Q-SEE NVR QC804

[andresdamas 0]

I just bought the NVR QC804 with 2 720P cameras, i have another camera and it is ovnif, works perfect with several manufacture software, my question is:

 

-using the rtsp for my camera ovnif can i connect to the NVR?

-where can i enter the rtsp url for make the connection? DVR has the option for OVNIF cameras where you specify the IP addres, rtsp and HTTP port, user and password and it didnt work!

 

the defaul port for my ovnif camera is http: 80 and rtsp: 554, password : admin and user id admin.

 

my ovnif camera work fine in some software like milestone, alnet, blue iris and NUUO and this is the url that i enter

rtsp://192.168.1.XXX:544/ch1-s1

 

The Q-see tech support were very nice but didnt answer my question, the POE switch built in the NVR has 4 port and automatically assigned IP to the cameras connected to using the 10.1.1.1 as gateway. anyways the cameras that i am trying to use are not built in DHCP, but i can change manually the gateway and subnet and IP addres, so I did and it didnt work

 

Any suggestion?

[buellwinkle 0]

I did not see any support on the NVR for ONVIF cameras. It supports a few brands, like Axis but when I tried it, the camera kept dropping and wasn't stable and it only recorded continously, no motion detect recording. I would only count on the NVR working with Q-See/Dahua cameras and nothing else.

 

You can set the IP of the camera independantly of the NVR and then specify that when you add a camera manually. I did a review on the Dahua NVR on blog that may be worth looking at.

[dexterash 0]

if you don't need the PoE function of the NVR, you can plug the other camera into the other port (the single one) of the NVR using a bare switch

 

NVR looks like a 3204/3216-P, so it should have Onvif support

 

bare in mind to manually setup the camera with IPs from the same class as your NVR (if you are plugging it into the separate port) or the same class as the settings of the internal PoE router/switch (settings can be found in menu), if you plug it in one of the PoE ports

 

although it is a switch/router, it is separated from the main network

[AaronHolio 0]

What would truly impress me is if the Q-See NVR's were designed smart enough that you could access cameras both on it's internal PoE switch, as well as as the network LAN (or WAN if you set it up that way, but it's LAN port)

 

In other words -- Say I buy a bunch of extra PoE Q-See cameras along with my QC804... My home network switch is a 16 port PoE switch, and is connected to an ASUS RT-AC66U router (HECK of a router by the way if you can afford it) -- I want to plug the extra cameras into my main home network. They will get a DHCP address from my router like everything else on my network, just like the 804 does.

 

So now picture going into the NVR setup, telling it to also search for cameras on the LAN/WAN side and adopt them. I can assume there may be a limitation where the cameras only want to be accessed by one device at a time, but that wouldn't be a problem if you were using the NVR as your main access to all your cameras.

 

Anyway, I know I laid out the obvious there - but I didn't want any confusion. This is something I hope Q-See (Dahua) and other manufacturers think of in the future. Theoretically it is all software solvable. I'm most likely moving away from Q-See since their techs repeatedly told me I could just add more cameras to my QC804 and it would adopt them, but so far I haven't been able to get this to work at all. I wonder if the QC804 thru QC8016 are the same hardware and I could firmware update my 804 to support more cameras. I'm actually starting to learn towards giving the AvertX system a try. http://www.costco.com/AvertX-16-Channel-Professional-IP-HD-Security-System-with-2TB-Hard-Drive-and-8-1080p-IP-Cameras-.product.100021442.html

[dexterash 0]

it works like that (request a firmware update from QSEE)

 

if not, try to add them manually - the only thing to pay attention is to setup the IP of the WAN port of the NVR to be in the same class as your other cameras

 

also, try to setup the internal router of the NVR with an IP class that differes from your router's

[AaronHolio 0]

Interesting. I poured over the documentation and searched online, as well as tried a bunch of configurations but I just couldn't get it to connect. I think the piece I was missing was that it could find cameras over the WAN port. I had done a search previously while the cameras were on my main LAN, but perhaps I had something wrong at the time.

 

My NVR's LAN was running different (in the 10.x.x.x world) so that isn't a problem. And since I don't have to contend with it trying to hand out DHCP addresses on my network there are no conflicts.

