LaView LV-PB932F4 -- Hikvision Camera?

[fenriz79]

Greetings,

I bought a LaView NVR kit from NewEgg. LaView has provided me the latest firmware for the NVR (Oct 2015), but says they don't have one for the camera. I suspect the cameras are Hikvision rebranded models. Anyone know?

LaView camera:[h=2]LV-PB932F4[/h]
Is there a Hikvision (or other) OEM model that I can find newest firmware for?

Thanks all, and yes, I did search the forums before posting

 

[Lloydchristmas]

Did you get that 6 camera deal plus NVR for $450? Mine were just installed. Cameras are great so far.

 

[fenriz79]

Yes, I did. They just emailed me the latest firmware for the NVR, but said nothing was available for the cameras. I believe the cameras are re-branded Hikvision DS-2CD2022 cameras.

 

[rayeyoung]

I grabbed the same system from Newegg and have the same question.

I received the updated firmware for the NVR but LaView is saying there is no new firmware for the camera's.

Did you ever find more info on flashing hikvision firmware for these LaView cameras?

I also have LaView camera:LV-PB932F4.

 

[allanak]

Good news for this thread! I was able to flash the LV-PB932F4 with the Hikvision DS-2CD2x10,2x20,2x 5.3.0 firmware successfully today on all 6 cameras. I used the TFTP method. I did not try it via the web UI functionality which may work, but I know the NVR can't be flashed to Hikvision firmware directly from the web interface and unfortunately it doesn't seem to try and pull a TFTP image the same way the cameras do at boot time. I've got the parts on order to throw together a USB RS232 to TTL cable as there is no DB-9 connector onboard anywhere, just a 4-pin JST which seems to be a 3 pin serial connector based on what I've read in other posts.

Now for the fun part: a screenshot of one of mine running the new firmware.

 

[rayeyoung]

allanak, awesome news!

Can you provide brief instruction or a link to for instruction on to flash using the "TFTP" method.
Also, can you link to the hikvision firmware you used? I'm guessing it's the international version?
I would really like to duplicate what you have done.

 

[allanak]

Of course! You need to set up the Hikvision TFTP server which is typically used for recovering bricked devices. While the process is fairly well documented around the interweb, I'll give the brief rundown. The tool is publicly available and Hikvision has the process documented in a PDF on their web site here. In short, you need to set up a Windows box on your network listening at 192.0.0.128 (netmask 255.255.255.0) on the same switch as the camera you want to upgrade. Now in the same directory as the TFTP tool, you'll need to extract the firmware from the Hikvision web site which as of right now is the last item on this page, titled "DS-2CD2x10,2x20,2x14 IP camera firmware v5.3.0_150513"

If you've done everything right to this point, you have a windows box listening at 192.0.0.128 running the Hikvision TFTP server tool and a file named digicap.dav sitting in the root of the TFTP server directory. When you power cycle a camera, it will boot up with a static IP of 192.0.0.64 and attempt to grab that file from the TFTP server at the .128 address. A few seconds after powering up the camera, you should see the log entry in the tool showing the initial connection from the camera followed by the file transfer completion at which point you can close the TFTP utility. In a minute or so, the camera should come back up with the Hikvision firmware.

I performed the above on a separate switch (not on the NVR) but I can't think of any reason that wouldn't work so long as the camera and your Windows box are both physically on the same switch. Long story short without going too far down a rabbit hole, certain features of the cameras aren't exposed when you can only get to the cameras through the limited NVR interface, so I needed to be able to access my cameras directly on my LAN for things like MJPEG streams for my home automation dashboards or grabbing still snapshots when things happen based on home automation events. I'm new to this whole scene, so I'm not sure if these features exist on the vanilla Hikvision NVR firmware, but that's going to be my next obstacle to tackle once my JST connector shows so I can get serial access to the box.

 

[rayeyoung]

Thank you for the detailed write up! I was just hoping you would share a link confirming your steps and to the correct firmware but this is awesome.
Thanks for taking the time to explain in detail.

I will update my cams and let you know once complete.

Let us know how it goes with your NVR upgrade.

