Daylight Savings Time woes.

My problem started March 12, 2017. Changing clocks once a year is a little annoying for us but the benefits of more daylight in the evening make the chore bearable. Besides, I'm not in charge anyway so I fall in.

I have 2 NVRs, one is a Hikvision DS-7616NI-E2, the other is a LTS LTN8708-P8, which is basically a Hikvision re-branded NVR. I have a mixture of 19 cameras which include 13 Dahuas, 2 Huisun Mini PTZs, and 4 Hikvision cams. I record 24-7 on the NVRs and run Blue Iris on a dedicated PC for only motion. Up front I'll say that other than the PC and the LTS NVR this is all re-branded China equipment.

The setup has been working up to my expectations until DST took effect. Since I'm using the Onvif protocol on the Hiks and the Dahua cams the NVRs seem to control the ip cameras' internal clocks. Any time settings made within each camera's UI get altered by the NVRs.

If there is a setting in either NVR to NOT have them change camera settings I've not been able to find it. I have tried many settings in each NVR to work around the problem and now have settled on leaving everything back on standard time. At least that way all cameras are withing a few seconds of each other.

I thought about custom protocols but it didn't take long for me to figure that I was over my head there. Surely someone else here has had this issue. I'd be curious to know how it was dealt with.

Thanks.

Maybe I'm missing the point but why not just change the time in the NVR?

I do wish mine would automatically update for dst though.

RazorsEDGE said:

Maybe I'm missing the point but why not just change the time in the NVR?

I do wish mine would automatically update for dst though.

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Initially I did just that. Some cams updated to the correct time and some did not. The Dahua cams did not. I tried many ways to work around it. I think it may be a hacked firmware issue from what I have read. I run the NVRs headless and use IVMS-4200 for access. Onvif protocols allow me to run PTZ on the one Dahua PTZ. The Huisun cameras are the only ones I run using the Hikvision protocol. If I change times in the individual cams the time changes by an hour automatically by the NVR. I've exhausted all my tricks.

With my Dahua cams I've noticed the time will not sync with the NVR if you have the box ticked telling the camera to sync with a time server. Something to check.

Some of my Dahua cams are running firmware with that checkbox, some don't have it. This is an issue I created by purchasing different brands and cheaper Chinese re-branded hardware. I have at this time settled for leaving NVR's and cams on Standard Time. NVR times get updated on a regular interval along with all the cameras. Everything is just an hour behind, but consistent across the system. Blue Iris notifications are real time. In 6 months it'll be right again. Thanks.

You didn't actually say what the problem is.

bp2008 said:

You didn't actually say what the problem is.

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Sorry I wasn't clear in stating my problem. When DST started some, not all, of my cameras changed times correctly to DST. Both NVRs did change and showed correct internal clock times. The Hikvision and Huisun cameras all displayed correct times. Some, not all, of the Dahua cams did. I have a mixture of Dahua cams with hacked China firmware. In a nutshell problem is DST and Onvif protocols that are changing the clocks on the IP cameras automatically. Some are correct, some are 1 hour off, and that is with settings as close as one can make them with the supplied firmware. As I stated before I have presently settled on leaving my entire system on Standard Time. All machines agree on time, only exactly 1 hour early.

scguy said:

Sorry I wasn't clear in stating my problem. When DST started some, not all, of my cameras changed times correctly to DST. Both NVRs did change and showed correct internal clock times. The Hikvision and Huisun cameras all displayed correct times. Some, not all, of the Dahua cams did. I have a mixture of Dahua cams with hacked China firmware. In a nutshell problem is DST and Onvif protocols that are changing the clocks on the IP cameras automatically. Some are correct, some are 1 hour off, and that is with settings as close as one can make them with the supplied firmware. As I stated before I have presently settled on leaving my entire system on Standard Time. All machines agree on time, only exactly 1 hour early.

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And that's not a good thing if you ever need to use that video footage in a legal case. The time stamp matters.

looney2ns said:

And that's not a good thing if you ever need to use that video footage in a legal case. The time stamp matters.

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I can't argue that point but I am still able to see what happened and know when.

I have had a similar situation, It was caused by both NVR's fighting to set the time.
My solution was to disconnect ONVIF/i8 on 1 nvr and make its connection to the cameras via RTSP.

Sent from my D6503 using Tapatalk

I had a similar problem as well, just figured it out.

It looks like it is a bug in the firmware of certain cameras when DST is enabled on both the NVR and the cameras. When daylight saving time was in effect, the NVR was sending the correct updated time to the cameras, and then the cameras were adding an extra hour to it for DST. So even though the NVR showed the correct time, the cameras were advancing it an hour.

So to resolve it I just disabled DST on the cameras and now they just display whatever time the NVR sends them, DST or non DST.
This is a BUG. When the cameras are getting the time from an NVR they should not be changing it.

Why not set everything to UTC ? then there is no DST