patmas

For some reason my mini nvr stopped to detect i12 protocol (Escam QD900) camera :S. So I've tried various firmware versions, including the 20150808 which worked fine before. But I guess the firmware updates just copy over existing files. I still have the boot splash from the latest version, not the one used in 20150808. I'm just inches from giving up this thing has taken up way too many hours already. Tinkering is fun but this is getting frustrating.

I've upgraded the firmware of my MiniNVR from 20150808 to the latest 20160707. Things did not improve, it still doesn't detect motion via onvif with the Escam Ant (QF605) camera. Which is ****ty since it's the same brand... On top of that, the QD900 (i12 protocol) motion detection also doesn't work reliably anymore, it does sometimes get a motion alarm and starts recording but it never stops. Very disappointing that new firmware is a step back instead of a step forward, I can understand it doesn't support all brands out there but it should simply work flawless when only Escam equipment is used.

I'm not sure if I understand.... I've only updated by using web-browser, not local hdmi interface.

If you haven't found it yet, go to "System Management" > "System Update", there you should get a 'choose file' button that allows you to browse to the firmware file and upload it by clicking the 'update' button.

I'm still searching for a comfortable method of retrieving data from the disk attached to NVR. There doesn't appear to be a filesystem that my Linux PC can make any sense of, the data is simply written to disk without a fs to make it more durable. But if I have some details about what's on the disk (I imagine there's an index somewhere, containing info on which blocks contain data for certain timestamps) I could probably come up with a python script to extract data from the disk using a regular PC. Sounds doable but I can't find any info and escam won't reply to my emails

Does anyone have any details on the IPC protocol? I'd like to use the NVR to record streams when camera detects motion, it's probably quite a simple protocol that just sends 'alarm on' and 'alarm off' events but can't find any details anywhere...

I'm trying to find a comfortable method of exporting captured video from the NVR to a PC, i.e. without swapping drives or attaching a 2nd drive or usb storage device to the NVR. By creating a symlink in /root/web/www to /tmp/usb/sda1, I can download the files using a browser. But I still have to export the video using the ants gui over HDMI, and know the exact filename and wget it. There must be an easier way? Preferable something that can be automated with scripts. Specifying channel, start and end-time, run the export on the NVR, wget (or netcat) the file to PC and remove the original from the NVR. Can't find it in the webinterface but the goolink app does allow to export videos so there must be a way to imitate it with a script. Any ideas?

Do you record them 24/7 or do you get motion detection on rtsp streams as well?

So my mini nvr stopped working this afternoon. Even after rebooting, video lost events and when I connect with goolink it tells me the device is offline. I think the cloud service is non-responsive and the mini-nvr is stuck on connecting and doesn't fully complete it's boot sequence. Netstat output shows established connections with rtsp streams, so they should simply work. But there's a syn_sent connection to 60.28.222.28:www which is the chinese cloud service IP. According to a russian forum, the latest goolink firmware on urcctvstore changes the ip address to something different, so I'm thinking 66.28.222.28 may be down for good? But there're reports that the firmware messes up other stuff, like text being in russian so I'm not going to use it until I'm sure it actually improves things...

Well that's strange... I have the same firmware, also applied the rtsp fix and yet it doesn't work for me. Where did you download the patch? I might try to reapply it (hopefully it will not break anything). It was here http://www.urcctvstore.com/Download.html but it's disappeared. Like I said in one of my previous posts, there's a newer 20151231 firmware and also Goolink_Firmware_20160302 but no information about what's changed. Maybe the rtsp fix is included? Maybe the goolink firmware is for generating a new deviceid, in case the goolink website refuses to register the original id? Who knows...?