 

I am getting them to add manually now. Thank you for the information. " title="Applause" /> Unfortunate that I am still stuck with 4 cameras. I have watched q-see's site for a firmware update and seen none, do they not post new versions unless people contact them for the latest? I have 2.610.qs00.0.build2012-7-16

 

And do you happen to know if I can flash my unit to act like a 8016?

 

Update edit:

Just got off the phone with q-see support. They want me to use PSS to access the other cameras, but I explained that isn't my goal. I have the HDMI from the NVR split out to displays around the house and would like it to handle more than 4 cameras in the live feed and recording. They are forwarding my ticket to the firmware peeps to see if anything will be possible. I guess I wouldn't be as insistent about this if when I bought the device they said the 804 could support more cameras than 4 by adding a switch. If it is possible to FW upgrade it, I'd like to do it.

[dexterash 0]

since it's a firmware made for QSEE, i can't tell what will happen at upgrade/firmware change or when/if qsee will release a newer firmware

[tomcctv 190]

Hi which make camera are you adding to your system .....qsee if very very limited and also if your over D1 that will be a problem in its self

[buellwinkle 0]

He bought a 4 channel NVR with PoE built in. The NVR has DHCP running and assigns an IP to the two included cameras. He has additional cameras, I'm assuming under the 4 camera limitation of the NVR that are connected to another switch.

 

Other people here posted that they were able to add additional Dahua branded cameras to their Q-See NVR from Costco so that's not the problem, the problem is likely his network topography.

 

I think the problem stems back to what I've said all along, the PoE version of the Dahua/Q-see NVR is acting a router. One obvious clue is that the NVR is running DHCP and assigning address to cameras. So now my guess is he plug the NVR into his router. So now you have two distinct networks that can't talk to each other. If he connects the NVR to a switch and not his home router and the camera is on that switch and set for DHCP or configured to an IP on that subnet, it would work but he can never access the camera directly from the internets, just connect to the camera via the NVR interface. This is one huge reason I tell people not to buy the model with the PoE built in.

[AaronHolio 0]

buellwinkle: I am now running them all on my LAN because the NVR can see them on the it's WAN or sub-LAN switch. The limit is only software based. The DVR can see all 6 cameras (I bought a 4 camera system, q-see support on their facebook page told me that I could add more cameras with a switch) so I bought 2 more ($300), tried to add them after the NVR's subnet and it just confused it. Then I learned it could see cameras on it's WAN port (plugged into my local LAN) -- and there you go, the NVR can SEE all the cameras, but their software limits you to only accepting 4 to be active. I suspect the 804 808 and 8016 models are the exact same hardware and they are just charging you more for them to be able to add more cameras at once. Considering the 808 and 8016 have the same 120fps limit, I think this is just their cheap way of getting people to pay more for a software switch.

 

Yes, I would lose frame rate by adding more cameras, but it would be within an acceptable loss.

 

I did get a reply from Q-See and they told me the hardware was different. But opening them up and comparing the hardware, they look exactly the same. No difference at all. They said if I tried the 8016 firmware it would likely destroy the motherboard. Wish I could just try the 8016 firmware without fear knowing I could rollback if it didn't work.

[MaxIcon 0]

I did get a reply from Q-See and they told me the hardware was different. But opening them up and comparing the hardware, they look exactly the same. No difference at all. They said if I tried the 8016 firmware it would likely destroy the motherboard. Wish I could just try the 8016 firmware without fear knowing I could rollback if it didn't work.

 

Lol! FUD is alive and well! You may brick the NVR, but firmware updates destroying the MB sounds unlikely.

 

You can recover from a bricked NVR with TFTP, if you have the correct files (not just the .bin file, you need armboot-x.bin.img and update.img, per their instructions) and a serial cable that works with the NVR, and either their TFTP server software or a generic one from the web. Here's Dahua's instructions on this:

http://www.dahuasecurity.com/download/TFTP%20upgrade%20instructor.pdf

 

I don't have a Dahua NVR and have never done this, but my Dell POE switch requires TFTP to upgrade the software, and it's pretty straightforward. Still, there's always a risk.

 

If it gets messed up, you'd need to return it to the vendor to get straightened out, but the vendors use TFTP to fix these problems.

[dexterash 0]

Lol! FUD is alive and well! You may brick the NVR, but firmware updates destroying the MB sounds unlikely.

 

Not destroy, but the least problem is if you brick the uBoot or the UBL - you will need JTAG to rewrite.

