Hikvision DS-7604NI-K1/4P - can't see cameras...

Hi all, I bought one of these NVR's today to replace my existing solution using the iCode platform. I'll try to be as exact as I can but forgive me if I miss a detail (sorry, this is yet another new owner can't get it working thread!), also sorry for the long thread!

So, in summary, my problem is the NVR won't see the cameras, even though SADP can - to go into a bit more detail...

I have three PoE cameras, they're all already set up because I've been using iCode's CCTV software until now.

Camera 1 : is connected to my home LAN via PoE.
Camera 2: is connected to a PoE switch in the garage
Camera 3: Is connected to the same switch.

Cameras 2 & 3 are connected back to the house by a single Cat6 cable - which is plugged into the back of the NVR.

I set the NVR up today, my cameras aren't all directly connected to it, so once I'd realised they needed to be set up manually as per the ports on the back of the NVR I had it all working.

I left the room, came back and the cameras had dropped.

Now, if the cameras are connected to my home LAN, SADP can see them. I've also confirmed that if I change their IP addresses back to match my Home LAN they are all still working, and transmitting video so no cabling or PoE issues.

If I connect the cable for Cameras 2 & 3 back to the NVR, SADP can't see them. Move the cable back to my home LAN and they appear.

Now, despite having had all three working earlier, no amount of repeating the process of manual set up works, even the first camera it automatically detected when I initially started the NVR isn't detected via plug and play.

Could this be as simple as a dead set of PoE ports on the back of the NVR?

I can connect to the NVR via web through the LAN side interface.

What I can't figure out is, having had them all set up, and having confirmed all the cameras are still in working order (by moving them back to my Home LAN) why won't the NVR see them? Or SADP for that matter when plugged into the NVR?

I wonder if there's a way to factory reset the NVR so I can truly start again in case there's sme odd config floating about?

SADP will not see the cameras through the NVR so that is all okay.
You can reset the NVR to default under maintenance. Have you tried just rebooting the cameras and NVR?
Not being able to see the LAN attached camera indicates that it has nothing to do with the ports on the NVR.

Thanks for the reply

I may have written it wrong or you misunderstood what I meant above, but to confirm all the camera streams are visible when their IP addresses are set to my Home LAN range. So they're all working A okay.

Re SADP I thought I saw someone say it would detect cameras regardless of where they're plugged in, so maybe that's a red herring.

I found the factory reset option, so did that, this is where it gets interesting!

With all my cameras plugged into my LAN, the NVR was able to see them all, I was then able to manually associate one of the cameras (lets call it Garage for simplicity) to Port D1. I was then able to view it on the NVR.

I then moved the ethernet cable from my home LAN switch, into the back of the NVR, at which point it became invisible to the NVR with an network error.

So I moved the cable back and the NVR still won't see Garage - if I change the IP of Garage back to my LAN range I can view on my other CCTV software.

I then associated my other two cameras manually to D2 and D3, which worked fine.

But no matter what I now do, I can't associate Garage to a port on the NVR (bear in mind I did it successfully initially) it seems once it's errored the NVR can't seem to "forget" the error.

As you can see from Picture 1 attached - after reset I could see all three cameras.

I forgot to take a pic with the Garage camera configured so you'll have to take my word for it it worked, moved the cable, now it won't attach at all (Garage Cam is IP ending in 60)

In picture 2 you can see I've successfully added the other two cameras, but still cannot add Garage (IP address 60) to either of the remaining ports...

Sorry forgot to add pic 2 to the post

you didn't mention what sort of cameras (brand/model) these are, or did i miss that?
If Hikvision cams, they should obviously work with the hik NVR...

if not Hik cams, they most likely can work, as long as they are ONVIF-compliant.
you may need to enable ONVIF and.or add an ONVIF user/password in teh cams config.

In any case, the NVR should work with your existing cams on the LAN side, if you like.
- make sure you have the right admin user and password for each cam entered in the DVR's config

or should be able to make them work on the PoE side, if that simplifies things, but will
require changing the cam's ip addresses to match the range of the NVR's Poe side (192.168.254.x)

as suggested, might be simplest to reset cams & NVR back to defaults & start over...

@pozello Apologies I missed that detail, yes they're all HikVision cameras.

Okay update, as I carried on fiddling.

I realised the IP Gateway of the Garage camera was blank, once I corrected that via SADP I could add it manually and it worked. So all cameras are set with NVR IP's (192.168.254.X) although plugged into my Home LAN switch.

Just to confirm Picture 3 shows all cameras working when manually configured and plugged into my LAN Switch NOT directly to the NVR.

