Can someone explain pc based nvr's for me??

[thetester 0]

As the title says I need help understanding how to turn a PC into a nvr. How the cams are connected and how triggers of alarms are managed.

 

I have used every term I know in google but I can't find hardly any info on this subject.

[tomcctv 190]

As the title says I need help understanding how to turn a PC into a nvr. How the cams are connected and how triggers of alarms are managed.

 

I have used every term I know in google but I can't find hardly any info on this subject.

 

 

Hi. VMS is what you are looking for ..... What make are your cameras

[thetester 0]

Thank you for your reply. They are swann HD 1080p 3MP bullet cams with cat 5 style connectors not BNC. The exact model I would have to really look.

 

I'm trying to figure out what hardware to add to my PC in order to run the system. I'm pretty good at learning and figuring stuff out for myself but this has posed to be one of the most difficult as it don't seem to be a lot of info about it on the net. Either that or my terminology isn't correct.

 

Any help what so ever would be GREATLY appreciated.

[Boogieman 1]

Thank you for your reply. They are swann HD 1080p 3MP bullet cams with cat 5 style connectors not BNC. The exact model I would have to really look.

 

I'm trying to figure out what hardware to add to my PC in order to run the system. I'm pretty good at learning and figuring stuff out for myself but this has posed to be one of the most difficult as it don't seem to be a lot of info about it on the net. Either that or my terminology isn't correct.

 

Any help what so ever would be GREATLY appreciated.

What model swann cameras?

You dont need any hardware other than a POE switch to power the cameras. Then you can use vms software like blueiris, exacq, milestone to record. If the swann cameras are hikvisions rebrands you should be able to use ivms as well.

[thetester 0]

The cams are swann srnhd-815cam I did a few searches and still could not find whether or not they are hikvision rebrand cams. I did read that if they were not rebrands it would be trouble with software and possibly impossible to use with other nvr's or PC.

[Boogieman 1]

The cams are swann srnhd-815cam I did a few searches and still could not find whether or not they are hikvision rebrand cams. I did read that if they were not rebrands it would be trouble with software and possibly impossible to use with other nvr's or PC.

yes, those are not rebranded hikvisions....maybe made by hikvision, who knows..you will need to see if you can find the rtsp stream from those cameras...return them and start over.

[thetester 0]

Here is a pic of the cam itself. If it helps

 

 

[thetester 0]

What do you mean return them??

 

Wait wait wait.

 

You mean these can not be used as they are with PC software ?? I have no need for the rstp stream as where these will be so far back in the woods there is no internet and no possibility to stream. I just need to access all the features in the cams via software for full functionality.

 

Still no go with these cams??

Edited September 1, 2015 by Guest

[Boogieman 1]

What do you mean return them??

to the store you purchased them from...

[thetester 0]

Ok before I go off half ****ed and buy more cams. Which models at Costco or such ARE rebrands. I know I can get the bundles cheaper than simply buying a bunch of cameras. So what do I need to look for before I buy??

[Boogieman 1]

Ok before I go off half ****ed and buy more cams. Which models at Costco or such ARE rebrands. I know I can get the bundles cheaper than simply buying a bunch of cameras. So what do I need to look for before I buy??

First, do you know if your pc can handle the task? What are the specs? how many cameras do you intend to run?

[thetester 0]

The pc I have home built pc. AMD 4.0 ghz 8 core. 8 gig ram GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Video Card

 

I use this PC for solid works at home.

 

Surely this will do???

 

Edit***

Sorry I plan on using 8 cams and later possibly 2 more inside the home. So safely say 12 cams.

 

I know I'm gonna need a raid array of hard drives for storage but motion detection should knock down a little or running the not so critical cams at lower res and frame rates.

[Boogieman 1]

The pc I have home built pc. AMD 4.0 ghz 8 core. 8 gig ram GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Video Card

 

I use this PC for solid works at home.

 

Surely this will do???

 

Edit***

Sorry I plan on using 8 cams and later possibly 2 more inside the home. So safely say 12 cams.

 

I know I'm gonna need a raid array of hard drives for storage but motion detection should knock down a little or running the not so critical cams at lower res and frame rates.

It depends on the software you use..and if you display the cameras on the screen..its a bad idea to use your general purpose pc for NVR..you are better of simply buying a kit with an NVR...

[thetester 0]

Ok but instead of buying hikvision or dahua straight out. Which units are rebrands at Costco or amazon etc or how can I look them up myself. . If I decide to go pc route it be better to have the true rebrands to avoid complication. As I can tell it is much cheaper buying these bundles. If they are the same units no need to pay more just because. Even if I go stand alone nvr if they are not rebrands I'm locked to that brand so to say.

