How To Upgrade Amcrest / Lorex to Dahua Firmware And Get All Dahua Features

Arjun

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Its very likely they did create this camera exclusively for Amcrest; its frequently discussed throughout this forum


There are not that many PTZ Dahua cameras and I believe none of them is 4 MP like the IP4M-1051. I wonder if Dahua created it just for Amcrest...
 

Gary R.

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Anybody compiled a list of what camera's will take what upgrade file. I got a few older Amcrest, wondering what might work.
 
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I flashed the Dahua firmware on my LaView LTDHIP3682W-28ISM, it takes the same Dahua Rhea firmware. I knew it would accept it, that's why I bought it from LaView (got a pretty solid deal back in Nov). I did not know that the Amcrest cameras would also accept it and add IVS so that's awesome news. Might be picking up another one of these now that I know that.
How exactly did you do it? I have the same cameras as you and I sat for an hour and it starts to upgrade but never finishes? Not sure what I can do differently? Do I open the camera casing to access reset button?
 

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TheDude

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I've posted about this before quite some time back. There are a bunch of brands that Dahua is the OEM for like Amcrest, Clearview, etc... The key is to find a brand and model camera that you suspect is OEM Dahua (often easy to tell just by closely looking at pictures and comparing) and then check their site for firmware and match up the firmware series and generation names (they need to be exact) like Mao-Rhea, Chou-Rhea, HX2X3X-Rhea, HX5X3X-Rhea, etc. Sometimes some brands will also rename the firmware which can make it harder to tell for sure the specific series/generation but you can generally then extract the firmware with 7zip and then find the name buried deeper in the actual extracted files. Some brand have also put out some cameras that truly are stripped and modified and will NOT work with any standard Dahua firmware like many of the Lorex cameras which use a truly custom modified firmware (what I determined was that the firmware is by Dahua but the Lorex camera has the firmware fiole system partitions setup different which will cause any standard Dahua firmware to fail to load). Many of the Lorex NVR's however can be crossflashed to Dahua firmware by using the serial port on them.
 

tibimakai

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I also have the older IP2M-841, that is 1080p. It would be cool, to be able to do something like this.
 

mmmburritos

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How exactly did you do it? I have the same cameras as you and I sat for an hour and it starts to upgrade but never finishes? Not sure what I can do differently? Do I open the camera casing to access reset button?
That doesn't look like a LaView screen shot, on mine I just uploaded the image normally and it rebooted and was Dahua branded (although the model number did not change). I used the Chrome browser to do the upgrade and have upgraded it a few times since with no issues. You definitely don't have to open up the camera, but it's not a bad idea to do a factory reset before and after the firmware upgrade.
 

Arjun

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Qsee, LaView, and Amcrest have the Saphhire logo in their web interface. Once you upload latest Dahua firmware, the logo should be either IP Camera or Dahua Technology, depending on what version / variant of firmware you use
 

mmmburritos

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Qsee, LaView, and Amcrest have the Saphhire logo in their web interface. Once you upload latest Dahua firmware, the logo should be either IP Camera or Dahua Technology, depending on what version / variant of firmware you use
Ahh ok, I only saw it literally one time. Booted up the camera out of the box, installed Dahua firmware and never looked back.
 

guho

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@pov2: IP4M-1053E is Amcrest PTZ 4MP and I have mine crossflashed to Dahua SD49412T-HN. It was necessary as Amcrest fw did not want to stream H.265 to Milestone XProtect while Dahua FW had no problem doing this.
now I also did this to my 8MP Amcrests and I cannot believe how easily it took the Dahua firmware. Thanks OP! With my 4MP PTZ I had to do an elaborate TFTP upgrade to get Dahua FW on it.
 
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pov2

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@pov2: IP4M-1053E is Amcrest PTZ 4MP and I have mine crossflashed to Dahua SD49412T-HN. It was necessary as Amcrest fw did not want to stream H.265 to Milestone XProtect while Dahua FW had no problem doing this.
now I also did this to my 8MP Amcrests and I cannot believe how easily it took the Dahua firmware. Thanks OP! With my 4MP PTZ I had to do an elaborate TFTP upgrade to get Dahua FW on it.
Earlier in the thread I was talking about the smaller indoor PTZ Amcrest IP4M-1051. The IP4M-1053E is out of my league. I didn't know Amcrest sells such cameras now.
Would you happen to know the Dahua equivalent of the IP4M-1051?
 

guho

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Would you happen to know the Dahua equivalent of the IP4M-1051?
Sorry, I do not know. But there is a surefire way to find out the Dahua equivalent. These cameras pull a script file using TFTP upon boot. If you put "env" in it, you can see all the environment variables. One of these is HWID, which will answer your question.

