Adding Old Night Owl Analog Cameras to Blue Iris through Axis P7214

[QuickbeamX]

Hi everyone,

I am new to surveillance systems and recently moved into a new home. There are 8 Night Owl 3.0 analog cameras (BNC and power cables already run) currently installed outside the home. There is no Night Owl DVR which I understand to be terrible anyway. I have a new computer dedicated for this purpose and I hope to use Blue Iris (5.9.4.5) as an NVR. I bought a pair of Axis P7214 encoders for this as well, however, I cannot seem to get any feed into Blue Iris. I am sure that I am doing something wrong when configuring the network IP address but have tried a handful of things without any luck. I did set a new password through the Axis interface and have it typed in correctly for the steps I took below.

I only have one camera powered and connected to the encoder to fiddle with until I figure this out. When I use ONVIF discovery I see the following:


When I highlight the device and click "OK" I get the following:



It does say "RTSP Port Detected" which gives me hope, and here are the fields that are automatically populating after the inspection:



After accepting these settings I just get "Cam1: No Signal, RTSP: 500 Internal Server Error"

I have downloaded the Axis IP Utility program but I am not sure what I should do with it. I would appreciate any help you all are willing to offer. I know there is a bit of a learning curve for me here, but I hope to get this system operational without replacing the cameras and (god forbid) having to re-run all of the cables throughout the house. Thank you.

 

[Valiant]

Ignore all the errors and get the encoder web interface on your network working correctly before you start on Blue iris. Your home network is likely in the 192.168.1.1-254 or 192.168.0.1-254 range and the axis encoder should be in that same range. Also try factory defaulting the encoder. By default the unit may be 192.168.0.90. Assign a fixed IP address to the encoder.

 

[TonyR]

+1^^^.

169.25.XXX.XXX is a private IP address that the device automatically assigns itself when it can't get a valid IP from the router's DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server.

If the encoder's documentation says it has a default IP (after reset) then assign Blue Iris a unique, static IP in the same subnet and connect the server directly to the encoder. For example, if the encoder's default IP is 192.168.2.100, assign 192.168.2.200, subnet mask 255.255.255.0 (no gateway IP needed) to the server. Open a browser to the encoder's default IP to access its embedded webGUI and confirm you have the correct IP for Blue Iris to work with.

If the documentation says it defaults to DHCP when reset, then connect it to the same router as the BI server is connected to and and after reset it should receive an IP from the router's DHCP server. Open the router's webGUI and look under the devices on the LAN to find what IP was assigned to the encoder by the router.

EDIT 072124 @ 0657 CDT: then it follows that the IP discovered or assigned has to put into BI along with the username and password before you click on "Find/Inspect."

 

[QuickbeamX]

I didn't mention this in my original post, but I had factory reset the original encoders.

This morning, I tried setting the Axis IP address to 192.168.0.100 as recommended, but I still haven't gotten any video feed through the Axis web GUI. I should also mention that in the GUI, when I set the IP address it stays in the IP address field on a refresh, but to access the GUI or the "live view" I still have to go to 169.254.236.46. I'm not sure if this is relevant. Pointing Blue Iris to the 192.168.0.100 address is unsuccessful. I agree with you guys that I should probably see an image in the browser before bothering with BI.

I have tried both encoders thinking I might have a dud (they are used) and have tried plugging in different cameras to the encoder to see if maybe one had gone bad, but I haven't seen any picture on all 8 of them, although I did get a few static blips from one. I am still hoping this is a networking issue, but I am tempted to buy a cheap analog camera to test and eliminate the possibility that all of my cameras are dead. I think that this is unlikely. They all worked before I bought this house because the previous owner had a live feed set up during our walk-through, although that was two years ago.

Edit: I thought I had a great idea and just changed my Windows PC IP address to (169.254.236.1) within the range of the Axis encoder (169.254.236.47) but had the same result. I tried changing the Axis IP using the IPUtility program from the Axis website, but it doesn't seem to work either.




Edit #2: I have also downloaded the Axis Streaming Assistant to see if I can get any kind of feed. I have four cameras plugged in and that program seems to see the four ports, all of them with no video. Sorry for the enormous screenshots, but I think it helps illustrate my problems.

 

[Valiant]

How are you powering up the analogue cameras?

You should also try a different web browsers.

 

[QuickbeamX]

I am using the same 12v adapters that came with the house. I checked them with a multimeter to confirm they worked. I am using Microsoft edge currently but also tried Firefox with the same result.

 

[Flintstone61]

Slap an amcrest XVR
AMDV5108-2TB

in your system and use that as a pass thru for BI.
Thats how I did mine with BNC Nightowls. The nightowl DVR was shite. The mobile APP was shite.
no need for AXis encoders.
Just use the Channel #'s in the camera settings page and for each new came go up from Cam#1 ....using the IP address of the Amcrest as the main setup.
and make note of which BNC ports your connected to on the back of the machine.
this way I was able to use the legacy Nightowls for a while until i could Afford good cams from Andy.