Dahua Camera Initial setup

K

KatchMeRacing

n3wb
Apr 1, 2018
20
2
I'm not sure if I am posting this in the correct sub, but it is part of the installation process.

I bought a Dahua PoE NVR and Dahua Starlight and 8mp eyeball cameras from Andy recently.
Going to install this weekend.

Looking at the IPcamtalk cliff notes wiki, i'm confused about the initial camera setup.

Reading the part about Dahua Camera Initial Setup, #3 Apply Power to the camera

To do initial setup, do I need to buy a separate PoE switch to update firmware and setup cameras direct through my PC, or can I just plug them into the PoE NVR, and plut the NVR into my home network?

I fear messing up the cameras, but I want to convert them to NTSC firmware.

Is there a better initial setup guide out there that is easier to follow?

Thanks in advance.
 
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With a PoE NVR, the networking gets interesting. The NVR will create a separate network for the cameras plugged into its PoE ports. If you temporarily unplug your PC from your home network and plug it into the back of the PoE switch, it should come up on the same network as the cameras, and then you can directly access them. Having said that, I think that the NVR has an option that will let you update the camera firmware without having to do it directly from your PC.

Not that you have to worry about messing the cameras up when applying the firmware (that's hard to do), but there's also no hurry to upgrade. All video coming out of these cameras is digital, so regardless of if the firmware is PAL or NTSC, it should look fine on your system. I've always kept with the PAL firmware versions (even though I'm in the US) because sometimes they'll only release a PAL version of new firmware.
 
aristobrat said:
With a PoE NVR, the networking gets interesting. The NVR will create a separate network for the cameras plugged into its PoE ports. If you temporarily unplug your PC from your home network and plug it into the back of the PoE switch, it should come up on the same network as the cameras, and then you can directly access them. Having said that, I think that the NVR has an option that will let you update the camera firmware without having to do it directly from your PC.

Not that you have to worry about messing the cameras up when applying the firmware (that's hard to do), but there's also no hurry to upgrade. All video coming out of these cameras is digital, so regardless of if the firmware is PAL or NTSC, it should look fine on your system. I've always kept with the PAL firmware versions (even though I'm in the US) because sometimes they'll only release a PAL version of new firmware.
Click to expand...

Ok, so I should be fine just plugging my cameras to the PoE NVR and then plugging the NVR to my network?
 
Right, these NVRs are pretty much plug and play. Was the same way when I used a Hikvision NVR before moving to Blue Iris. Just get the NVR setup with a password, then plug one cam in at a time. Best to plug them into the NVR inside before mounting outside, just for convenience to make sure the camera connects ok and is alive and kicking. Then mount it in it's final location.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A3000 using Tapatalk
 
Get the NVR up and running with no cameras plugged in. Then plug the camera into the POE NVR and give it a few moments to register.

DO NOT FOLLOW THE CLIFF NOTES WHEN IT SAYS TO CHANGE THE IP ADDRESS ETC.
I made that mistake and had to open each camera up to do a factory reset. From my understanding that procedure is only if you use a POE switch and BI.
 
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Thanks for the heads up. I am in the process of setting up a new Dahua NVR and 4 cameras and was confused reading the Cliff Notes.
 
Last edited:
toolazyforalogin said:
From my understanding that procedure is only if you use a POE switch and BI.
Click to expand...
IMO, those procedures are for just about every situation other than a PoE NVR.
 
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That’s exactly why I was confused. I bought a PoE NVR. I wanted to make sure I did everything correctly so I began by reading the VPN Primer for Noobs and the Cliff Notes. The VPN primer was helpful and resulted in me setting up a Raspberry Pi with a VPN server. The Cliff Notes had me confused because I couldn’t figure out why I would need to set up the cameras by attaching them directly to my computer rather than setting them up through the PoE NVR. I spent a few days thinking there must be a security related issue I was missing but this thread helped clarify that the Cliff Notes appear to be talking about a different kind of setup. Had it not been for this thread I probably would have used the Cliff Notes and potentially run into some problems. Perhaps there should be a clarification added to the Cliff notes regarding the setup for Dahua cameras using a Dahua PoE NVR.
 
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