Hitting cameras web pages with a laptop in an NVR with POE

[bigredfish]

@Gilean I have had similar problems with my 4208-8P-4KS2

Something between the NVR recognizing the cameras in the Registration area and assigning them to the Switch when you add them is messed up and inconsistent. Its buggy firmware

Though Dahua uses port 37777, this is NOT what you want to see under the "Port" column on the Registration page. As the cameras are added to the Bottom pane, you should see a port # of 1,2,3 etc as mine below. This is displaying the "port" of the internal switch.

Any camera I had in the bottom pane of the Registration page that had a port of 37777 I was not able to connect to using the Web Browse icon like you describe. I believe the two cameras showing in your list with port display of 1 and 4 are duplicate cameras trying to connect. You may remove the conflicting IP's showing port 37777 and try to connect with those shown in red currently.



Here's what I did;
1- Update to the latest firmware. Scroll down page to 'Downloads" tab and then download "Firmware" https://www.dahuasecurity.com/products/productDetail/8261
1B- update firmware on NVR
1C- reboot NVR
2- Delete all cameras on the bottom of the Registration page.
3- Now disconnect the ethernet cables leading to cameras from the back of the NVR
4- Wait a few minutes....(leave NVR running)
5- Reconnect each ethernet cable from the cam to the POE ports on the NVR
6- At the top of the Registration page hit the Device Search button. This should find all cameras. It can take a minute or two, so be patient
7- Add all of the cameras that appear and have a port number like 1, 2, 3 etc but do NOT add ones that appear in the top pane with a port of 37777
8- With any leftover cameras at top (with a 37777 port number showing) I just navigated away from the page, disconnected and reconnected the ethernet cable for that camera, and returned and ran another "Device Search" until I got cameras showing port #'s in the single digits. Once I did I added them as well to the bottom pane.
9- Then I manually clicked on the "Modify" icon for each camera, enter the expected login and password and the cameras connected (this can take some time) and frequently I had to open the Modify dialog box a couple of times and tell it to Connect again before it actually did.

Once I had all port numbers showing 1,2,3 and all green connected lights, the Web Browse function worked as expected allowing me into each camera's web interface.

When you click on the Web Browse icon for a camera, it opens a new window and in my case using the NVR subnet of 192.168.1.X and a seemingly random port number. If it tries to connect to a camera page using 10.1.1.X it wont open the camera page as it can't talk to that IP range.

Hope this helps

 

[Gilean]

Thanks @Thedy Bratu and @bigredfish ! I have very similar observings, but that's good to know that it's mainly because of buggy firmware. I am on a vacation now, but thanks to TeamViewer, I can access my home computer from here So I checked and see that my NVR's firmware is 3.215 and the one found on dahuasecurity website is 3.216. Although I believe SmartPSS told me that I have latest firmware... So I will update that when I get back home on Wednesday.

But today when I logged remotely in my home computer, I found that SmartPSS now listed three cameras, and after a while, I got this on Web Service software:

And just like bigredfish said, for some reason now I actually can log in to two cameras! Not sure why I cannot connect to 10.1.1.68 although password should be right. But again, it might be because of this duplicate "ghost" camera that has now port 4. If I delete it, it comes back... EDIT: I deleted the one that has port number 2 in my screenshot (even though that has type reckognized, the one that has port 4 has no type at all), and now I could connect to that as well! I noticed that all those three cameras that now connect, are ones that are straightly connected to NVR's POE ports, those three cameras that are behind a separate POE switch are not showing. Anyway, I guess it's just because of this buggy firmware. Like I said, I have seen all 6 cameras online already, but with every reboot, things go randomly wrong and IP addresses change and cameras disappear /reappear...

But I think I will do what suggested once I get back home: first I update the firmware, and then I connect my cameras - not all at once but one at time! That also includes those three that are behind that separate POE switch, I will plug one camera in at a time. Anyway, I hope after I update the firmare and finally get my cameras working, that next time I have to reboot the NVR, things still work. How it is for you, does the settings stay after power failure / reboot or do you have to tweak them all over again? Hopefully not because then it's a pain...

