Hikvision cams occasionally becoming unresponsive

[carpii]

My setup is this...

- 6 HikVision cams, bought and installed from a licensers reseller. EU firmware
- All cams are wired to a Hikvision NVR, which records 24/7
- Each cam has its own IP on my LAN so I can access them individually without going via my NVR (I do not use the NVR's NAT feature)
- BlueIris on my LAN is also monitoring all 6 cams for motion detection and recording clips
- The cams are configured to use static IP's and so there is no DHCP or IP conflict going on

The problem is occasionally one of the cams will become unresponsive, sometimes for a couple of hours at a time.
When this happens, I can't reboot the cam via BlueIris, and the only way to reboot the cam, is to go and physically remove the PoE cable and plug it back in.
I cant ping the cams IP access the web interface for it, and even the NVR shows the IP as offline.

Rather than remove the cable, often I just... leave it... and after a couple of hours it starts responding again, having done nothing at all to fix it.

I'm guess the cam's onboard firmware is just crashing.
But if that's true, I would expect the cam to either lock up indefinitely, or reboot immediately

Why would it take a couple of hours and then the cam starts responding again?

 

[alastairstevenson]

I'm guess the cam's onboard firmware is just crashing.

The very old Hikvision firmware, say 5.3.0 or older, can lock up after a few months and need a power cycle to get working again.
What firmware version is running on the cameras?

- All cams are wired to a Hikvision NVR, which records 24/7

- Each cam has its own IP on my LAN so I can access them individually

That does seem a bit conflicting, implying both connected to NVR PoE ports and on the LAN presumably via a PoE switch.

 

[carpii]

The very old Hikvision firmware, say 5.3.0 or older, can lock up after a few months and need a power cycle to get working again.
What firmware version is running on the cameras?

Thanks, I wonder if that's the issue. The cam (a model DS-2CD2132F-I) which went down recently has firmware of V5.2.0 build 140721
I did not power cycle it this time, it just came back on its own (or BlueIris was able to reboot it, but this seems unlikely since in order to reboot it, it would have to be responding somehow).

I did look into upgrading the firmware about a year after I got them, but the HikVision site is not very intuitive, and I heard horror stories of people accidentally installing Chinese firmware, so I backed off.

That does seem a bit conflicting, implying both connected to NVR PoE ports and on the LAN presumably via a PoE switch.

Yes, I have a PoE switch which powers all the cams, and this is connected to my LAN. The NVR just sits on the same LAN like any other network device.
I'm looking into segmenting them onto a seperate subnet or maybe using VLAN's, but haven't found time to dig into that yet.

 

[alastairstevenson]

I did look into upgrading the firmware about a year after I got them, but the HikVision site is not very intuitive, and I heard horror stories of people accidentally installing Chinese firmware, so I backed off.

There is a fair chance that the camera is a Chinese model, that would 'brick' if you attempted to update the firmware to 5.3.0 or later.
One way to determine that is to look at the serial number (SADP or the web GUI) and see if it contains the sequence of letters CCCH.
But even if it is Chinese, there are ways to convert to EN and update the firmware, should there be a strong need to do so.
See my signature below.
But don't attempt this without understanding that with the benefits do come some risks, and it does require some techy activity.

 

[carpii]

There is a fair chance that the camera is a Chinese model, that would 'brick' if you attempted to update the firmware to 5.3.0 or later.
One way to determine that is to look at the serial number (SADP or the web GUI) and see if it contains the sequence of letters CCCH.

Hi, Thanks for the help.

My cams were installed by a (presumably licensed) Hikvision installer, but I did my research at the time and made sure he was not sourcing Chinese Ebay models (can confirm there is no CCCH in serial).

I had a lot of trouble trying to find firmware from the Hikvision EU portal, so ended up downloading US firmwares.
Not sure if this was a mistake, but I've ran through the upgrade path for that cam, and it's now on v5.4.x.
Hopefully this will resolve my issue, and I'll then upgrade the rest of my cams.

But don't attempt this without understanding that with the benefits do come some risks, and it does require some techy activity.

Understood
I'm a software guy, so am not averse to technical stuff. I was willing to risk bricking one cam as a test, although also hoping to avoid it

 

[alastairstevenson]

I've ran through the upgrade path for that cam, and it's now on v5.4.x.

Well that's a good result.

This is the only R0 firmware on the EU portal :

DOWNLOAD EU PORTAL

www.hikvisioneurope.com

And there are some more version on the forum downloads are here :

R0 series DS-2CD2x32x-Ixx IP camera firmware - Updates

ipcamtalk.com