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hotwheels498

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Well for anyone that has the IP8M-2496 cameras (the ones that are always on Amazon deals), I went ahead and tried this and can confirm that BINGO......IT WORKS ! Now have IVS on these cams. I will let you know that I did have to upgrade the Amcrest to the latest first then go ahead and upgrade to the Dahua. Also it does keep your old password so don't worry that you are not prompted to setup new. The old firmware upgrade screen looked different but the new one looked very similar to the Dahua upgrade screens we are used to so knew it was looking good.

Face Detection and IVS supported on this one. SmartIR & up to 40960 bitrate, should you ever need that :) hahahah

Also of note is this does unlock a 3rd stream where this cam is usually limited to 2.

Now all I have to do is find the latest Lorex LNB9232 FW and I'll try flashing those old ones as well :)

@Wildcat_1 what firmware did you end up going with? Link?
 

ip_poe

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@Wildcat_1 what firmware did you end up going with? Link?
Edit: Turns out that the bullet (IPM8-2496) and the turret (IPM8-T2499) use the exact same firmware files. I think the internal hardware is the same they just have different lenses and IRs and body I'm guessing.
 
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pov2

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Sorry, I do not know. But there is a surefire way to find out the Dahua equivalent. These cameras pull a script file using TFTP upon boot. If you put "env" in it, you can see all the environment variables. One of these is HWID, which will answer your question.
Thanks! Can you elaborate more on the procedure? In my understanding TFTP is a one way transmission of a single file upon camera boot. How do you actually get a response where you can see what HWID is? And for the script can I use a file of any name and three chars "env" in it? That's it? I still don't get how I would see the list of environment variables. If you were talking about Telnet or SSH I could guess.
 

ip_poe

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I have one of each of the bullet (IPM8-2496) and the turret (IPM8-T2499) and just flashed them both. FYI they both use the exact same firmware. They would not take the Dahua firmware until I update the Amcrest to the latest available "Amcrest_IPC-HX5X3X-Rhea_Eng_N_Stream3_AMCREST_V2.622.00AC000.0.R.191024.bin" dated 10/24/2019 on their site first.

Then just get the latest DH_IPC-HX5X3X-Rhea here and update with it. I went with:
DH_IPC-HX5X3X-Rhea_MultiLang_NP_Stream3_V2.800.0000014.0.R.191203
 

pov2

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I remembered a trick I had for Dahua firmware. It works for Amcrest too. If I open the firmware file in 7-Zip there is a list of files as in archive. I extract "check.img" and open it in any text editor (Notepad). There is a list of all compatible cameras for this firmware.

So, for the IP4M-1051 I got this list:
IPC-HFW1430SN-W-Lexus
IPC-HDBW1430SN-AW-Lexus
IPC-HFW1430SN-Lexus
IPC-HDBW1430EN-AS-Lexus
IPC-AW46W-5G

Is anybody familiar with any of these cameras? It doesn't seem like Dahua sells them under its own name. So, I suppose there is no Dahua-branded firmware for them.
 

tibimakai

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Hmm, the last one looks like the one I have just used for my IP2M-841: Amcrest_IPC-AWXX_Eng_NP_Amcrest........
Should I try this firmware?
 

pov2

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Hmm, the last one looks like the one I have just used for my IP2M-841: Amcrest_IPC-AWXX_Eng_NP_Amcrest........
Should I try this firmware?
The list was for camera models, not firmware variants.

From the IP2M-841/941 firmware I got this list of camera models:
IPC-AW15W-Amcrest
IPC-AW15A-Amcrest
IPC-C15-Amcrest
IPC-AW25W-Amcrest
IPC-AW25W-V2-Amcrest
IPC-AW25W-V2-Amcrest
IPC-AW25A-Amcrest

So, the IP2M-841/941 firmware looks very Amcrest-specific.
 

KCO

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What happens if my lite cameras try to get the lite ai firmware? There are some that are the same in hardware and only software capabilities differ.
is there a possibility of brick?
 
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