Oh and Thedy Bratu, I definetely agree about that irritating NVR fan noise! I had to put my NVR inside a kitchen cabinet and pull all the wires from there to attic and forward, but that did the trick In fact, the fan itself is not very loud, if you remove the NVR's cover, but when you put that on, it is too noisy for my ears that I couldn't place it next to my router etc because I couldn't sleep :/ But of course you want to keep that cover on, except now in my kitchen cabin it's okay to be without cover...

EDIT: By the way, is the latest firmware a bit faster to find cameras after reboot? Because it's not minutes for me now, it can be HOUR or even more! That's why I found these three cameras only now when I looked at my settings the next day, I couldn't find them even after one hour after my last reboot...

 

[bigredfish]

The newest firmware improves things but still buggy.

After a power failure I often have to go in and reboot the NVR to get the cameras to be recognized by the switch. And the Dahua cameras seem to take a loonnggg time connecting. Last night I rebooted that NVR, both Axis cameras came back immediately, the Dahua took better part of an HOUR to finally reconnect.

 

[looney2ns]

The newest firmware improves things but still buggy.

After a power failure I often have to go in and reboot the NVR to get the cameras to be recognized by the switch. And the Dahua cameras seem to take a loonnggg time connecting. Last night I rebooted that NVR, both Axis cameras came back immediately, the Dahua took better part of an HOUR to finally reconnect.

Yikes!

 

[bigredfish]

Definitely buggy firmware on these 4208-8P-4KS2 NVR's.

The identical sister NVR at the other end of the street had a power failure last night for like 30 seconds, and even though the NVR rebooted itself, I still had to manually reboot AND re-login both cameras via the Registration page to get things back to normal.

The one referenced above in the previous post seems to have a problem with the 52A1EN camera which takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to reconnect. As mentioned both Axis cameras connect right away no problem. I'm replacing that camera with a new 5231 bullet this week so we'll see what happens..

 

[Thedy Bratu]

Hi,
Thanks for pointing out the availability of a new firmware. It does (so far) work better than the previous one, and now the sequence of the cameras is the same as the sequence of the physical ports they are connected to, this is awesome.
The NVR lost all passwords for the already installed cameras, but the only thing that I had to do was to re-enter the passwords.
So far so good, thanks again.
Cheers

 

[Gilean]

All right, I am back at home, trying to get my cameras working. I followed advice by @bigredfish and also @Thedy Bratu . I upgraded my firmware first. Funnily, my NVR claimed I already had newest firmware, although it was one version behind, maybe because I had "generic" firmware as my NVR is from Andy, now after upgrading, I actually see Dahua logo on UI. I rebooted, and deleted all cameras, and unplugged them all. After that, I started connecting them, ONE BY ONE, so that after I got one camera working, I connected the next etc. Well, Everything went... almost right, but not quite See this:


First I noticed that "Device Name" is now its MAC address (or I think so). And now I can see video stream from all 6 cameras. But see, there are two cameras that has port 37777, and like bigredfish explained, I cannot connect them. But for some reason one camera got this 10.1.1.68 address (not 10.1.1.129-132 like those that I can actually connect into via web gui) and although clicking "web browse" gives this address: 10.1.1.68:10080, and I get grey background like normally when Web Config works, it doesn't never load a login screen. No idea why.

Then, I can see that from those three cameras that are connected to external POE switch, only one of them gets "proper" port and is accessible, other two gets ports 37777. It seems to be the first camera that I connect (I tried to unplug them all, and then plug a different camera, and after a while the rest of those two).

I am not sure but seems like those cameras that are not working too well, I could reset, but why on earth resetting is made so difficult that I need to remove the cam and open it... :/ I wonder if that was possible somehow with camera's software if I can connect it straight (I could move my laptop and extension cord for power, next to those cameras if needed).

