DavidH

Totally agree if only the UK sales guys would come a bit closer on price though. From China I can get the camera around £100 may have to pay some duty vat etc in the UK some companies have quoted me up to £245 for the same camera which is just crazy. Found a few on eBay who say they are in the UK but when you look into it further they are actually Chinese anyway. What a minefield. I did bring in my last dahua cameras for around £1000 and was getting quoted £2300 in the UK they have worked well but never got any help with firmware updates etc from the supplier and was left to work it all out myself. Previous cameras from China ended up being fakes which was an absolute knightmare. Any UK suppliers want to sell me these at a reasonable price please PM me.

Hi I am in the UK. What do you mean hikvision changed their name to hikvision?

Feel the same Tom. How come others can supply 8mm with ease. Are you a fully authorised hikvision supplier?

Hi xinray Are you not the same company as eagle vision as they do appear to have 8mm available. Think like Tom says will just buy one but really want an 8mm one to start with.

Hi xinray I really need one with an 8mm lens and one with 4mm. Can you supply that? Just to check these have audio are PAL and in English? Kind regards David

Hi I had planned on buying a few Hikvision cameras from Eagle Vision https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Hikvision-DS-2CD2185FWD-IS-8MP-Dome-IP-Camera-H-265-POE-SD-Card-slot-30m-IR/217821_32831814016.html?spm=2114.12010612.0.0.7fd314922h7aSR these ones in particular and have asked if they are Hikvision authorised etc. just wondering if you ever got your problems sorted out? Also if you did finally receive your items where they genuine articles etc. Kind regards David Sorry I know this thread is a few months old now.

Thanks for the info danBBB glad to hear it works well. It is a genuine HIKVISION you have bought though just not from an authorised dealer or is it an actual copy like tomcctv says?

Guys, About to replace my Dahua DH-IPC-HFW3301CP 3-12mm cameras as the 3mp resolution is not good enough and I have always struggled to get them really well focused. I am thinking of HIKVISION DS-2CD2185FWD-IS does anyone own use or even supply these? (I am in the UK) I have noticed I can get them pretty cheap on aliexpress for as low as £91.64 delivered what do you guys think? Any issues with these 4k cameras that anyone knows of? Thanks David

unreliable firmware, no response when you email them and also their PSS and smartPSS are rubbish. I was asking for help in setting their software up on another link. No matter what I did it just does not work. I have installed genius vision and with a bit of work with my limited knowledge its recording. Still can't remote access the cameras though so not sure if thats just me being rubbish, the software being rubbish or the firmware just not allowing it. I do think its my knowledge though and not understanding port forwarding, ftp, rtsp, ddns and any other arrangement of random letters !! Cheers I have it downloaded but may not run it as yet as I bricked the last 4 IP cameras I have and 3 years later they are still sitting in a cupboard as I don't have the heart to throw them in a bin. David

thanks for that is it definitely genuine and no viruses etc?

Dear all I have 4 of the above cameras on my house for a few years now. Up till now I have used PSS and it has worked, more recently it appears to be conflicting with my PC and making Explorer.exe crash so I thought, as I did a few years ago move to SmartPSS with PC-NVR. After 3 days of pulling my hair out I can see the cameras on the view screen, I can press the local record on the SMartPSS view screen and it records in the F drive that I am pointing them at but the screens need to be kept open in live view. However, I cannot get PC-NVR to record at all and even allocating disc space from my 2TB drive does not appear to work. It says allocate between 6G~1865G if I type in a number it does not allocate that amount. What am I doing wrong? I really never got to grips with all the FTP, RTSP etc. and don't know much about settings so treat me as a newby. Thanks for any help OR would I be better trying other smarter software that auto fills all the information for me such as blueiris? I think the plusnet router also has a lot of problems with it as I can't seem to easily open ports on it so I cannot remote view using gDMSS etc. Cheers David

Has anyone got firmware for IPC-HFW3301C I bought 4 of these a few years ago and am back trying to set them up properly but a firmware may be a place to start. I am also starting a new thread where I really need some setup help again. David

Hi if you did download the latest PSS and install it did the information change on the program at all? If you click on the about button from within the program mine still says Ver 4.06 Date 2012.01.09 which is what originally came with my Dahua 3301 cameras just late last year. Software is a bit out of date. Also wondering if there have been any firmware updates for the Dahua's anywhere that I can download those as well. Thanks David

