Dahua + Blue iris general questions

T

Thomas Kenny

Getting the hang of it
May 7, 2017
39
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Just got my Dahua starlight (IPC-HDW5231R-Z IPC-HDW5231RP-Z) in the mail and I have been trying to get it setup. Looking for a pointer or two.

With SmartPSS I can connect to the camera and zoom and focus and see the IR working and hear sound so I know the camera is fully functional.

But with Blue Iris I cannot seem to get zoom to work. Any pointers on how to add the camera since there are a lot of options here? I tried "Generic" and then from the Dahua menu Ive tried all three options that are shown including "Main Stream RTSP" and depending on what I try the camera doesnt show up at all, or it does and the zoom buttons are disabled or they are enabled but do nothing.

I can probably just set the zoom once in the SmartPSS but Id like to get the most I can out of the camera. The IR night shots are phenomenal on this thing!
 
^^^^^ this.

The Find/Inspect process will query the camera, and the camera will report back that it can zoom/focus. It will still leave the camera type set as "Generic", which hasn't created any problems for me.

One thing to watch for... When you click Find/Inspect, a window will pop open and it will show you the results. Scroll up towards the top and make sure you can see where the camera reports back its make and model. If it doesn't, then it also won't report back that it's capable of zoom/focus. Give a shout if you run into that. I had that happen on two of my five cameras, and it took a week or two to figure out...
 
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it will work but you really dont need it..the varifocal is designed to be used at setup not on a day to day basis...just log into the cameras web interface and make adjustments
 
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Thanks for the advice all, esp aristobrat. Just in case it helps others my steps to get zoom working were:

1) Open "Add camera" wizard...
2) Input user name and password values
3) input the address of the camera but *do not include the port number*
4) leave the camera type at generic
5) Click Find/Inspect.

The capabilities report doesnt seem to find make and model but the zoom does work when I setup in this way. @aristobrat: if you want to offer more info as you alluded to above, lll take it :). If I include the port number in the URL the resulting camera will not zoom though it otherwise works. Thats the sort of thing that makes this confusing. Focus still doesn't work but so far, I am OK with just letting it autofocus anyway. I think Blue Iris might be "fighting" the autofocus selection set earlier on with SmartPSS when I hit the buttons anyway so the camera is just overriding my button pushes (but I don't know for sure).

Thanks again all.
 
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Thomas Kenny said:
@aristobrat: if you want to offer more info as you alluded to above, lll take it :)
Click to expand...
It was nothing exciting. The cameras have two different "admin" accounts -- one used for "ONVIF", and then one used by "users" logging into the camera. That wasn't obvious to me, ... you can only see the "ONVIF" admin account if you use a special tool... doesn't appear to show-up anywhere in the Web UI.

Normally the password is set the same for both admin accounts. It is possible to wind up in a situation where the accounts have different passwords, though. I did, and I've seen one or two other posts from folks on here.

If they are different passwords (and you're unaware of that), if you type in the "user" admin password into BI, BI will try to use that to connect to the camera using the "ONVIF" admin account, and it will fail. When that happens, what the camera reports back on the Find/Inspect window is a lot different, and BI won't know that the camera can zoom, etc.
 
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aristobrat said:
It was nothing exciting. The cameras have two different "admin" accounts -- one used for "ONVIF", and then one used by "users" logging into the camera. That wasn't obvious to me, ... you can only see the "ONVIF" admin account if you use a special tool... doesn't appear to show-up anywhere in the Web UI.

Normally the password is set the same for both admin accounts. It is possible to wind up in a situation where the accounts have different passwords, though. I did, and I've seen one or two other posts from folks on here.

If they are different passwords (and you're unaware of that), if you type in the "user" admin password into BI, BI will try to use that to connect to the camera using the "ONVIF" admin account, and it will fail. When that happens, what the camera reports back on the Find/Inspect window is a lot different, and BI won't know that the camera can zoom, etc.
Click to expand...

@aristobrat and @looney2ns

I am facing a related issue. I recently had 6 dahua starlights (from andy) installed and added to BI. Hitting the inspect button, none are being recognized as Dahua. Made me initially wonder if this was an issue but it sounds like there are others with the same issue so maybe this is an international Dahua model issue. When i added them to BI, 5 reported no issue but one (camera 4) had a "bad response". That camera does not let me zoom on BI. The video path selected by BI is also different. Can you or others take a look at the files i have attached to this message. The first 3 pics are of camera 4. The other 2 are of the other cameras.

I can zoom all 6 of them using the same ID and password in Dahua's webUI (using the chrome add NACl web plug in). And i have had recordings from this camera 4 in the last couple of days though sensitivity seems to vary (sometimes it shows me leaving my driveway and not at other times!!)

I didnt entirely follow the "two admin" accounts part of your message. What is the special tool you refer to?

thanks
 

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The "bad response" is what my two cameras got when the ONVIF admin password didn't match the user admin password that I would type into BI.

In BI, as a quick test, try typing in 'admin' as the password for that one camera and see if Find/Inspect works properly.

When I get home I'll find the link for the tool I used to change the password for my ONVIF admin account, but I had to know what the current password was. On my cameras, the password was the default 'admin'. It's like when I changed my user admin password on those two cameras, it didn't change the passwords for the ONVIF admin. They stayed the same as how it came from the factory.
 
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Aah, u did it buddy. Well not the exact word 'admin' as password but I remembered that between the installer and I we set up the cams. I had used a different password on the dahua webui site for one camera and he set up the rest and he later had me change it to the current common one. It looks like the changed password didnt affect the ONVIF admin account like you said. I put in my older password in BI and now no error!! At some point please let me know how i can change the ONVIF password also to match my user one. Il search on the dahua web UI to see if there is some hidden account. Thanks again :-)
 
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Thank you. Il work on that when I'm at the computer. As I think back, that camera password was set up on first powering on. I was asked to chose a password. The change in password was however done using the dahua GUI under account. So it sounds like that creates a user account and former an admin account maybe? Strange that dahua does not offer a way to change the first password within its GUI and also that BI uses the onvif log in as a default creating the confusion.


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Thank you!! It worked.

Now in the future, do I always need to change passwords using the ONVIF device manager for all 6 cams for BI to read it? I wonder how then the other 5 cams have worked fine all this while given that i did not have this software. May be the installer only used the dahua web gui to create passwords and that creates the same ID and password for both ONVIF and user account?
 
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