Help Converting SWANN Camera to HIKVISION (Solved)

[Keyboard]

I'm trying to convert the firmware of my SWANN camera (model NHD-831) to HIKVISION firmware. From what I can tell, the HIKVISION equivalent is DS-2CD2732F-I.

Per HIKVISION, the upgrade is the digicap.dav file of the DS-2xx2_5.3.0_151016 firmware. However, when I apply the upgrade, I get the error "Upgrading failed". I've tried applying the upgrade via the web as well as the NVR. I've also read this post from @DemonicHawk which discusses the conversion process.

Any ideas of what I could be doing wrong?

 

[Keyboard]

I'm still hoping someone can help me with my firmware conversion. Has anyone successfully converted SWANN cameras to HIKVISION?

 

[benetton73]

I flashed my swann cameras to hikvision this is the firmware i used
http://www.hikvisioneurope.com/portal/index.php?dir=Product Firmware/Front-ends/01--IPC/R0 platform(2xx2)/Baseline Firmware_IPC_R0 series_En_V5.3.0 151016(Released)/

 

[benetton73]

I also flashed it through the nvr, not sure if it matters but it was after I flashed the swann NVR to a Hikvision NVR

 

[Keyboard]

@benetton73, Thanks for providing the link.

I tried it and I get the same error: "Upgrading failed". I guess I must be doing something wrong, or there's some flag set in the NHD-831 that prevents flashing the HIKVISION firmware.

 

[Keyboard]

I'm happy to report that I finally had success upgrading my SWANN NHD-831 camera to HIKVISION.

After many failed tries and online searches, the solution to my "Upgrading failed" error was to perform an incrementally upgrade. This may have been known by many of you, but I’m still learning. So, it’s news to me.

Buried in a thread from another forum was the clue that you had to do incremental upgrades between major builds (See this post).

In other words, trying to go from V5.1.x to V5.3.x was too big of a jump. So, I performed the following steps:

1. Start with V5.1.2 build 140307 (factory firmware);
2. Upgrade to V5.2.0 build 140721; then
3. Upgrade to V5.3.0 build 151016;

The camera has now been converted and using the latest HIKVISION firmware.

I was referred to HIKVISION's Europe firmware site, but decided to take a chance anyway. English is English as far as I'm concerned. Plus, I couldn't find earlier HIKVISION builds on the USA site.

I may proceed to V5.4.0 build 160530. However, the cautionary note is that you can’t downgrade once this firmware is applied.

Special thanks go to @benetton73 for helping me troubleshoot my problem.