Help with system design - HikVision IP cameras and NVR

[PolishBen 0]

Hi

 

I have been slowly expanding my home CCTV system over the last few months and now have 3 HikVision IP/PoE cameras (DS-2CD2012-I, DS-2CD2035-I and DS-2CD2032F-I).

 

The cameras are connected to my home network, running from a regular PoE switch and are configured to FTP images to a NAS server when motion is detected.

 

So far for my needs that's been fine and everything has been working just great.

 

After a suspected break-in attempt at my house, I decided that it would be useful to also record so I decided to by an NVR. As I found the HikVision cameras intuitive and easy to work with and because I want to add more PoE cameras in future I bought a HikVision DS-7108N-SN/P.

 

I was (naively) expecting everything to be straightforward but I have hit some problems because the NVR doesn't work as I would expect and so now I need your expert advice...

 

The first issue I have is that the NVR appears to have broken after just a few hours of me playing around with it. When it powers on none of the LEDs flash (to indicate hard drive usage) and there's no video output (either on VGA or HDMI). Is there anyway to troubleshoot it over the LAN connection? Or is this NVR toast?

 

Prior to it dying on me I had some other issues:

* it seems that I must use default passwords for the admin accounts on the cameras for the NVR to recognise them as HikVision cameras for plug & play to work. Is that correct or was I doing something wrong? Or is it due to bad firmware?

* when I tried to use the PoE ports the NVR seems to put them on a subnet and so the cameras can't see my NAS server and my FTP set-up mentioned earlier breaks. From googling around I found similar problems such as http://www.cctvforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=39791 so I am assuming there is no decent way around this. Am I correct?

 

Many thanks in advance for reading this long post and any answers.

[Securame 0]

* it seems that I must use default passwords for the admin accounts on the cameras for the NVR to recognise them as HikVision cameras for plug & play to work. Is that correct or was I doing something wrong? Or is it due to bad firmware?

 

The camera has to be default so the NVR can activate it and auto configure it. Otherwise, you will have to configure the IP by hand, setup user/password on the NVR, etc.

 

* when I tried to use the PoE ports the NVR seems to put them on a subnet and so the cameras can't see my NAS server and my FTP set-up mentioned earlier breaks. From googling around I found similar problems such as viewtopic.php?f=19&t=39791 so I am assuming there is no decent way around this. Am I correct?

 

No way around this, cameras connected to the NVR POE ports have no internet access.

 

Btw, 7108NI-SN/P only supports up to 2MP.

[PolishBen 0]

Hi

 

Thanks for the info.

No way around this, cameras connected to the NVR POE ports have no internet access.

So is there any way I can continue to have FTP notifications on certain events such as line crossing? For example sent by the NVR itself? Having this was one of the key features of my home automation set up as I had the line-crossing trigger my doorbell as soon as somebody walked on to my land. Are there other NVRs that don't have this restriction?

 

Also, is my NVR fried anyway / do you have any suggestions for this problem:

 

The first issue I have is that the NVR appears to have broken after just a few hours of me playing around with it. When it powers on none of the LEDs flash (to indicate hard drive usage) and there's no video output (either on VGA or HDMI). Is there anyway to troubleshoot it over the LAN connection? Or is this NVR toast?

 

The 2MB limit isn't a problem - my current cameras are only 1MB or 2MB and that's more than adequate for my home set-up.

 

Many thanks for your help once again.