A few questions about Dahua IPC, NVR, SmartPSS and gDMSS

DavidDavid

Getting comfortable
Jan 29, 2017
604
266
Ohio
I've been playing around with my 4 cameras (Three 5231 Starlights and 1 ONVIF), NVR5216-4KS2, SmartPSS and the full (paid) version of gDMSS for a little while now and I have a few questions about some features that I just can't seem to figure out....

1) When you add your cameras to SmartPSS, do you add the NVR as a device or add each individual camera? I've noticed that just adding the NRV doesn't allow for all device configuration options even though adding the NVR seems the most logical in my mind....

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vs

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2) Is there a special setting or trick to make the 5231 Starlights get their time from an NTP server? I'm using my NAS as a server and have set the cameras up to use it, but it just isn't working. Also, I upgraded the firmware of the cameras to the newest version (NTSC Firmware: DH_IPC-HX5X3X-Rhea_EngSpn_N_Stream3_V2.460.0000.7.R.20170306.zip)
so I started setting the IVS rules again from the web page and also set the time setting to pull from NTP server. Well, when I was in SmartPSS a little while later, I went to the time settings in device config and it was not set to pull from my NTP server even though I got the "changes saved successfully" message in the web page settings. I did make sure to uncheck the setting in the NVR (using a mouse and monitor connected directly to the NVR) to "IPC Time Sync" and that at least stopped the camera times from being off by hours/days now they are just off by seconds even though I've got it set up to update from the NTP server every minute.

3) Where do you tell the NVR what to record? When I first turn on the NVR it runs through the initial setup where I told it to record everything (Regular/General, Motion, Alarm and Smart/IVS) 24/7/365. When I open up SmartPSS and enter the device config for the NVR, the recording is set how I've set it on the NVR. But, when I open the recording schedule for the individual cameras it is not correct. Never once have I told it to not record "Regular" and yet here it is, saying that it's not recording for this individual camera....

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It seems like when I make a setting change in the Camera web page or the NVR it doesn't always carry over to SmartPSS.

4) For the life of me I can't get the push notifications to work on my phone. I've got the paid version of gDMSS, I've set the NVR to record IVS events on the NVR, the camera and SmartPSS.
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On the phone I've added the NVR device and can see my cameras in real time no problem. I've gone into the Menu --> Alarm Manager --> Push Config --> NVR (picked the device name) and turned the slider on. Then went into the IVS option and added all of the cameras to the options. Then backed out and hit the 3.5" floppy icon for save. I've left the app open and walked thru my intrusion line 100x and never received a notification.

5) What is Pack Duration? I'm assuming that is the minutes for each individual file when recording 24/7. Any idea why this camera is at 8 minutes when I've set it to 30 minutes on the NVR? (This kind of goes back to my third question....where are you making most of your changes at? The NVR, SmartPSS or the camera itself? Also the pre-record (which I assume is how many seconds it records before the IVS event happens) on the NVR keeps changing itself back to 4 seconds when I keep changing it to 5 seconds. (probably not the end of the world but come on....nothing I do seems to stick or be consistent between all of the devices)

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I'm going to stop here because this is way longer than I was intending it to be. Sorry about that but I would really appreciate any advice you have to offer.
 
You've got to be fucking kidding me....literally 10 seconds after I posted this thread I got a notification on my phone about an IVS alarm. I've been trying to get that working for 2 weeks now. I have no clue what I did to get that working.