I received my Xiaomi Ants camera a couple days ago, it works fine on RTSP. Are you sure you're using the correct url? You can specify one for main and another one for substream. The format is rtsp://IP:PORT/FILE (without rtsp:// it didn't work). I used the web gui. It's not really suited for RTSP streams and it'll show port 0, but since the port is in the url its not a problem. Good luck! Yes, I have several working streams that work with VLC or any other player but don't work on NVR. What firmware version do you have on the NVR? Master Version: V4.0[20150808] I also applied the rtsp fix.

I received my Xiaomi Ants camera a couple days ago, it works fine on RTSP. Are you sure you're using the correct url? You can specify one for main and another one for substream. The format is rtsp://IP:PORT/FILE (without rtsp:// it didn't work). I used the web gui. It's not really suited for RTSP streams and it'll show port 0, but since the port is in the url its not a problem. Good luck!

I'm using i12. I've tried setting a different channel on the nvr to access same cam via onvif, so I can compare results. But onvif didn't detect any motion, and I had limited time so gave up... Maybe next time I'll add a rtsp channel as well, though I don't know if the NVR can detect motion in RTSP streams, or if it relies on external triggers by the cam? I doubt their rtsp client supports control commands besides the simple video/audio streaming. In my case, cam is accessed with user/pass admin/admin. So not empty, but admin is the default password so who knows what'll happen after I change it. I've order a couple of other cams (Escam and XiaoYi) so more toys to play with are on the way

I have the same behaviour as reported by Dehumanizer77. Escam Mini-NVR connected to Escam QD900 cam, motion detection works for a couple of days then suddenly stops without a clear reason. When I check logs of cam and nvr, sometimes I see cam stops getting motion triggers and I have to restart cam + nvr. Sometimes cam still gets triggers, but NVR doesn't, and I only have to restart nvr and things work again for a while... until it repeats. Could be after a couple hours, or couple days, but eventually it stops working. I can automate things, to reboot the devices when needed, but what is the trigger to reboot? There must be a reason why the software stops working, if we can find out what it is, we can think about a possible solution... I'm on the 20150808 firmware. Is there a changelog of things fixed in 20151231?

To enable rtsp you need the firmware patch here: http://www.urcctvstore.com/Download/20150808/Enable_RTSP_protocol_20150907.update (probably only use it when your NVR contains the 20150808 firmware, which mine did as shipped) In my experience, and others in this thread, the proprietary i16 protocol works much better compared to ONVIF. I also have the QD900 and changing/saving settings from either the QD900 webif, or the NVR webif seems to work smoothly. If it doesn't, try the ants gui on hdmi. With ONVIF I got continous motion alarms even with the camera on its side aimed at the table I seem to get reliable motion alarms now, and the NVR starts recording, but after 10-15 seconds it stops recording while there's still motion. Maybe there's no motion-stop event, and it just starts recording for a fixed amount of time, and I need to increase the recording time? Have to wait until I have time to play with it again...

I think we all agree the software, especially the webif, sucks. You have to keep in mind you pay a very modest amount of money for the mini NVR hardware, and you get the software for free. Not really fair to compare that to a commercial piece of software with a price that exceeds that of the Mini NVR hardware. Of course it is much better. I knew all this before purchasing the device. I just like to try and get the most out of the hardware, and I don't rely on it for anything important (aka a hobby project...). It would be awesome to opensource (part of) the software. Maybe we could even get stuff like motion or zoneminder to replace the ants application. But this will likely never happen since the kernel modules are probably licensed from the SoC manufacturer (hilink) by Escam (and other mini nvr clone sellers) after signing nda contracts...

There is no trace of any Samba support on the device. You can probably get samba binaries by building them for armv7 and running from harddrive, probably a bit more difficult to build the cifs kernel module without the original kernel sources, patches, configuration. I've managed to mount a NFS share on the MiniNVR, since the nfs kernel module is already on the device. However I have no idea how to convince the ants application to record to a network share. Maybe it'll work if mounting the share on a path that is normally used to mount harddrives? But I don't know which location since I don't have an external drive yet, only had the MiniNVR for a couple of days.