MindrustUK

So I've got a full Hikvision CCTV setup that I'm more than happy with. I'm doing some light dev work with the events generated, the Hikvision's work fine but I want to expand my compatibility a bit. A lot of these cheap cameras from eBay are all advertised as "Fully ONVIF version 2.4" certified, really all they do is discovery and advertise the stream but don't handle eventing / analytics etc. I've bought one or two ELP and other random brand cameras but they all appear to be much the same in terms of limitation. I wonder if anyone can recommend a few cheap cameras that actually do motion detection / eventing / analytics on board ? Thanks.

If you can provide a link to the firmware I can try and take a look.

@hendrik6073 ELP and Hikvision on ONVIF and the Grandstream GXV3504 while detected by ONVIF only picked up channel 2 so I forced it to RTSP. As for the flashing, I tried via the upload tool which repeatedly errored out on me. I still haven't gotten around to playing with the device any more to try and figure out why...

Thanks for the info GhostRider, I've soldered up some pins on my device and flashed the xvision firmware. Using the TTL to Serial cable I can see it gets an encryption error unpacking the jffs2. I've not spent any time playing with the firmware yet... Not sure why your one 'just works'. In other news I tried this with the firmware provided by systpro, for some reason both eSATA and USB harddisks show up and the device sets them up (a few partitions, FAT32 and EXT off the top of my head) but when I force a manual capture it returns a 'No HDD' error. I've got the device setup with a Hikvision camera, a Grandstream GXV3504 and a 'ELP' cheap chinese camera they all seem to trigger motion events (observed via the console) but since it's not recording I can't really verify this 100% I've had no luck using any of the remote Android apps to connect to the device (vmeye for example). But looking 'under the hood' I can see the device (by deafault) calls out to a few chinese servers. One of them is goolink the other one I can't remember much as they are used for p2p I can't say I'm wonderfuly happy with this being a paranoid tinfoil hat.

Thanks for your post systpro, I tried Ghostrider's firmware and bricked the NVR. I used the one posted by systpro to restore it so I can only assume there are two different models (at least) out there. I got the Xvision splash then nothing (I'm going to investigate what went wrong more later). Interestingly I couldn't use the Xvision product tool to detect the device before the restored flash now I can. That said any attempt to update the firmware fails. Maybe this is a serial number lock out? Ghostrider, could you telnet to your device and post the output of the following commands: dmesg free cat /proc/cpuinfo I'm thinking maybe the CPU is differnt or there's a differnce in the ammount of RAM in the device. It seems your device is some how magical

Well here's what I've got: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=http://forum.videon.spb.ru/viewtopic.php%3Ff%3D10%26t%3D5930%26start%3D60&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://forum.videon.spb.ru/viewtopic.php%253Ff%253D10%2526t%253D5930%2526start%253D60%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DVns%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-GB:official%26channel%3Dsb It's a translation of a Russian CCTV site. Looks like there's someone on there who has managed to get a serial connection into the device. As I understand it, a standard serial UART cable such as this: https://www.modmypi.com/USB-to-TTL-Serial-Cable-Debug-Console-Cable-for-Raspberry-Pi should do. Just looks a case of soldering in the pin headers and connecting up the device. Not sure what you can force Uboot to do then but if you get any output then it's a start.

For those that have bricked their NVRs has anyone tried attaching a serial cable? I've seen reports of this working on another forum. Looks to be a standard TTL header so a MAX232 serial converter should enable direct access to the console. I've also read that it's a uboot boot loader so in theroy there should be some chance to restore the device. I've got one of these on the way so I'll see what happens when I try flashing it. GhostRider could you post as much detail as possible about your unit so we can try and work out which NVR's are cross flashable and which aren't, if there's any differnces etc?

Hi all, I'm looking to upgrade my existing analogue setup. I've got a 4 Channel Dahua with a few cameras (varying types). And so far I've been REALLY happy with the Dahua (I did have an Avtech which worked but the software was painful to use). I've elected to go for IP over HD-SDI I've bought one camera to start and test with (Hikvision DS-2CD2012-I) following some recommendations via networkcameracritic.com's reviews. I'm currently looking at options for the DVR/NVR side of the solution now. It seems there are a few really good free Windows solutions (I've tried Genius Vision NVR Community Edition), but I'd like to avoid running windows where possible. I'm looking to put in 6 cameras total, probably all one or three megapixels. And make the most use of motion detection. There are a few Dahua NVR's which look good which come in around 300 UK pounds which I'm reserving as plan b. I have an Intel Atom and an i3 (I'd prefer to use the Atom) to hand, Linux is very much my platform of choice (nothing wrong with Windows I'm just a penguin at heart). To this end I've been looking for NVR software in the 100-200 UK Pounds bracket. Network Optix HD Witness has been really good of what I've seen of it but works out too expensive (around 150 USD per camera). I've tried Zoneminder and Motion for Linux which while both work seem to be low quality and extremely heavy on resources. Bluecherry also showed a lot of promise but didn't have an Android client and also seems to have some pretty nasty bugs. So are there any suggestions for good Linux based NVR software that's potentially cheaper than buying a dedicated NVR?