HIKVision 7608 installation driving me nuts

[genwolf]

I am trying to set up a HIKVision 7608 that is driving me crazy.
The situation is that the bussiness had an existing security camera setup consisting of 8 cameras that came back to an NVR which was seized by the police after one of the partners was accused of smuggling tobacco products. The owners don't remember what the original NVR was but from their description of the interface it was probably a HIKVision. All the cameras are still in place and their cables terminate at one point. There was existing cabling from the modem router to the old NVR.
So far I have succesfully connected the NVR to the network and it is visible to SADP and you can login to its web interface.
The router Subnet is in the 192.168.1.x form and the NVR is using DHCP
After connecting all the camera cables to the POE ports on the NVR all the rx and tx lights are blinking green.
But neither on the router nor on the monitor interface, nor with SADP tool, are the cameras visible. I have tried a number of protocols, but all the camera ports just show network unreachable messages.
According to this thread (Hikvision NVR POE not detecting my cameras)apparenty some people have had succcess running a 2nd ethernet cable back to the router from one the POE ports on the NVR. I have ordered a 30m cable to try this. The HIKVision manual is pretty useless for any purpose other than getting a fire started. I have attached pics of setup.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[wittaj]

The NVR acts as a firewall of sorts so you will not see cameras connected to the NVR POE ports in your router with any other device as the cameras are now on a different subnet.

Your mistake was connecting all the cameras at once.

You can try unplugging them and then plug one in and wait and see if the NVR sees it. If not (and probably not as either the previous NVR or owner assigned it passwords), then factory reset the camera and wait for the NVR to see it and then plug in the next camera.

 

[genwolf]

The NVR acts as a firewall of sorts so you will not see cameras connected to the NVR POE ports in your router with any other device as the cameras are now on a different subnet.

Your mistake was connecting all the cameras at once.

You can try unplugging them and then plug one in and wait and see if the NVR sees it. If not (and probably not as either the previous NVR or owner assigned it passwords), then factory reset the camera and wait for the NVR to see it and then plug in the next camera.

Thanks for your response, before connecting any cameras should I try and delete any settings I made in the NVR camera management page or should I maybe start by resetting the NVR as well?
Is the only way of resetting the cameras usually finding a physical reset switch? The way these cameras are installed this is a major job, they are mounted high up in hard to reach parts of a warehouse.

 

[wittaj]

Yeah I would go ahead a try resetting the NVR as well.

Yes you can reset the cameras without using the physical reset, the problem is that you need to be able to log in to them - if you could log in to them, you wouldn't have this issue!

Do you know the user/password of the old NVR? If so, make that the user/password for this NVR. And hopefully they didn't make the cameras different and by plugging them in one at a time it will find them and add them.

 

[Flintstone61]

They could have setup Static IP's, oh i see they show IP's...
Ok then the USER/pass of the NVR is often handed off to the Camera and will only respond to the Previous USER/pass.
which would require a physical hard reset of the cameras.

 

[genwolf]

Yeah I would go ahead a try resetting the NVR as well.

Yes you can reset the cameras without using the physical reset, the problem is that you need to be able to log in to them - if you could log in to them, you wouldn't have this issue!

Do you know the user/password of the old NVR? If so, make that the user/password for this NVR. And hopefully they didn't make the cameras different and by plugging them in one at a time it will find them and add them.

I will give this a try and let you know how it worked

 

[Revo2Maxx]

Hold on a Second! Are you saying that your normal IP address for your local network is 192.168.1.xxx? Then you are saying that your cameras loaded on the NVRs POE Switch as 192.168.1.xxx? If that is what I understand you are saying then it could be an issue with the 2 switches trying to work on the same IP range.. I know that my different branded NVRs will not do this infact even connecting one to a network with the same range I will get a pop up saying that there is an IP issue.. Using the NVRs GUI, I would go to Setup and Network and in the area for the Switch change the NVRs IP For the POE PORTS to something different like 192.168.0.xxx and see if that can cure the issue. Now I don't know that NVR and if you have an NVR like one of my NVRs and uses what Is called Bridge Mode where it will setup all IP connected to the POE ports to the same IP range as your local IP then forget what I said LOL.. But could be an issue where you will need to reset the Cameras back to factory, Then you might need to get access to them with SADP as well to change the cameras from the default network settings if they don't take on the POE NVRs IP settings.. Normally if I am going to offsite location for camera work I will make sure to have some type of POE injector or POE+ switch that I can connect the cameras to for testing that I can access the cameras.

Next question did you setup the cameras protocol as Hikvision or was that something that the NVR detected? It might be that the cameras are working on ONVIF if not working on the set protocol..

Something also to keep in mind is that not all NVRs report the correct Encoding settings.. For instance on my 16ch POE NVR from a different company when I connect a Hikvision OEM and setup the camera to use 2x Iframes with a camera that is 20fps the NVR reports the camera to having 40fps and my cameras from same company that are setup with 30fps and 60 iframes the FPS for the camera is showing that it is really 30fps as expected. Even my Amcrest 20x PTZ camera that is connected to that NVR with 30fps and 60 iframes it shows the Amcrest is 30fps.. So if your cameras are not really Hikvision but an OEM it might not work as expected and might need to have some things changed in the cameras WebUI setup..