 

[allanak]

Just got my JST connectors in and was able to flash the LV-N9808C8E NVR with Hikvision 3.3.6 firmware! I'm happy to say the most painful part of this was stripping the wires on the JST connector down enough to get a good connection into the TTL connectors on the USB cable. I then rebooted the NVR from the web interface to try and get a hint of what type of firmware would likely work and I noticed this little nugget scroll by:

serial_number_: DS-7608N-E2/<redactedserial>

So I went to the Hikvision site and pulled down the zip file for DS-76xxNI-E1(E2)P/DS-76xxNI-E1(E2)P_USA_Firmware_V3.3.6_151229. I unzipped it and spun up the native TFTP server on my mac (not the Hikvision one...that might work, but I don't know for sure) and dropped the digicap.dav into my TFTP server root. I then rebooted the NVR and you'll have about two seconds to interrupt the U-boot prompt by typing Ctrl+U. I then gave the device its usual IP and then the IP of my TFTP server. It looked like this:

U-Boot 2010.06-svn (Aug 15 2015 - 15:18:43)


Protected at offset:0,size:20000 Protection status:[0xf88]=>[0xf8b].
Hit ctrl+u to stop autoboot: 0


This program will upgrade software.
*******************************************************
* ATTENTION!! PLEASE READ THIS NOTICE CAREFULLY! *
* Don't reset machine,or anything that interrupt it. *
* The upgrade process must finish in 10 minutes! *
* If this program fails,machine might be unusable, *
* and you will need to reflash again. *
* If you find this too risky,power off machine now. *
*******************************************************


Now press [u/U] key to upgrade software: u
File system error,please upgrade by TFTP


Please input ip address of device: 192.168.1.200
Please input ip address of upgrade server: 192.168.1.86
Confirm?(y/n): y

It took a couple minutes to download, erase and rewrite the image, perform some integrity checks and was I was eventually prompted to reboot. (Sorry, didn't manage to copy/paste that bit.) Anyway, after reboot the box came back up with 192.0.0.64. I couldn't figure out how to reset the IP from the serial connection as there's some limited shell prompt type menu, so I just changed my workstation IP to 192.0.0.128 to be able to access the box long enough to change the admin password and assign its normal IP address. The SADP tool could have saved the hassle of temporarily changing IPs, but I didn't bother.

It's only been an hour or so since I did it, but everything looks fine to me. The only thing I've noticed out of place is that the the web UI retained the LaView logo in the top left corner of the web UI when logged in and it's too large for the space allocated for it. I'm thinking that was just left on a partition that may have gone untouched during flashing and I'm not really concerned about it.

Now to find out how to get SSH enabled...

 

[alastairstevenson]

Well done indeed!
I bet you were sweating a bit at the Press Enter to reboot bit...

 

[allanak]

Well done indeed!
I bet you were sweating a bit at the Press Enter to reboot bit...

Thank you, and maybe a little Having gotten this far already, I figured I could always load up the LaView f/w if shit hit the fan. Not being much of a hardware junkie, I was more surprised that my cobbled together USB cable worked on the first attempt over anything else :laugh:

 

[allanak]

So I got a little gutsy and tried to jump to 3.4.6 with the firmware posted in another thread; seemed to take the firmware fine from the web interface. All was looking good, box came back up to the web UI and was unable to login with the admin credentials. Tried my existing password before flashing and all the various defaults. Then I tried the password reset tool, no dice. The interface via HDMI looked fine, and I could bounce between my feeds without authenticating. Poking the remote to getting to a login prompt showed usernames with a bunch of nonprintable characters in the dropdown, so I'm not sure where to go from here but I'd guess something it trying to read config from the wrong place. I flashed back to 3.3.6, set a different password and flashed back up to 3.4.6 using TFTP this time. Still unable to login. Back to 3.3.6 for now. Would love some input if anyone has any suggestions on how to get a lead on that. I didn't see a way to reset creds via the busybox shell presumably because there isn't one.