[lgRich 0]

The cams are swann srnhd-815cam I did a few searches and still could not find whether or not they are hikvision rebrand cams. I did read that if they were not rebrands it would be trouble with software and possibly impossible to use with other nvr's or PC.

Swann camera are selling by Costco and are made by Hikvision.

 

I have 2 Swann model 820 and they are identical to the Hikvision DS-2CD2032.

 

Use the SADP tools from Hikvision and will be able to access your camera.

[Boogieman 1]

The cams are swann srnhd-815cam I did a few searches and still could not find whether or not they are hikvision rebrand cams. I did read that if they were not rebrands it would be trouble with software and possibly impossible to use with other nvr's or PC.

Swann camera are selling by Costco and are made by Hikvision.

 

I have 2 Swann model 820 and they are identical to the Hikvision DS-2CD2032.

 

Use the SADP tools from Hikvision and will be able to access your camera.

There is a difference between the 820/825 and the 815...costco canada sells some kits with the 815...

[Boogieman 1]

What do you mean return them??

 

Wait wait wait.

 

You mean these can not be used as they are with PC software ?? I have no need for the rstp stream as where these will be so far back in the woods there is no internet and no possibility to stream. I just need to access all the features in the cams via software for full functionality.

 

Still no go with these cams??

The rtsp stream is NOT the wifi stream...

Here is my advice to you. Return the cameras. Then, read this and other forums and learn about ip cameras before getting the improper equipment.

[thetester 0]

Thank you guys for the prompt replies. I have been reading now for a few weeks. There isn't enough precise information on any one subject. I guess different quality and price ranges. Short of living on the net this was one step forward or so I thought.

 

Now I'm almost sure I know how a pc based system operates, it's down to cameras.

 

Yes my cams are the 815 but i live in the US not canada. They were originally purchased at SAMS club. I can not return these cams as I bought the system cheap from a friend. The NVR is inoperable thus I wanted to use the cams with a PC.

 

I will however look at costco for the 820 versions. Not to figure out how to make sure they are US for upgrades.

[thetester 0]

Does anyone know more about these 815 cams????

[Boogieman 1]

Does anyone know more about these 815 cams????

First thing to do is to download onvif device manager from the soundforge website and see if it can pull information from the camera including the proper rtsp stream URL..

This is not going to be plug and play.

[thetester 0]

Thank you for the instructions. I do not have a poe switch so I'm not sure how or if I can connect the cams to pc until I purchase a switch??

 

I looked up the 815-- 820---825 models. It seems the 815 is the better model. The 815 and 820 are the same except the 815 has audio mic. I'm assuming I'm correct??

 

Also the front glass lens cover has a spanner ring for removal of the glass where as the other two models do not.

 

I would like to take these apart and compare internals as well. If only I was more educated in testing cams LOL.

 

I guess it all boils down to software, support and compatibility which is depend on components.

[steveo44 0]

Your not the only one who finds the range of equipment confusing.

 

Interesting thread i look forward to your results!

[Horizon 0]

Hi there thetester.

 

Swan claim that the camera can be powered from a 12 volt 2 amp plug pack, so you could try this before getting a POE switch.

Actually, is this a POE camera, or the 12 volt only one? There seem to be a couple of options for the NHD-815, which is the closest match I can find to the SRNHD-815CAM.

 

Basically, the NVR (or PC NVR) connects to the IP camera over a network, and requests images from it. These images can come in several formats, but the one I'll concentrate on is the MJPEG. See the "IP camera" and "M-JPEG over HTTP" headings here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_JPEG

 

So the NVR requests MJPEGs using RTSP, and the camera sends a rapid-fire stream of JPEG images to the NVR, which then either copies these images to the hard disk, or has to decompress them to perform motion detection.

A dedicated NVR has it easy - it has special hardware to do the JPEG decompression (similar to turning the JPG image back into a bit map). This makes the dedicated NVR very efficient, and it uses less electricity.

The PC (being a "jack of all trades, master of none" type device) has to do the decompression in software. This is very inefficient, and the CPU has to devote a lot of resources to this task. Then it has to do the motion detection, which uses even more resources. As a consequence, the PC based NVR can be very power hungry, and run up a big electricity bill. You have to factor in the running costs of PC versus NVR.

With a 16 camera setup, you could liken the PC to playing 16 BluRay movies simultaneously. Quite the workload!

To lighten the amount of work, you can specify that the camera sends less images per second. Instead of (say) 25 per second, you could use 5. The motion looks more jerky, but the NVR only has to do 1/5th the work.

