Dahua cameras not holding correct time

[born2ride]

i have 2 dahua that change to the incorrect time of day. never holds the correct am or pm. i have synced to pc, set them manually to pm . after i log out and recheck its incorrect again
IPC-HFW4431R-Z and a IPC-HDW4431C-A

 

[giomania]

i have 2 dahua that change to the incorrect time of day. never holds the correct am or pm. i have synced to pc, set them manually to pm . after i log out and recheck its incorrect again
IPC-HFW4431R-Z and a IPC-HDW4431C-A

You need to set up a time server in the camera interface, where you set the date and time. Sometimes, your Router can perform this task, if you prevent your camera's from connecting to the internet, which is a best practice.




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[c hris527]

i have 2 dahua that change to the incorrect time of day. never holds the correct am or pm. i have synced to pc, set them manually to pm . after i log out and recheck its incorrect again
IPC-HFW4431R-Z and a IPC-HDW4431C-A

Yup classic time issue..Try this, leave the time zone alone its default is GMT+08:00..sync the cams to your PC make sure your time is set correct.
Uncheck ALL DST and SYNC with stuff. It should look something like this.

------->

See if it stays after you do this, This is caused by cheap crappy firmware they Created so they can sell chinese market cameras in the USA

 

[giomania]

Interesting.

My two "international" models purchased from EmpireTech and flashed with Dahua-branded firmware only differed from each other by a few seconds over 24 hours. After I set up my router to act as the time server, they are synced perfectly.


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[c hris527]

Interesting.

My two "international" models purchased from EmpireTech and flashed with Dahua-branded firmware only differed from each other by a few seconds over 24 hours. After I set up my router to act as the time server, they are synced perfectly.


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I think Andy's stuff might be better firmware but I have run into this a few times, even on a time server setup..the trick was to just leave the dst and time zone disabled. I would set them on EST at night and within 24 hours it would be WAY off. I can not say about the international models but the two I got from Amazon were Chinese sellers and who knows what kind of firmware they had, the Chinese do not use DST. I sent 1 back and kept one and after a bit I figured out to leave the time zone alone and all was well after that.

 

[born2ride]

I changes the NTP server and changed the GMT time seems to be holding now!

 

[Mohamed Musthafa]

I have 64 camera installed using Dahua cameras and Hikvision NVR. These cameras have a time bug. I have tried several timeservers, they stay within a few minutes and the problem is always the same. Never holds the correct time. I have synchronized to pc, set them manually and set up a timeserver in the camera interface. After I log out and recheck it’s incorrect again The camera's time is off by arbitrary values. Like 8 hours wrong. I can turn off the timeserver and synchronize time with the computer.
Has anyone else seen this problem, and does anyone know of a fix?
I have found others complaining of the problem on the internet, but I have yet to see a solution.

 

[Whoaru99]

Those of you with trouble, what tool are you (or had you been) using to check/set the time?

If I use the ConfigTool I get result same/similar what you report. Set it all up, looks good, close the tool and reconnect, looks like it reverted back to the previous settings. If I use the web GUI as shown in a couple earlier posts it seems to work/hold time OK.

 

[JRNAn30]

The cameras don’t follow the NTP protocol specification exactly (ref GMT broadcast) which results in some unpredictable behaviour depending on time zone and NTP server used.
I reduced impact by brute forcing updates every minute.
I’ve got wireshark scans somewhere but a colleague reported to Dahua late last year so we might see a fix at some point.

 

[Victor-y]

Hi everyone,

New to this forum and IP camera system in general. Thought I should share my experience in case it might help others. This forum has been a great source of information.

I recently purchased one camera - a black version of the IPC-HDW5231R-ZE - to try out as I plan a system for a new house. I found that when I have the Time Format to 24-Hour (the default), the camera would not sync to my NTP server. When I change the Time Format to 12-Hour, then the camera would synchronize. Firmware is 2.622.0000000.31.R, Build Date: 2018-08-13.

