carpii

I'm just digging into my new HikVision system to explore whats possible with it. I've various questions and would appreciate advice on any of them accessing nvr via telnet/ssh 1) From what I've seen, various guides suggest you can ssh into the NVR, and then access the usual linux filesystem /proc etc. I've only found a telnet option (disabled by default, but I could enable it via the Windows client). Even after telnetting in, I'm presented with Busybox rather than a true linux OS, and can see no way for it to even support an ssh server. Is this how all Hikvision NVR's are set up? My goal was to look into writing my own notification system (and perhaps using ffmpeg to generate a series of thumbnails) for motion detection events, as the current system is a bit inadequate for me (and also unstable when using the Mac client). system load 2) busybox reports than the process load on the NVR is averaging out around 33. This seems very high, and I'm wondering if maybe I should lower the recording quality a touch (currently serving 4 cams at high res). Or is this sort of load normal for a box doing so much video processing? video seeking in client software timeline 3) Using the client software, I search for a list of motion detection events. Clicking any of those starts playback, but the recorded stream always starts about 20-30 seconds before the actual motion event. Even trying to drag the timeline to the motion time, its not possible, almost like the video can only be seeked at certain points. Is there a way to fix this? Maybe its something to do with the type of compression the video streams are using, but I cannot find any way to change this anyway ip-based alarm? 4) One of the notification options includes triggering an alarm, but it also seems to allow an alarm to be sent via TCP to a given IP. What sort of device is it expecting here, and what protocol would it be using? Maybe I can set up a custom server to act as an alarm server, and handle my custom notifications from there. Thanks

Hmm, but wouldn't this suggest its not a firmware issue, but some limitation of various client software versions? I use the iVMS Mac Client: sadly I don't have the luxury of more than one version to choose from

All video processing and motion detection happens on the NVR. The motion detection in each IP camera is not used. This is how it is. This would match what I'm seeing. If I set up motion detection on the NVR, at first I assumed it might just be passing the config onto the cam. But I've since managed to log into the cams individually, and the gui shows that motion detection is disabled on each cam, which implies the NVR is doing all of it, as you say

Cameras do it. Sweet, thanks. Do you know what mechanism the camera uses to notify the NVR of motion detection events? I'm a bit confused by all the triggers such as 'Notify Surveillance Centre', 'Trigger D4', 'Trigger Alarm' etc None of it seems very well documented by HikVision

Do you know which device is responsible for the motion detection? Ive since managed to gain access to each cams web gui, and I can see you can set up motion detection there. But since the NVR also allows motion detection to be set up, Im not sure whether its doing it, or whether its just passing those settings onto each cam I can only telnet into the NVR, and its a heavily crippled operating system (BusyBox), but at least with the cams I can ssh in and gain access to the underlying filesystem

Thankyou! It turns out 3.2.1 does support Virtual Host after all... Its hidden in the 'Other' menu, along with various Alarm options, so I didn't see it. After enabling Virtual Host, it appeared to do nothing at first But then a short while later, the Cam page now exposes each cam on a different port. A big improvement

I have a Hikvision NVR, which has 6 cams attached to its PoE ports The NVR says the cams are all on its internal interface of 192.168.254.* The NVR also has an external LAN interface, which I've assigned an IP of 192.168.1.230 , which I can access fine, but cannot get any access to the cams on 192.168.254.* So then I added a static route, which maps 192.168.254.* to the NVRs LAN IP of 192.168.1.230 Now I can ping 192.168.254.1 but trying to ping one of the cams on 192.168.254.2 doesn't work (I wasn't fully expecting it to, but worth a try - I think packet forwarding is disabled on the NVR, and since its BusyBox, I cant see any way to enable it) Any ideas what else I can try? The only thing I can think is to unplug the cams and shove them in a switch, but since they are PoE It would mean buying a PoE switch Just to clarify, this is not about router port forwarding. I am not trying to access the cams or the NVR externally Thanks

Do you know where this would be set? I cant see anything similar in the NVR gui Ok, thanks. Im really not 100% sure whether its the cam or the NVR doing some cpu intensive stuff like motion detection. I initially thought it had to be the NVR but now Im not so sure.

I know, but I cannot find anywhere to enable this in my NVR Do you have a download link for this please?

Could you tell me which would be the latest? My NVR came preinstalled with 3.2.1 (English), but I cannot find this available for download on any Hikvision site. All I could find was older firmwares Is there some setting I should look for? I know there is some 'Enable Virtual Host' option on some HV NVR's which I believe is what I need, but mine doesn't seem to support it.

Thanks, I eventually found this in Remote Config -> Events -> Schedule -> Advanced Settings But its already set to 5s My NVR is set up to record constantly (rather than starting and stopping only when motion detection occurs). Maybe this has something to do with it? I can drop the timeline, at say, 14:06:35 but it will round it down a bit and start playing at 14:05:50 instead. Its almost like the video is split up into tiny 30 second chunks, and it can only start playing from the start of a chunk. This is the same behaviour I see when I double click an 'event' and it tries to start playing from the exact event time

I'm not sure I fully understand what steps you took If you are connecting the POE interface to the switch, it may be that the cams are now trying to get an IP from the DHCP server on your LAN (as opposed to the internal DHCP server the NVR presumably runs)? This is what you were aiming for I think, but would explain why there is a temporary loss of connectivity Not 100% sure this is the cause of it, but thats my guess

Hi, You're in luck, as this is a very similar setup as I'm getting installed at the moment (4 cams done, 2 left to do). I opted for the Hikvision DS-7608NI-E2/8P (with 2*4G drives, although even with 6 cams my storage is a touch excessive) You seem to consider it to be lower-end, but I think its hugely capable for a consumer device. It does very good motion detection, but you can also set up regions on any cam, to exclude certain areas etc. You can also draw a 'line' or quadrilateral and have it trigger when someone crosses the line in a given direction (or both if you want). I'm a software engineer so its quite rare that technology impresses me much, but I was impressed by some of the features on it. I think these are bullet cams? I avoided these for the sole reason I cant stand the look of bullet cams. Instead I opted for 5 Hikvision dome cams, and a mini-dome to go in the porch/front door area (all 3MP). All of the dome and mini-dome cams are smaller than I expected, but the image quality is excellent. I cant say I know a huge amount about different CCTV models, but I did research my purchase throughly before deciding on HikVision ones, aswell as getting some expert advice from the CCTV guy who is fitting them (he's an ex-Bosch CCTV engineer but still recommends HikVision), so just trying to share what I've learnt recently. You'll be happy with the cams I think, in terms of clarity and night vision. The NVR software lets you tweak many aspects of it anyway One issue might be your security lighting. If its triggered by PIR (which coincides with when you most need the cams to be capturing), it could interfere briefly with the cams motion detection, and also the cam will revert back to non-night vision mode, meaning you'll mostly see the area which is lit up and very little in the darker areas. So what I learnt is that many different vendors IP cams are designed to be interoperable with the NVR, via a standard known as 'ONVIF'. But even if a vendor says their cams are ONVIF compatible, there are various levels of ONVIF support and not all vendors adhere exactly the same standards (especially when it comes to controlling PTZ cams). For this reason I'd just stump up (infact did!) a little more and buy fully HikVision cams to go with the NVR, so you are guaranteed they all sing nicely together. The way I saw it, it's something you buy once and it'll lasts you for years, so there's little point trying to cut corners just to save a few pounds. There is a lot of awful crap on Ebay if you are just looking at "Brand-X" models. If you've any questions about the Hikvision setup, drop me a line and Ill try to help (like I say though, my field of expertise is IT rather than CCTV) Just curious, modified in what way? - Paul