justinmiller16

I have two Dahua IP cameras, one in the front of my house, one out back. They should be not be triggering on the same motion events since they are covering very different areas. However, when I search for motion events in SmartPSS (or the mobile app), both cameras show motion events at exactly the same times and appear to be 'synced' or linked to the first channel. I can't imagine this is the expected behavior. Is there a config option I missed somewhere? I have the PC-NVR added as a device in SmartPSS and I've added both cameras to the NVR, so recording DOES work. Like I said, the cameras just appear to be linked. I'm running the latest and greatest versions, 1.14.2. Thanks, Justin

Sadly I’ve not figured this out. It’s in my future though to upgrade to Win 10 and a newer SmartPSS. Hoping that might solve some issues. Though your reports don’t make me too hopeful! Big reason I don’t want to move to Blue Iris is because l, as I understand it, it doesn’t use the motion events generated by the camera, but instead analyzing the video stream itself, looking for motion, thus making it a CPU hog. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong though! It sounds like those with physical NVRs don’t have this issue. I just don’t see a need To spend the money when I have a decent server and HD space already.

Yeah, I did make sure that only one channel was set to record. That's why I find it weird.

Correction: I verified that the opposite is also true. The second camera will record on motion and record on both channels. At least I'm not missing events, but still odd that it records on the channel that didn't trigger the motion. Any help from those who use PC-NVR would be appreciated.

Bump. Nothing here? Any particular tricks or quirks to setting up the PC-NVR? Like I said, I can get motion recording on both channels, with the caveat that channel TWO only records when camera ONE detects motion. Thanks.

So this question may be a little weird, but I just ordered the new Dahua IPC-HFW4421S off of Amazon (at least I think it's new). The seller was US based and they said the firmware was in English and that they could provide firmware updates. Since it didn't specify that it was NTSC or PAL, I assumed NTSC since it's a US seller. Low and behold, when I got the camera and logged in, PAL was my only option. The firmware is nearly a year old and I'm wondering if a firmware update would give me the option for NTSC. I'm pretty sure in my previous HFW4300s I was able to select between the two. I know NTSC and PAL are analog video formats, but I'm not 100% sure how that relates to IP cameras and again, if that could firmware controlled. Can an IP camera even support both formats? Thanks, Justin

The default night profile settings for the 4300s seem to be a bit brighter in the center of the picture, making facial recognition difficult. I tried simply adjusting the brightness, but with that I lost detail. I also tried playing with BLC and HLC levels but from what I've read about both, they're not entirely applicable to my situation. The other setting that seemed promising is gamma, but to be honest I don't really know what that does. Anyone have any tips? Thanks, Justin

Thanks! The check.img was all I needed. I was able to load the 12/2014 firmware. Is it my understanding that no one has been able to load anything newer using the same trick of replacing that file?

I can't seem to find any links to the Chinese firmware, otherwise I'd do that. Could you upload the check.img to expirebox.com and PM me the link? Do you have any links to any Chinese firmware? Thanks

Does anyone have an original, Chinese firmware for the HFW4300s-V2? It's really the check.img that I need. Does that file change from version to version?

So I want to try the method of replacing the check.img from my original firmware. My camera has the 20141103 dated firmware, but in all the download links that have been posted, I cannot find the original firmware. Not really sure how I to proceed from here. Anyone have a link to that firmware? p.s. As per my earlier post, for anyone interested, the first character of 'PK' (the ascii char 'P') has a hex value of 0x50, which is part of the zip file header format. Therefore replacing those first two bytes in a hex editor allows you to extract as a zip. Must have been Dahua's half-assed attempt at making their firmware 'unreadable'.

