the church tower where I do not want to connect to the church’s WiFi network – I want to plug an Ethernet cable directly between the camera and the laptop (running Windows 10).

The first consideration is that the camera requires power. I have chosen a Power over Ethernet (PoE) camera, which takes power via the Ethernet cable, but a PC doesn’t supply power from its Ethernet connection, so I need an Ethernet Power Injector.  I bought a TP-Link PoE+ model POE160S for this, as it automatically supplies the correct current.  It has two gigabit Ethernet ports, one for data in/out, which I connected to the PC, and one for data+power which I connected to the camera. The PoE Injector also has a socket for mains in – there’s no need for a separate power adaptor.

I have already given the Camera a static IP address of 192.168.1.252
This means that I don’t need to have a DHCP controller (router) to assign a network address – I will be using its known, static address.

To avoid conflicts potentially caused by the LAN router, firstly I need to turn off the laptop’s WiFi network.  I just click on the WiFi icon in the taskbar and select ‘disconnect’.

Now I plug in the Ethernet Cable and go to the Network and Sharing Centre on the laptop. Here I see that there is a connection called ‘Ethernet’ and I click on its name to open its Status dialog, showing ‘No network access’.  I click on the Propeties button and select IPv4 and again select Properties.  This enables me to set the properties of the IPv4 connector (adapter) on the  laptop.

I click ‘Use the following IP address’ and enter 192.168.1.240
This is essentially the IP address of the laptop.

The important thing about this is that both the laptop and the camera are connected to the same node (the 1 in the third group above)
I also set the subnet mask to 255.255.255.0 and leave the default gateway blank.

I set the DNS server to 8.8.8.8 and the alternative to 8.8.4.4

These are essentially null values as there is no DNS server or internet gateway – the laptop /camera network is isolated from other devices.

I can now use the Reolink app which should detect the camera, from where I can instal it.

Reverting

The downside of this adjustment is that you have disconnected your LAN and the Internet from the laptop.  In order to restore it, you need to reconnect the WiFi. You can do this by going to the WiFi icon in the taskbar and just reconnecting WiFi.

However, I found that after reconnecting the WiFi I was able to access all the LAN resources and this included viewing my other Reolink camera which is connected to the LAN via my Network switch.

It’s taken a bit of effort to get to this point, so I hope I can help others by sharing it.