 

ONVIF is a standard (or bunch of standards) that allow better interoperability between cameras and NVRs from different manufacturers. If your cameras and NVR are compliant with ONVIF (or ONVIF2.xx) then there is an excellent chance that they will work together. Unfortunately I don't think your NHD-815 supports ONVIF.

 

The major challenge with IP cameras and NVRs (those that don't support ONVIF) is adding foreign cameras to them. The cameras from different manufacturers have different methods of requesting the RTSP stream. Many DVRs (especially the budget ones) are designed to only work with cameras from their own manufacturer.

In your case, the Swan NHD-815 camera only works with the NVR4-73XX™, NVR8-73XX™ & NVR16-73XX™ recorders. See here: http://www.swann.com/us/swnhd-815cam

You have a faulty one of these recorders, right??

 

However, PCs, being a "Jack of all trades" are very flexible, and if you can find out the RTSP stream, the NVR software (EpiCam, ISpy, Zoneminder, etc) might work with it.

Having done some searching, this site: https://www.epicamera.com/camera_model.php?iId=944 claims the RTSP stream should be:

http://[iPADDRESS]/videostream.asf?usr=[uSERNAME]&pwd=[PASSWORD]

 

This site: http://www.swann.com/us/downloads/dl/file/id/1289/MPOECAM171213E_Web.pdf claims that the defaults are:

[uSERNAME] = admin

[PASSWORD] = 12345

Hopefully no one has changed the password!

 

So if you know the camera's IP address, you should be able access the images.

 

I can provide info on how to discover the IP address if anyone's interested. This post has become a bit long

[SunnyKim 2]

Thanks, Horizon!! Quite informative.

But can you detail how to get the ipaddress?

[Horizon 0]

Sure, this is mostly from memory, so lets see...

 

I mostly play around with Ubuntu, so this description is from that point of view.

Basically, the method involves using a packet sniffer to capture the camera's IP address when the camera is powered on. When the camera starts, it will either announce itself to the network, or request an IP address from a DHCP server.

Yes, depending on who has been messing around with it, it may have either a dynamic (assigned by a DHCP server) or static (assigned by a human) address.

 

What you need in the way of hardware is:

PC or laptop running Ubuntu, with an Ethernet port

A connection to the internet (to download stuff)

A router that's running a DHCP server. You're probably already using one to connect to the internet.

 

The tools you need are:

VLC (a handy media player)

TCPDUMP (a basic packet sniffer)

 

To install the tools, on your PC open the terminal window (Ctrl+Alt+T), and

use the commands:

sudo apt-get update             (this updates your software repository)
sudo apt-get install vlc         (apt-get installs software - it saves messing about with the mouse)
sudo apt-get install tcpdump

 

"sudo" means that you are using elevated permissions to poke about with important parts of the operating system. It will ask you for your password, to make sure that you know what you're doing (or in my case, that I think I know, but probably don't).

 

You want to do the next bit when your network is quiet, in other words when no-one is streaming videos, youtubing, or torrenting. Otherwise the camera's brief burst of activity will be hidden beneath a load of network traffic.

 

Plug the camera into the router, and get ready to apply power.

On the PC, use the command

 

sudo tcpdump -i eth0          (eth0 is the copper/RJ45 Ethernet port connecting the PC to the router)

 

Check that there isn't much activity, then turn the camera on. Within about 30 seconds or so, the camera should either announce its IP address, or request an address from the DHCP router. Either way, you now have the address!

 

If you type that address into your web browser, it will (hopefully) take you to the camera's home page. And now you can see whether you know the username and password, or if it's time to start guessing!!

 

If the camera is on a different sub net (ie the PC address is 192.168.15.1.5 and the camera's is 192.170.15.7) then you can temporarily change the PC's IP address onto the camera's sub net. If you're on different sub nets, then the PC will not be able to talk to the camera.

 

To temporarily change the PC network address:

sudo ifconfig eth0 down
sudo ifconfig -a eth0 192.170.15.9 netmask 255.255.255.0   (192.170.15.9 is for example!!)
sudo ifconfig eth0 up

 

The PC network address is now 192.170.15.9, but it will return to its original address when it is next rebooted.

 

The VLC media player is useful in that it can display the RTSP video feed from the camera. Instructions are here: http://www.ipcam-shop.nl/media/foscam-faq/MJPEG/How%20to%20get%20video%20stream%20on%20VLC%20media%20player.pdf

VLC is also available for Windows.

 

Anyway, there's probably an error two or three in the above, but that's pretty much how I got the last piece of junk camera going.

 

Have fun!