Also, there is some sort of hardware key. Accesing it incorrectly/damage to firmware/bootloader may brick the MB.

 

L.E: the hardware key communication/init is done at uBoot load.

[AaronHolio 0]

Yes, I'm aware when someone from support says destroy the motherboard it is either a scare you into not doing it statement, or they just don't know.

 

I'd like to try the firmware update, but in no mood to send it in for repair if I brick it temporarily.

 

The latest feedback I got from q-see was that the 808 and 8016 models "had a stronger chipset, so that is why it costs more" -- so my question is, if it has a "stronger" chipset, why does q-see still list 120FPS of total processing capability for all 3 models?

 

804 - http://www.q-see.com/products/product_description.php?cId=139&pId=273&id=139&pid=114

 

808 - http://www.q-see.com/products/product_description.php?cId=140&pId=274&id=140&pid=114

 

8016 - http://www.q-see.com/products/product_description.php?cId=141&pId=275&id=141&pid=114

 

All 3 show -- Real Time: 120 FPS (30 FPS Per Channel) - So, 16 cameras at 720p and you get about 7fps at best. Again, my bets are that this is a mere software difference and not hardware, unless q-see simply forgot to update the tech specs on their product pages for the 808 and 8016 to show that they handle 240fps and 480fps respectively.

 

I suppose it could need more CPU to handle the writing/management of the data to the storage, but I'm not sure why you'd release a device that displays 7.5fps and records 30fps.

[dexterash 0]

I suppose it could need more CPU to handle the writing/management of the data to the storage, but I'm not sure why you'd release a device that displays 7.5fps and records 30fps.

Actually, recording doesn't eat too many CPU cycles since the video is already encoded by the camera (thus the NVR only writes the stream to the HDD - in a brute way to say)

 

Decoding&displaying it's what eats up CPU cycles.

[AaronHolio 0]

Actually, recording doesn't eat too many CPU cycles since the video is already encoded by the camera (thus the NVR only writes the stream to the HDD - in a brute way to say)

 

Decoding&displaying it's what eats up CPU cycles.

 

Kind of what I figured. I was listing a possibility in case I missed something. Just out of curiosity, do you happen to know what CPU they use in these? An Intel Atom, or more likely an ARM variant?

[dexterash 0]

It's an ARM based with a dedicated coprocessor for decoding H.264 (as I do know, it's a Broadcom).

[AaronHolio 0]

It's an ARM based with a dedicated coprocessor for decoding H.264 (as I do know, it's a Broadcom).

Then I am truly curious if this CPU and/or decoder vary with the model #'s.

 

BTW, some power data I collected; The NVR only pulls 15.5-16.1 watts without the on-board PoE switch powering 4 cameras. With a 2nd hard drive, no cameras running (unplugged the PoE power supply) – it pulls 17 watts. Plug the PoE PS in, with 2 cameras in color, and two cameras in B&W (IR LEDs on) it goes up to 38 watts. Pretty reasonable power usage really. I figured that is about $1.50-$1.90/mo in power.

 

And here is a pic I took when tinkering with a 2nd 3TB hard drive. (need to take a better one, a bit lost in the shadow on this one)

[dexterash 0]

"hack it", look under the coolers and stuff

 

Unplugged PoE router should reset the NVR - as a safety measure..

 

BTW, uppper limit of DAHUA NVRs has been raised to 4TB.

[AaronHolio 0]

"hack it", look under the coolers and stuff

Unplugged PoE router should reset the NVR - as a safety measure..

BTW, uppper limit of DAHUA NVRs has been raised to 4TB.

Heh - I tried to take the CPU heatsink/fan off, but it looks like the spring loaded hooks are connected on the other side of the board. Not something I'm in the mood to remove at the moment

 

Sorry, are you meaning to say if I unplug the PoE PS it would reset the NVR? It doesn't seem to, or did you mean something else? Since I did those power readings on my kill-a-watt meter, I now have 6 cameras powered via a Zyxel PoE switch. Which brings my total power usage to 42.2w for 6 cameras (and PoE switch). Now minus the 3TB hard drive, going to put a 1.5TB in instead. So that dropped the total power by 3w or so until I replace it. My guess is that 2nd drive + external PoE + 6 cameras with IR LEDs on + NVR will come out to 46-49 watts.