So this begs a couple of further questions if anyone will indulge me.

If I plug the camera directly into the NVR, it seems like the IP Gateway is incorrect at that point, what should the subnet mask be when plugged directly into the NVR? ( I would assume the same gateway but maybe not?)

Part of the reason for me buying the NVR was to get the stream traffic off my LAN by connecting two of the cameras directly, ideally I'd still like to figure out why it isn't working when connected directly so I can do that.

When I install my hard disk, will it record audio from the cameras that support it?

Next hurdle is remote access

from the initial pics posted, i had assumed the IP range on the PoE side is 192.168.254.x (default hik range)
and your LAN is on 192.168.1.x.

So they are 'working', but on the LAN-side of the NVR? and the cams all have 254.x addresses?

if that's the case, they should work plugged into the PoE ports as well, as long as each port is configured for that cam's ip...

Roy Thompson said:

If I plug the camera directly into the NVR, it seems like the IP Gateway is incorrect at that point,

Click to expand...

on the POE side, the gateway of the cams should be the IP of the NVR on the PoE side.

on the LAN, the gateway should be the IP of your router.

Thanks pozello, you're right in terms of the IP range assignment (basically out the box for the NVR and my own range internally on my LAN)

Like I figured that they should work on either side of the networks.

However, when I plug the single ethernet cable that the Garage and Garden cameras hang off, the stream drops. Plug back in to my LAN, they work again, so I'm still guessing the gateway is incorrect when in the NVR.

What's interesting is, when plugged into my LAN, they Gateway address that works is the NVR one!

Could my problem be I've got two cameras on one ethernet cable in the NVR? (even though furtehr downstream they're split by a switch)?

doh. that may be the problem. the NVR wants to see ONE cam per PoE port, i think...

That would at least make sense, albeit a bit annoying

To confirm, single cable plugged into the NVR can see neither camera (I almost don't want to complicate that statement by saying this morning it did allow me to see one of them but not the other, whereas now it won't allow me to see either!!!)

As soon as I plug the single cable back in LAN side, I can see both cameras, I'll need to see if I'm getting any network issues elsewhere...

By the way, thanks a lot for all your comments guys, it was this forum I spotted the Manual setup requirement so I wouldn't even be at this point if not for you!

i wouldn't worry about the traffic from 4 cams on your LAN.
that's like 4Mbps on your 100mbps or (or gigabit/1000mbps) LAN...

Okay what?

I wanted to get the remote access working, noticed in my Network settings on the NVR it didn't have a default gateway, added that of my router, that meant HiConnect could then see my NVR was online... guess what, at the point of adding the default gateway and DNS my cameras won't connect!!!

Through trial and error I've found if I blank Default Gateway but leave DNS filled in (both with my router IP) the cameras will reconnect, but that of course means the NVR can't connect to the internet

What is going on!!!

side effect from having your cams at IP's in the NVR's internal/poe range.

as your router's (gateway) address is NOT in the same subnet, it can no longer see those IP's on the LAN side.

best to use the LAN-side IP's for cams on the LAN side.
PoE/internal IP's for cams on the NVR inside/poe side.

Ah yes, I think I'm being a dumbass

To get the cameras working I assigned them the address if the default internal NVR ports, but it hadn't occurred to me that I could instead assign the NVR ports with internal LAN addresses to match the cameras being set to my LAN addresses, so I've done it back to front... let's hope that works!!!

No! the NVR really acts as a sort of router (or NAT box) from your LAN to its internal ports.

cams plugged into the NVR's Poe ports should be assigned IP addresses on the internal/PoE side of things.
if the NVR's own address on the internal side is 192.168.254.1, assign cams 192.168.254.x addresses and make sure the cam's use 192.168.254.1 as gateway.

if you're leaving cams on the LAN side, they get LAN-side (192.168.1.x) addresses on the same subnet as your router and the NVR's LAN-side IP, and use your router's IP as the gateway.

I don't know how to make that more clear...

Yep got it, I was so focused on having the cameras plugged into the NVR I just did things about-face.

It's now online with Hiconnect, and the cams all have LAN side IP addresses, I just had to assign D1 to D3 manually to the LAN side addresses to be able to see the cameras.

Cheers for the help mate

The specifics of my setup (i.e. having two cameras connected to the NVR via a single cable) complicated things initially, I'll still have a dig into whether or not this is a conigf that can work, at the end of the day it's all just IP addresses...

Appreciate all of your input pozzello

glad you got it sorted for now. welcome, and cheers!