Hi all, Just bought 4 of the above spent all day wiring and drilling etc. Fired them up and only 2 appear to go onto the network. The two that work have both digital ethernet video and also analogue out of the BNC. I can access them etc. The other two definitely have power going to them but are not logging into the network. I cannot get an IP from them at all. I tried to connect one directly to a laptop but still nothing. Any ideas? I tried to turn off and on again, tried the reset button but nothing. After the problems I had with a crap company called Anran who are still refusing to refund me for my last cheap rubbish cameras I thought the Dahua ones would be everything I wanted in a camera but to find 2 ones possibly duff is very depressing. If any Dahua reps are reading this I am not impressed and would like to find a solution quickly David

yes did not try link it is not working. Is there no way you can get someone to copy the small disc onto a full size disc or onto a memory stick maybe? Is there a way I could send it to you its around 50mb possibly by skype have seen that done before. I am sure there is probably a more up to date version by now but prying that out of Dahua hands appears difficult. David

I think its number 3 on this page http://www.dahuasecurity.in/download_9.html and within that there is some config information for recording onto a PC. Other than that go directly via internet explorer and type in the IP address of the camera on your network and you will see the CCTV interface. I ended up just recording constantly with my 3301's as I could not get motion detection to work correctly and quite a few other problems with these cameras. I have asked Dahua around 5 times now if there is any firmware update for the camera to make it more stable and an update of the PSS software but got nothing back. I learnt more from the guys on this forum so thanks Dahua for nothing and CCTV forum for everything. David

I will second buellwinkle on that one. My first venture into IP cameras was 4 Anran ones from China. They did not work well on MD I asked for a firmware update which bricked all 4 cameras 24 hours later. Turned out the cameras and firmware were fake they are now sitting in my utility room taking up space as the company will not give me any money back. Quick question is there any update to the Dahua PSS software I have V4.06 which is working pretty well. Was going to try other companies software but other things like work have got in my way of spending more time on it, work is such a nuisance some times. Gibbo did you get a quote from the lionscctv company? Any good? David

so far so good. Why would Dahua put smartPSS on their website when it is rubbish and does not work !! PSS is working ok but can't see any option for MD so I may have to go for blueiris or might try milestone. I can mess around with the trail stuff before purchasing. At present I could in theory record 38 days at my 9fps VBR set at around 2000kbps and quality at max of 6. I have decided to up to max 15fps 4000kbps quality max 6 to see over 24 hours how much hard drive I use I can presume double. If MD would work I could max all the cameras and still record weeks/ months on a 2TB drive. Only strange thing I noticed is when I turned the monitor on this evening the picture was all messed up. It appears that the graphics chip is having problems probably as my PC is also connected to my TV. I also noticed if I hit control F to find anything on a document that the PSS page comes up instead it must have altered the hot keys somewhere. Any idea if PSS is optimised for 64bit PC's blueiris and milestone do mention they are suitable/ optimised for this which would certainly mean full use of 64bit CPU's. I am so happy at least I appear to have started being able to use these cameras thanks to you guys. Now if I can sort out MD, remote viewing, optimise settings, understand all terminology fix and sell the anran ones that I have been stuck with etc. I am sorted Cheers David

Hi all, I am really struggling with my setup of dahua 3301 http://www.dahuasecurity.com/products/ipc-hfw3301c-357.html I just do not have the knowledge to set them up no matter how much I seem to read just getting more confused and need HELP ! I installed 32gb micro SD cards in all 4 cameras. I have managed, with difficulty, to access the cameras with IE11 and can adjust most of the settings. Google Chrome has a lot of buttons missing so don't use it. I have set the cameras for motion detection, masked off the areas which I do not want activation from. The software for this masking seems very poor and offset from where the mouse is pointing a bug of some sort here. I have set the cameras for 3mp, low framerate and VBR to reduce the amount of data to the card. I have set it to pre-record 5 sec but I noticed that if I walk into view of the camera and then walk away again and access the footage using Dahua smartPSS or the smart Player software, both of which appear to have a lot of faults in them, the camera is recording but I am not in view. What am I doing wrong? I have set it to record 3 minutes, there are anti dither settings etc. as well but no matter what I try I don't spot myself in the footage. Would I be better just setting the cameras to record all the time to my PC? I feel that may be more reliable. Do I need to set up FTP setting in the record section of the camera for this? I tried the setttings within Dahua smartPSS but I press local record and about 20minutes to 1 hour I come back and it has stopped recording again, that is with general not MD settings. I feel that its all a bit hit or miss with my recordings and I would not like to rely on the footage. Is there a good dummies guide to setting Dahua or any IP cameras up properly? Thanks David