 

Ah - well that is cool. Now if 4GB drives were affordable -- I was lucky and managed to get 3) 3TB drives for $85/ea on a Cyber Monday deal. Kind of wish I'd gotten a few more at that price.

[dexterash 0]

Sorry, are you meaning to say if I unplug the PoE PS it would reset the NVR?

 

The models I use(d) have an watchdog that resets(after some time)/doesn't boot the NVR if you remove the power to the PoE switch.

[AaronHolio 0]

The models I use(d) have an watchdog that resets(after some time)/doesn't boot the NVR if you remove the power to the PoE switch.

- I see. Well doesn't seem to have any effect on this one. I just double checked and plugged it in then unplugged. Looks like they keep the PoE board pretty isolated from the main board.

[AaronHolio 0]

I just got the new months "online only" deal advert from Costco. Unfortunately they don't have the QC808 or QC8016 deal yet. So we've got another month to see if that shows up. They did have a deal on an analog 16 camera system, but not what we are waiting for.

 

I did get a note from someone on the Facebook Q-See page that Sam'ss club is selling the QC808 now for $800. But with only 4 cameras. Seeing that I paid $600 for my QC804 with 4 cameras 4-5 months ago, I'm going to keep waiting. http://www.samsclub.com/sams/8-ch-4-cam-nvr-sys-4-hd-720p-ip-bul/prod9130159.ip?navAction=

[KyleK29 0]

Hmm, found your thread because I have a similar issue with the QC804. One of my cameras is picking up a neighbors light so it won't switch to night-vision. I believe you can set a manual time for the camera to switch the IR-filter off and turn on the IR lights .. but you can't seem to access those camera settings from the NVR software.

 

The NVR does have it's own DHCP and it does put the cameras on a 10.1.1. IP# set. It's incredibly silly that you can't manually set that to match your network.

 

Besides going to an external POE switch, did you find (or does anyone know) a way to manually set the internet network IP?

[AaronHolio 0]

Hmm, found your thread because I have a similar issue with the QC804. One of my cameras is picking up a neighbors light so it won't switch to night-vision. I believe you can set a manual time for the camera to switch the IR-filter off and turn on the IR lights .. but you can't seem to access those camera settings from the NVR software.The NVR does have it's own DHCP and it does put the cameras on a 10.1.1. IP# set. It's incredibly silly that you can't manually set that to match your network. Besides going to an external POE switch, did you find (or does anyone know) a way to manually set the internet network IP?

Glad finding the thread helped. When I was first figuring out my system these forums helped me quite a bit. So onto your questions...

 

Yes it is a little annoying that Q-See puts it on a subnet that you cannot access very easily.. Or more so, that they NVR doesn't allow you to configure ALL the settings you can configure via the direct camera web interface. It took me a month to realize that the camera was setting its own time to a different time zone (than the NVR) and every night at 2am rebooting and re-syncing its time to 1 hour ahead of the NVR. Among many other things, you cannot make several changes to the cameras without directly hitting their web interface.

 

The good news is (as I think you've realized) if you buy your own PoE switch, you can put all the cameras on your local network (i.e. giving them all 192.168.x.x addresses) and the NVR will find them over its WAN port. Unfortunately while you can add a hundred cameras on your local LAN, the 804 will only let you add 4 of them -- or 8 for the QC808 -- or 16 for the QC8016, while the debate remains if the hardware is really much different between the units other than several hundred dollars in price. So you can take that route, I think I got a pretty good Zyxel PoE switch for around $110. Now, if you don't want to do that, you can connect up your cameras to your local LAN, use configtool.exe to find them on your network (assuming your router gave them a DHCP address), then right click and open them in Internut Exploder (no advanced controls are available in any other browser) -- install the activex cab file (select "Allow for all sites" or you'll be clicking that often) and then you can fine tune all the things the NVR doesn't allow you to set. There are lots of features you need to comb thru to get things just like you want. Something wise to do is change the camera's default login admin pw: admin to admin pw: so if someone taps into your network they can't jump right onto your camera.

