Is a firmware upgrade possible with my cams?

Hi everyone!

I've been very happy for the last few years with my Aliexpress bought Hikvisions, namely some DS-2DE7184-AE (firmware V5.1.0 build 131203, Cod. Version V5.0 build 131118, serial no. with CCCH) and DS-2CD2032-I (firmware V5.2.5 build 141201, Cod. Version V5.0 build 140714, serial no. with CCCH).
They worked fine with my Synology Diskstation as NVR.
The Synology also acts as a NTP server, synching the time once a day with the cams.

But in the last few weeks, all my cams are 1 hour too late. All the DST and timezone settings are correct in the cams, as well as in the Synology.
Now Synology support told me to update my cams to the latest firmware in order to solve the problem, even though I don't know what my cams could have done, as they worked fine for the last years.

Nevertheless I wanted to ask here if it's even possible to upgrade my cams to a new (multilanguage, or English at least) firmware at all? I can't afford to have a $1000 cam bricked.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Suggestion:
As a test/experiment, change a camera to time.windows.com or time.nist.gov instead of the Synology server and see if that fixes the problem.

If you update firmware on CCCH cameras that are currently in English, they will either revert to Chinese menus or they will 'brick'.

xamoel said:

Hi everyone!

I've been very happy for the last few years with my Aliexpress bought Hikvisions, namely some DS-2DE7184-AE (firmware V5.1.0 build 131203, Cod. Version V5.0 build 131118, serial no. with CCCH) and DS-2CD2032-I (firmware V5.2.5 build 141201, Cod. Version V5.0 build 140714, serial no. with CCCH).

Click to expand...

So, if the sticker on the cameras show a firmware older than 5.2.0 (ie. 5.1.0, 5.1.6, etc.), you SHOULD be able to upgrade to 5.4.5 without issue. I literally just did 16 of mine that were all 5.1.0 and 5.1.6 CCCH 2032/21232's.

Here is a link: MTD Hack Upgrade
The steps I took are on posts #7, 11, and 12.

As for the camera with the sticker that shows 5.2.5 with CCH, that's as high as you can go from what I've read. I've heard of some people going to 5.2.8, but that wont be the latest firmware. You may need to replace these with "real" Hikvision cameras.

Hope that helps!

The one hour error has been reported here.
Timestamp error in emailed "Events"
SMTP timezone locked at GMT+8?

The headers in the email tell the story where the wrong time info exists.

Fastb

Thanks for the fast replies! What do you mean with "sticker"? I got the firmware version info from the GUI itself.

The timestamp-problem is a little different than in the other threads I think, as I don't receive emails from the cams but from my Synology. The timestamp in the videos are off by one hour, notifications from Synology are alright.

Edit: If I sync with time.google.com, the timestamp is correct. But Synology messes it up once it synchs to the Diskstation.

The camera should have a sticker physically attached to it with the serial number, date of manufacture, and a version number of the firmware it shipped with.

Here's a camera that came with 5.3.0 from the factory. This one, being a Chinese camera, would not be upgradable. But if you had one with 5.1.x or below, you should be ok.