It sounds like this is a necessary step in being able to unpack the firmware, but I'm curious as to why? What's the archive format of the firmware? How exactly does this change enable unpacking this particular format? Justin

All, I'm using Smart PSS/PC-NVR with a Dahua 4300s. When viewing recordings through the iDMSS iOS app, it seems there's always 45 seconds of recording prior to a motion event, despite what I set it to in the cameras web UI. It's not a huge deal, just a little annoying to have to skip ahead 45 seconds for every event (especially because the iOS app has some issues in that department). Anyone else having this experience? Thanks, Justin

Hey all, I'm looking for the best solution to get motion recordings to my server (home grown) so that I can view past recordings on my iPhone as well as view live streams. I've successfully setup FTP and motion settings in the camera web UI itself so that it pushes the DAV files to my server. But to my knowledge there is no iOS app that can view them. Also, I can connect to the RTSP stream with VLC, but that isn't optimal. I'd ideally like one app that can do all this. So when I say a 'simple' solution I don't necessarily mean simple on the backend. Just has to be easy access from iOS. I run both Linux and Windows 7. I'm not opposed to a software NVR/PSS/VMS if that is really the best option, however I tend to prefer a solution that lets me take advantage of the processing on the camera to minimize server resources. Any ideas on what my best options are? People seem to prefer exacq, milestone, blue iris, genius vision to name a few I've read about. Aside from Blue Iris (which is cpu intensive), the others seem to be almost prohibitively expensive for simple home use with just a few cameras ($50/camera isn't terrible but I just don't know that's it's necessary for home use). I've been able to connect to my camera directly with iDMSS and that's fine for viewing the live stream, but I haven't yet figured out how to view the recordings I've FTP'd. If I could, that would be the ideal solution. Again, I don't need a fancy UI or very advanced controls on the server. Thoughts here? Thanks, Justin

Hey all, I have a Dahua 4300s. I also have a pretty decent sever already setup that I installed the Dahua NVR server software onto. I've been able to add the 4300s as an IP camera but I can't quite figure out how to get it to record to my server. In other words, it's not clear to me what I need to setup via the camera vs. the NVR software. If I understand the broken English I the manual correctly, it appears that most of the setup is done in the camera. Then once I add the camera to the NVR, all I have to set is the recording schedule. I did this but I get no recordings at all. I even tried hitting the manual record button... and nothing. I setup all the package management shenanigans so there should be a place for the recordings. Anyone have any insight or wisdom? Thanks, Justin

Yeah sorry I meant to clarify -- it's actually neither of those. It's the Digivision software that I downloaded from Dahua's site. I assumed it was made by Dahua. Would you recommend the Pss/SmartPss instead of the Digivision?

Hey all, I'm navigating my way through the Dahua web interface (for the 4300s). I'm trying to understand the Conditions and Profile Management. The way they have it setup is a bit weird, IMO. Here is my best guess, please correct me if I'm wrong: - There are three profiles: Normal, Day and Night - There are two ways to make a profile active at all times. Under Profile Management 1) Select the Normal radio button which will select the Normal profile or 2) Select the Full Time radio button, which will then let you select either the Day or Night profile. - I'm not 100% positive of my read on the Full Time options because if this is true, why not just make the Normal profile an option here and get rid of the Normal radio button? - Or you could select Scheduled which is pretty self-explanatory -- it will select either Day or Night based on the times you select Each profile has an Auto mode for the Day/Night LEDs to flip on, but that, AFAIK will not change the profile. Is it possible to change the profile automatically based on the lighting conditions? Basically, use the Day/Night mode setting of 'Auto' to also change the profile? Thanks, Justin

Thanks for the reply. So it sounds like the 12/2014 is probably the latest then for the 4300s? After you flashed the 7/2015 and recovered it, are you still running the 7/2015 or did you have to downgrade? Thanks for the offer. I think the guy who started this thread has instructions on the telnet method to flip the language.

Hi, Great thread. Thanks for posting. I have the HFW4300S and the most recent firmware, according to your thread, is from 12/2014. Is that the most recent firmware for this camera? Also, out of the box, my camera UI is in English, but all the help is in Chinese. Does that sound right? Thanks, Justin