Dahua - Several newbie questions please - IVS/SmartPSS, iDMSS and SMTP.

Hi everyone,

Complete newbie, but I've done a lot of reading and searching so my apologies if this is an obvious problem that I haven't come across.

I've just got a Dahua NVR 5216-16P-4KS2E and 4 x Dahua HDW5231R-ZE cameras from Andy. I have several issues and I'd appreciate if someone could advise. Cameras plugged into the POE ports and the NVR connected to my switch/network via the ethernet port.

1. Recording and playback is fine. However, I can't seem to get IVS to work.

Using the web menu and chrome into the NVR, when I click Event->Smart Plan, if I click face detect or IVS with any of the channels, it doesn't save. If I refresh the page it comes back as unselected.
When I go to event and IVS, the rules seemingly save, but then if I go back to it, they disappear from the list, and I can't get them back again. If I click a new rule, it adds it to the last one (i.e. if I made 2 rules, refresh the page and they disappear, then it will start on 'rule 3', so it knows that there were previous rules before, it just won't save them!)

If I try and use SmartPSS to enable the IVS, this saves the IVS setting but I cannot get to the screen that will let me draw a trip wire, on live view if I right click a camera there is only the 'IVS enable' option but nothing like IVS configure.

2. I was under the impression that you can't access the NVR remotely over the internet without a VPN or port forwarding.
I 100% do NOT have any ports forwarded. I paired up iDMSS over the wifi, however when away from the network I can still access via my phone/iDMSS the cameras, how is this possible? I have no VPN activated either. Is this safe?!

3. Finally I keep getting a 'test failed' when trying to configure the SMTP server - I use my own smtp server by my domain host (which I use for work emails and I've checked it - it's fine). Is there a way I can ping from the NVR to the email host to see if it can reach the smtp server (I've eliminated DNS issues by using the IP address of the server rather than the domain name of the mail server). I'm worried there is a connectivity issue but can't find a way to check connectivity from the NVR itself. I can ping the smtp server from within the network.

Sorry for a long list of questions, it's all rather confusing and all the user manuals seem to be for old versions of Smart PSS? Thank you so much in advance.

For 1), try connecting directly to the cameras to enable and configure IVS. Check @catcamstar’s post in this thread: Motion detection versus IVS??

For 2), two things pop to mind. If you enabled the P2P feature when you setup the NVR, that can tunnel you back into your NVR when you’re remote (without using a VPN or port-forwarding). The other thing is that if uPNP is enabled in the NVR firmware (and on your router), the NVR can use that to open ports on your router by itself.

For 3), I don’t know of a way to ping from the NVR. Does your SMTP server have any logs that would show the NVR connecting?

1. Thanks!! I just found that thread and have connected - it works! Wahoo! But didn't work from the NVR direct.
2. The UPNP is disabled but p2p is enabled. How does P2P work? Does it signal to a cloud server that it is online?
3. Not that I'm aware of sadly, it's making me tear my hair out!

Thanks so much!

molarbear said:

How does P2P work? Does it signal to a cloud server that it is online?

Click to expand...

There's definitely a cloud service involved. I originally thought it only handled authentication and setting up a tunnel directly between the device (i.e. NVR) and the remote client and then it was out of the picture, but someone uploaded more details of how Hikvision's work (there's is called Hik-Connect) and it made it look like the video actually streams through their servers. I'm not sure how they can scale for that, but who knows... If I come across the Hikivison details again (it was a PDF), I'll attach it here.

Good luck with your SMTP troubleshooting.

Thanks so much!! No luck with changing to another SMTP server, it seems like the NVR just isn't playing outright with emails. Luckily am getting some slightly unreliable push connections from the alarms to my phone via iDMSS plus so it's better than nothing for now!

fyi strangely I just noticed my NVR would no longer send emails (and has not been sending since May 1st). I just had to change my encryption to TLS and the port to 587 to make it work. Prior to May 1st I had no issues using SSL on port 465.

I find it highly coincidental that I had workers at my house that day all over the yard. I received over 200 tripwire emails and I wonder if somehow I hit a Gmail limit for stmp and now I'm no longer allowed to use SSL. From Gmail's feedback if I was blocked I should automatically be unblocked 24 hours later. Ya got me.... but try TLS on port 587 and don't forget to "add" your email address so you see it in the box.

Thanks all!

Finally managed to get it working - but not via any encrypted SMTP servers.
I have my own hostgator smtp server (paid for via my domain) which I use for all my business accounts - no luck with this. I then tried the ISP smtp server with new log in I just made and tls/ssl - no luck. Then I tried the ISP SMTP server (they bizarrely also allow an anonymous service) - it works with that! Clearly it's extremely sensitive to interacting with servers via TLS/SSL and log ins, it only works for me via anonymous SMTP now. So it works, but not how I want!

Mail servers can block you for excessive mail traffic, there is a limit, you need to be asked the ISP to whitelist your IP if you breach it so it doesn't happen again or raise your mail sending limit- however as you say Gmail should reset it automatically so it's strange yours hasn't.