Verkada cameras are equipped with an outside LED light status, which lets you know what’s happening at a glance. This article explains the different LED characteristics to help you understand what they mean.
On most Verkada cameras, you’ll find a white ring-shaped LED that illuminates the status of the camera. Depending on the camera model, this LED may dip to or flash different colors, which can indicate an event or the camera’s current status.
LED status categories
An LED status can be categorized as regular operation or network errors.
Regular operation
When the LED on your Verkada camera is illuminated in white or off, this means that the camera is in a normal operating state. The camera is powered on and functioning, and no activities or events have been detected.
During regular operation, the camera uses only 1 color to communicate its status:
Solid orange: Camera is on and booting up
Flashing orange: Camera is updating firmware
Solid blue: Camera is running, connected, and recording data
The initial boot sequence (solid orange) can take up to 20 minutes to reflect the correct LED status, if the camera is unable to reach any endpoint.
Network errors
In case the camera is unable to reach the required endpoints and services for regular operation, it attempts to communicate to Verkada Command by performing network checks.
After the camera conducts each of the network checks, it shows one of the LED statuses listed in the table.
Flashing blue: Generic network error
The camera is unable to connect to Verkada Command.
The flashing blue LED status only appears on cameras running factory firmware. Once the camera connects to Command and updates to the latest firmware, it only uses the granular LED statuses listed below.
Blue+orange: LED statuses
Colors | LED Status | Verification Process |
1 Blue 1 Orange | Camera is connected with Power over Ethernet (PoE), but is unable to connect to the switch. | Verifies that the physical layer status of the camera's Ethernet interface. |
1 Blue 2 Orange | Camera has not received an IP address. | Verifies if the camera has received an IP assignment by a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server. |
1 Blue 3 Orange | Camera is unable to reach the configured gateway. | Sends an Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) request to the gateway. |
1 Blue 4 Orange | Camera has detected duplicate IP addresses on the local area network (LAN). | Sends a gratuitous ARP request for the IP assigned to the camera. If any other device replies to that ARP request, this status is shown. |
1 Blue 5 Orange | Camera is unable to resolve Verkada hostnames. | Looks up a domain name system (DNS) of the relevant camera endpoints. |
1 Blue 6 Orange | Camera is unable to receive a response from the Network Time Protocol (NTP) server. | Attempts to get time synchronized via Network Time Security (NTS) or NTP. |
1 Blue 7 Orange | Camera is unable to certify the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connection, likely due to SSL inspection. | Validates the certificate presented to the camera while attempting a Transport Layer Security (TLS) handshake with Verkada endpoints |
1 Blue 8 Orange | Verkada endpoints are not reachable after booting up. Note: This LED status is only shown if at least 1 endpoint is unreachable. | Sends Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) requests to Verkada endpoints. |
Status indicators on Command
Cameras also have a status indicator in Command to show the camera's status at a glance:
Orange status indicator: Camera is offline
Blue status indicator: Camera is updating firmware
Green status indicator: Camera is online
Green status indicator inside white circle: Camera is local streaming
Slowly flashing green status indicator: Live feed is buffering
Endpoints used for network diagnostics
There are multiple endpoints that a camera can use, depending on which features are enabled. For LED statuses, only the endpoints that are crucial for camera operation are tested and are reflected on the LED statuses.
US
Here is the list of endpoints that are tested:
*.kinesisvideo.us-west-2.amazonaws.com - TCP+UDP/443
*.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com - TCP+UDP/443
*:4100 - TCP/UDP on LAN (only required for local streaming)
EU
*.kinesisvideo.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com - TCP+UDP/443
*.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com - TCP+UDP/443
*:4100 - TCP/UDP on LAN (only required for local streaming)
US and EU (NTP servers)
In addition to those endpoints, for time synchronization reachability to the following time, the camera verifies the servers:
NTS servers
time.cloudflare.com - TCP/4460
time.cloudflare.com - UDP/123
NTP servers
time.control.verkada.com - UDP/123
Network Time Security (NTS) uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) for secure time synchronization, unlike NTP. We recommend to exempt these connections from SSL decryption policies.
Need more help? Contact Verkada Support.