 

NOTE If you put your cameras on your main LAN, they will all try to set ports 85 37777 37778 via UPnP just like your NVR does. And guess what this causes? A whole lotta confusion to your router -- You'll need to go into your camera's network config and turn off the UPnP settings. None have to be on for the NVR to find them on the local LAN. And if you don't, your NVR won't be able to grab the ports itself.. So if you try to connect remotely, you'll be a bit confused that you'll get one camera at a time and it crashes.. I like to let my NVR handle all my viewing on the internet. So let your NVR have those ports, of it you really want, set the cameras to live on other ports.. although you'll have to take note of the info.. because you'll have a total of 15 camera related ports exposed to the internet world

 

After you are done, plug it back into your NVR's subnet and it will keep the settings and you should be good to go. As for setting the camera to NEVER turn on the LED lights. As far as I've discovered, not possible. You can set the camera into black and white or color mode, as well as set times for it to change into each mode (or auto which is default), but no matter what, the LED lights turn on when they want to turn on. I actually took an odd route with 2 of my cameras, I used a dry erase black marker and blacked out all the glass (except the camera lens center of course) - and that caused the LED lights to always be on and be barely visible. Since I run all my cameras now in color mode 24/7 the IR light doesn't really matter. For the one part of my back yard that isn't bright enough, I have a motion sensing light so anytime something (including squirrels) is back there, it lights right up and the motion record feature turns on and it is all good.

 

Q-See could have very easily (software wise), simply turned the on board PoE ports into a network bridge switch -- in other words, have it bridge into your LAN over its WAN port.. come to think of it, maybe it does do this. I never turned off its DHCP server. Perhaps I should have tried that. I was so angry that after I tried to plug a 5th camera into its 10.1.1.x network it freaked the whole thing out. I didn't even know it would detect cameras over its WAN port onto your local LAN until someone gave me the tip (although I did try but must have done something wrong the first time).

 

You can do other things from the camera's manual configuration, like give it a unique device name (instead of the serial # as a name) - for example "FrontDoor" and various other things that make it much easier to deal with when it is on your LAN.

 

If you don't have a PoE switch you can plug the camera into a 12v power supply and plug it into your non-PoE router. You could try plugging your computer into the PoE switch on the NVR, maybe get a DHCP address, and then use configtool.exe to find it.. although not sure that would work or not. If you do more than 4 cameras, just do yourself the favor and buy a good 16 port PoE switch for your entire network. Then you can see everything from the NVR and your computers.

 

It is a shame that Q-See's NVR has such promise, yet such annoying shortfalls that it turns off a huge amount of customers. Heck, their PSS software feels so clunky and non user friendly that their Android software even feels more modern... and even it kind of stinks half the time. Their software always gives very generic error messages, has little to no mouse over tool tips, and their manuals barely cover anything. Their web interface only works with IE unless you want to do anything more advanced that look at the cameras, and to top it off the Active-X .cab control now crashes IE version 10 across several of their DVR (and this NVR model) A bit more processing power and some firmware updates and it would be close to a small enterprise class system. But they are hung up on such silly little issues.

 

I only see them fixing some bugs in future firmware releases if we are lucky, and unlikely adding any new features (such as support for other browsers, more camera control without logging into the camera, etc). They seem to do the minimum on a platform, then release a new platform and ignore the previous models. As grumpy as I sound, I still like my system and will stick with it. Once they release the 8016 at a price that doesn't have an absolutely ridiculous price mark up, I've got several other sites to buy units for.

 

Hope this helps.

[KyleK29 0]

Hope this helps.

 

 

Doing the switch to main network and change settings, switch back, and test is a tad bit annoying. But it's all I have at the moment. For the record, there's no ability to turn off the internal DHCP for the POE ports on the NVR. I'm guessing that they did this because these are aimed more at consumers, so they want them to be as plug & play as possible. With this way (compared to being just a switch), you don't have the cameras getting a new IP# every time the router resets and you don't have DHCP conflicts. I'm still surprised there isn't even a forwarded port for each camera's interface (ie: port 192.168.0.3:8502 goes to camera 10.1.1.20:85, 192.168.0.3:8503 goes to camera 10.1.1.30:85, etc).

 

It'd still be nice to have the ability to turn it off or at the very least, tunnel through to get to the camera settings that are missing.

 

As for my neighbors light. It was causing the camera to not switch to B/W. But I got it sorted.

 

If you happen to figure out how to lift the 4 camera limit, definitely update. It's possible the only hardware change is the POE switch (I assume the QC808 have 8 POE ports and so fourth).