 

[Thedy Bratu]

Quickly before going to work...
OK.... My gut feeling is that it has something to do about the switch connected on the NVR' LAN. I say this because the NVR seems to be looking at 1 device per LAN port and gets confused. Try to search for remote cams, if still not working, put the switch on the NVR WAN. Cheers

 

[Gilean]

Quickly before going to work...
OK.... My gut feeling is that it has something to do about the switch connected on the NVR' LAN. I say this because the NVR seems to be looking at 1 device per LAN port and gets confused. Try to search for remote cams, if still not working, put the switch on the NVR WAN. Cheers

I have no idea what logic there is behind this NVR :/ But I cannot connect that POE switch to WAN port of NVR, because then I cannot connect my router anywhere (but NVR's POE ports and that should not work). Thing is, that I have a 25 meter ethernet cable going through my attic, then down the wall and underground across my lawn and then inside my shed, where I have my POE switch and those three cameras. So POE switch is connected to one of those POE ports of NVR. That cable is the only one I can use for those three cameras, and at least in theory it works because I can see video streams of all those three cameras.

As for searching, Web Service does not find anything for me, it never has, Dahua Toolbox finds only my NVR, and the only methods that has been working for me is straight from NVR software, or SmartPSS (by choosing my NVR and then looking for Remote Devices). Not sure if this is normal or not... Maybe my NVR is dud :/

 

[Thedy Bratu]

You move that cable (that goes to the switch) from the NVR to the router. I believe the NVR forwards the address ports to the NVR physical ports instead of forwarding them to the cameras' IPs, so you have 3 cameras responding to the same web querry = conflict

 

[Gilean]

You move that cable (that goes to the switch) from the NVR to the router. I believe the NVR forwards the address ports to the NVR physical ports instead of forwarding them to the cameras' IPs, so you have 3 cameras responding to the same web querry = conflict

THANK YOU!!! I never realized that you can actually connect your cameras to your router and still use them via NVR! My ethernet cable from that POE switch is too short to reach my router, but I happened to have an extension piece so I extended my ethernet cable and plugged it to my router. And almost immediately SmartPSS found those three cameras behind that POE switch, but now with 192.168.0.X -ip addresses! And port seems to be 37777 still. But that doesn't matter, as I can connect those addresses via web service, naturally, since they are in my local network This way things seem to work (if only that Web Service wasn't so buggy, as it often freezes, but that is another story).

 

[Thedy Bratu]

Yes, the port should most likely be the communication port (37777) as for the cameras connected to the NVR POE ports the NVR reports the physical port number. Hence those 3 cameras are not connected to the NVR POE ports, the NVR cannot do the same as for the ones connected to its LAN. On my NVR the Web service does not freeze, so it may be related to the CPU power, as my NVR is from the 52xx series. Cheers

 

[Gilean]

For me it's Internet Explorer that is freezing pretty much every time I try to connect cameras own UI. Using NVR with IE works though. Good thing is, that I can see the address and port (for those that are connected straight to NVR) so I can copy the address and use Chrome's plugin instead That seems rock solid, although connecting first to NVR UI using Chrome plugin and then trying to open cameras own UI by pressing that blue IE icon, that doesn't work. So I have to open IE first, just to see the correct address of that camera I am trying to connect, then copy-paste that to Chrome plugin. Complicated, but works

 

[Thedy Bratu]

Yes, the video plugin sucks. They could have found a better solution that should work on most major browsers.
Greetings from where now it's Winter

 

[bigredfish]

I have good luck with the Pale Moon browser

 

[Thedy Bratu]

I will try. Thanks for sharing

 

[Thedy Bratu]

Tried. How do I install the plugin on Pale Moon, please?
Cheers

 

[bigredfish]

Hmmmm ... Well I use Windows 7 on my laptop.

When I login to the camera it asks for me to download the plugin, I do, then locate the downloaded file and run it. It installs in seconds and all works.

Are you able to login before it asks for the plugin?

 

[Gilean]

I haven't tried Pale Moon yet, but I just read Cliff Notes where it stated that plugin only works on 32-bit version of Pale Moon browser (as plugin is 32-bit), so if you installed 64-bit version of that browser, maybe that's the reason?

 

[bigredfish]

Yes, @Gilean is correct. I have installed the 32 bit version...