Hi Tom, Installed the PSS think that is the same version from 2012 that was on the disc with the cameras. Main reason I had moved away from it at the start was because I was trying to set up the cameras to only use the microSD cards but that idea just is not working and I forgot to go back to the PSS software as I had the smart PSS installed. Can you set up motion detection in PSS? I can't see it. I have just pressed the 'start record plan' under tools and the PC did not explode, may have started a nuclear war somewhere maybe !! but so far so good. I will let it run for a few hours/ overnight and see what sort of quantity of data I am storing. If I can get motion detection to work at a level were I am happy I can trust it to actually work then I can up the fps, bite rate etc. to record in the best quality possible. Interesting point about PSS V4.06 at the top of each channel it says I am streaming up to around 1000Kbps which is a lot less than under SmartPSS which said it was over 2500Kbps mind you that was in daylight its now dark so that may account for the drop off. Do you have the same motion detection masking problem I mentioned earlier where I try and mask a box off but a box exactly 2 above is the one that is masked? I can try and put a screen grab up to show you if this does not make sense. Cheers David

I use the smart PSS so its a bit different and for the schedule it looks like this hope those appear using photobucket. The E drive mentioned is my 2TB backup drive which I want to record the footage to. It all just seems a bit flaky. I am not sure if I am supposed to set up FTP to just get video onto the PC. I have set the 'packet length' which I presume means how long each file should be at 15minutes if I use general recording but it can record straight for an hour. I think I may upload the original software from the disc again and see if I get any further with it or just buy something else like NVR+ or blueiris etc.

I asked and asked Dahua where I could get a local distributor but they gave me contact details of one company only who were wanting around £400 / camera I was probably still a bit under the £250 each once I paid delivery, import tax duty etc. etc. and also 4 x 32gb SD cards, ethernet cables, connectors, power supply, quad processor for the analogue feed etc. etc. etc. Also most of the people I contacted in the UK about any IP cameras all said the same thing to me 'better off sticking with analogue !!' Well from the point the analogue system I had was connect it press record and leave it for a months recording it was great but for the fact the picture quality was pathetic from 540TVL hence I moved to IP. David

I am in southside of Glasgow. I installed the software from the disc the older PSS but it is dated around July 2012. I downloaded a much newer version from the website but even after working out how to change it from Chinese into English it did not appear to work very well. I noticed they had SmartPSS so downloaded and installed that along with PC-NVR it appears to pick up cameras etc. but again the recording side of things is strange. There does not seem to be any information about software version anywhere on that package which is strange. I wonder if I need a camera firmware update and maybe up to date PC software. Getting to the point I am almost tempted to just buy an NVR to stop my headaches. I placed the front of house camera on record via web interface on general record and went to the park for 2 hours with the kids. Came back and after approximately 1 hour and 1GB of recording my PC had frozen. Only built it around 10 months ago and its never done that before so I think that was probably caused by the camera. What a headache this entire thing is. David

yes Dahua on the side of the case in silver only not with the red logo bit like on their website. I have opened them up inside and put in microSD cards etc. Certainly a heavy well made bit of kit but like my other posting I just can't get them to do what I want. After my Anran camera mistake and £400 down the drain I thought spending £1000 they would have just been plug and play. No chance of that after the hours and hours I have spent on trying to get them to record. All in all though very good quality cameras its probably just me being a plonker.

spent 12 hours yesterday trying every setting I could think of. Moved away from the SD cards like you say not enough storage, that was a waste of 4 x 32gb cards !! Going into IE11, set up only one camera to record on motion detection and put the path as my E drive on my PC. I have not set up FTP or anything. I then click local record on the live video feed. One file is recorded to the hard drive and thats it no more is recorded. If I set up to record on general, even if I set it to record for 15 minute packets it just keeps recording to around 500mb approximately 30 minutes then stops recording. What am I doing wrong? What way do you guys set up your cameras what settings do you use and where am I going wrong. Thanks for any help David