 

[fibersnet]

I've found that my dahua cameras also incorrectly implement the NTP protocol. There are 2 issues:
1) It sends localtime instead of UTC time in the ntp.xmt field
2) It sends multiple requests right after one another (1ms apart) in bursts up to 3

Some NTP servers throttle the number of requests from a single client, some NTP servers do this by taking the ntp.xmt field and repeating it in all the time fields in the reply message to the client. The dahua NTP implementation expects the reply from the NTP server to be in UTC however since the dahua ntp client sent it in localtime (incorrectly) the end result is that the timezone gets applied twice. For example if you were at GMT-5 and it was currently 17:00 localtime (22:00 UTC), the first ntp request would succeed and time would be accurate. The 2nd NTP request 1ms later would set the current time to 12:00 localtime (17:00 UTC).


2.622.0000000.23.R, Build Date: 2018-03-30

 

[Mohamed Musthafa]

I have 64 camera installed using Dahua cameras and Hikvision NVR. These cameras have a time bug. I have tried several timeservers, they stay within a few minutes and the problem is always the same. Never holds the correct time. I have synchronized to pc, set them manually and set up a timeserver in the camera interface. After I log out and recheck it’s incorrect again The camera's time is off by arbitrary values. Like 8 hours wrong. I can turn off the timeserver and synchronize time with the computer.
Has anyone else seen this problem, and does anyone know of a fix?
I have found others complaining of the problem on the internet, but I have yet to see a solution.

Have any solution.....?

 

[fibersnet]

Have any solution.....?

My temporary solution was to disable the rate limiting feature in my NTP server (sometimes its labeled as 'KOD packet', the NTP kiss of death packet). You may also try using a public NTP server that does not rate limit. Do you happen to be in GMT-8? That would explain the 8 hours off.

 

[arkotech]

I had the same problem. My workaround was to change the ip of the camera.

 

[JRNAn30]

I'd be curious how changing IP address resolved the problem, did you change to IP address in the same subnet, or to a different subnet served by a different NTP server? I've recently been trialing another brand of camera that don't have this NTP issue and they perform as you would expect, ie synced to within a second, no drift and no wild timezone jumps. With Dahuas incorrect NTP implementation I don't see how only a change of IP address could resolve this issue, outside of a firmware upgrade or timezone change at the same time of course.

 

[arkotech]

NTP didnt work. The time zone changed within minutes to the default +8. This was happening in all 16 cameras that I had. Last option to change was the IP address. Dont know why, but it worked. True Story!

 

[Whoaru99]

NTP didnt work. The time zone changed within minutes to the default +8. This was happening in all 16 cameras that I had. Last option to change was the IP address. Dont know why, but it worked. True Story!

Change IP address of what?

And from what IP to what IP did you change it?

 

[c hris527]

NTP didnt work. The time zone changed within minutes to the default +8. This was happening in all 16 cameras that I had. Last option to change was the IP address. Dont know why, but it worked. True Story!

Just changing The Cameras IP (as far as the camera goes) does NOTHING to fix your issue, You Most likely had another device on your network with the same IP or one of you switches or routers did not like it for some reason.

 

[lcam]

I was having a similar issue where 2 out of 4 cameras for where off 1 hour and I assume this is because of DST not working correctly. I set 2 cameras to GMT-7 which is correct and the 2 cameras that were not correct to GMT-6. That seems to have fixed the issue for now. I have DST and NTP checked. The firmware on the 2 cameras that were off an hour don't have the same firmware as each other either.

 

[Ford]

I currently have 16 Dahua IPCs and all are perfectly time synced to the Blue Iris server. These are the settings I have used from the start and they have always worked flawlessly. Daylight Savings transitions are smooth and accurate.

Note I never want these IPCs to get to the internet so I always point them at my Ubiquiti router which hosts an ntp server.