If the cameras are setup in Critical areas I hope they have Micro SD cards installed so at least something is being recorded now that they are powered back on with your POE NVR..

Also some NVRs come setup with Plug N Play setup by default, I would switch that off and I would turn off Auto Smart encoding, and H.265 if that is also an option set them all off.. Just in case your cameras are not H.265 compliant it might trip them out..

 

[Flintstone61]

Usually the default IP of the inside network of the NVR starts with 10.x.x.x

 

[Revo2Maxx]

Usually the default IP of the inside network of the NVR starts with 10.x.x.x

That is true for Amcrest and Dahua type NVRs.. However Hikvision, Alibi, Exviz and others have either 192.x.x.x or 172.16.x.x and the 172 format I can't get to work with Amcrest/Dahua cameras so I change them to 192.x.x.x format to keep them different then my Amcrest NVRs..

 

[genwolf]

Yeah I would go ahead a try resetting the NVR as well.

Yes you can reset the cameras without using the physical reset, the problem is that you need to be able to log in to them - if you could log in to them, you wouldn't have this issue!

Do you know the user/password of the old NVR? If so, make that the user/password for this NVR. And hopefully they didn't make the cameras different and by plugging them in one at a time it will find them and add them.

So where I am at so far is that I reset the NVR with a couple of passwords that the owners thought might correspond to the old system. When I go to Camera management page the poe page shows a device when I plug a camera in but I am unable to configure the camera to get it on the network.
The NVR is connected to my LAN and on to the internet through a TP-Link Archer Modem-Router and that network is configured as 192.168.1.X/255.255.255.0 with the Gateway at 192.168.1.1 and the NVR on a static IP at 192.168.1.113 which I have reserved on the router.
The NVR is visible and I can use its Web configuration Pages on the Lan.
Internally I accepted the default setup for POE on the NVR which is 192.168.254.x/255.255.255.0
I have gone and got the model Numbers of the 8 Cameras installed, 3 of them external bullet Cameras and 5 internal domes
The model numbers are IPC5-DF2853 for the domes and IPC-BF285 for exteranal bullets,
There is no brand name visible and the corresponding cameras that share these model numbers from DaHua are slightly different in appearance, so I assume that these are knockoffs.
They are all marked as using the ONVIF protocol.
As I plug in each cable to the HikVision NVR the POE tab on the camera management page shows that it is detecting a device and its power draw but going to the camera page there appears to be no way to overwrite what ever setting the camera has. I change the protocol to ONVIF and try and assign ip addresses but am unable to, and just get a network unreachable message next to that camera entry.
When I connect my laptop to a spare port on the NVR and scan with SADP only the the NVR shows up.
Next step is unscrewing all the cameras and doing physical resets as none of them have externally accessible reset switches.
It seems incredible to me that these devices can't be reset over the wire by default.
It also seems incredible that they seem to operate on static ips or am I missing something?

 

[Revo2Maxx]

Most cameras are setup with static IP addresses to keep the number known to the user or to the NVR.. So yes if the camera is setup on a Static IP and then IP range that you have the NVR setup for isn't' the same as the Camera then the camera will not get pulled in to the NVR in some cases it can but that would be like an Ultra Series NVR where it can run more then 1 type of IP address over its Switch..

So what would need to happen is that if they are Hikvision SADP could find them, IF not I would say you might want to DL easy tools as it can pull in different brands or DL dahua IP tools but again that would be for Dahua or OEM Dahau so might as well DL easy tools. Also Alibi Vigilant Toolbox might show more cameras then just Dahua kind of like Easy Tools.. Then the camera even if they were reset, If the cameras are setup with Static IP setup from factory and not setup to use DHCP the camera won't show on the NVR..

Then another issue you have to keep in mind as well. Cameras are not all ONVIF, I mean if the Tag says they are and they were setup to use ONVIF then sure. But some cameras are Brand Only cameras from factory and some are with ONVIF but the ONVIF has to be turned on and in some cases will need a ONVIF user and password to make it work as well.

 

[Flintstone61]

@Imran zulfiqar

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[genwolf]

I have finally admitted defeat and am just buying new cameras and junking the old ones. The final straw was discovering that despite the Model Numbers printed on the labels these cameras didn't look like those model numbers at all so the documentation regarding hardware resetting them didn't apply. When they were opened up there was nothing resembling a reset switch that corresponded to any documentaion online associted with the model numbers.

 

[alastairstevenson]

But neither on the router nor on the monitor interface, nor with SADP tool, are the cameras visible.

If the cameras are from Hikvision or one of their OEMs, SADP will find them if you plug the PC into an unused NVR PoE port.
When the PC is on the LAN, only the NVR will be found, the PoE ports are not accessible from there, as you have discovered.