 

[rayeyoung]

Just got my JST connectors in and was able to flash the LV-N9808C8E NVR with Hikvision 3.3.6 firmware! I'm happy to say the most painful part of this was stripping the wires on the JST connector down enough to get a good connection into the TTL connectors on the USB cable. I then rebooted the NVR from the web interface to try and get a hint of what type of firmware would likely work and I noticed this little nugget scroll by:



So I went to the Hikvision site and pulled down the zip file for DS-76xxNI-E1(E2)P/DS-76xxNI-E1(E2)P_USA_Firmware_V3.3.6_151229. I unzipped it and spun up the native TFTP server on my mac (not the Hikvision one...that might work, but I don't know for sure) and dropped the digicap.dav into my TFTP server root. I then rebooted the NVR and you'll have about two seconds to interrupt the U-boot prompt by typing Ctrl+U. I then gave the device its usual IP and then the IP of my TFTP server. It looked like this:



It took a couple minutes to download, erase and rewrite the image, perform some integrity checks and was I was eventually prompted to reboot. (Sorry, didn't manage to copy/paste that bit.) Anyway, after reboot the box came back up with 192.0.0.64. I couldn't figure out how to reset the IP from the serial connection as there's some limited shell prompt type menu, so I just changed my workstation IP to 192.0.0.128 to be able to access the box long enough to change the admin password and assign its normal IP address. The SADP tool could have saved the hassle of temporarily changing IPs, but I didn't bother.

It's only been an hour or so since I did it, but everything looks fine to me. The only thing I've noticed out of place is that the the web UI retained the LaView logo in the top left corner of the web UI when logged in and it's too large for the space allocated for it. I'm thinking that was just left on a partition that may have gone untouched during flashing and I'm not really concerned about it.

Now to find out how to get SSH enabled...

Do you have the Virtual Host option now with the Hik firmware?

I am familiar with TFTP (although I didn't realize these cams used this protocol for updates) and updated all my LaView cams as well. Thank you for the excellent write up.
I'm not familiar with Serial connections or the JST/USB cable you made.

Can I buy this type of cable (something like this)?
Your instruction seems like upgrading the NVR should be easy enough.

 

[alastairstevenson]

That's not a suitable cable - check out this useful post from @snikinl https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/6356-Manual-Create-console-serial-access-to-Hikvision-DS-2CD2032F-I?highlight=serial+console
If you search for the part numbers on eBay you can get them much quicker than via Aliexpress.

 

[allanak]

Glad to help out with the write-up. Yes, I have virtual host enabled so I created a route for the 192.168.254.0/24 camera subnet on my router using the gateway IP address of the NVR and can directly connect to the cameras now. As far as cables go, I bought this JBTek debug cable on amazon - if you've got prime, it's only $6 shipped and showed up fast. You'll also need the JST molex connectors. You can hit up ebay and search for "zh jst 1.5mm 4-pin" to get what you need. I got a bag of 10 for about $6 shipped but you can find them for even less; they shipped from Hong Kong and showed up in my mailbox about 8 days after ordering. Now you can connect the JST wires to the USB connectors as follows (thanks to alastairstevenson's post for the pinout mapping!):

Red molex to black USB
Black molex to white USB
Yello molex to green USB
Don't connect white molex

Just read over his post and it'll be clear what to do you've gotten to this point.

 

[rayeyoung]

Sorry for the late follow up.
At times I need to travel for work and have been at a customer site for the last few weeks.

Thanks for the links and confirming the correct cables/connectors needed.

I have my the parts ordered and hope to have them in the next week or two (the JST connectors are coming from Hong Kong).

Will update with results once I flash the NVR.

 

[Eye P. Freely]

I upgraded my cameras; thanks to the instructions provided here.
Haven't upgraded the NVR, are there an special features that are available with the hikvison firmware?

 

[rayeyoung]

Glad to help out with the write-up. Yes, I have virtual host enabled so I created a route for the 192.168.254.0/24 camera subnet on my router using the gateway IP address of the NVR and can directly connect to the cameras now. As far as cables go, I bought this JBTek debug cable on amazon - if you've got prime, it's only $6 shipped and showed up fast. You'll also need the JST molex connectors. You can hit up ebay and search for "zh jst 1.5mm 4-pin" to get what you need. I got a bag of 10 for about $6 shipped but you can find them for even less; they shipped from Hong Kong and showed up in my mailbox about 8 days after ordering. Now you can connect the JST wires to the USB connectors as follows (thanks to alastairstevenson's post for the pinout mapping!):

Red molex to black USB
Black molex to white USB
Yello molex to green USB
Don't connect white molex

Just read over his post and it'll be clear what to do you've gotten to this point.

Wow! Can't thank allanak and alastairstevenson enough.
Received the JST connectors today and thanks to your help was able to successfully flash the Hik NVR firmware.
You guys are awesome!

 

[rayeyoung]

I upgraded my cameras; thanks to the instructions provided here.
Haven't upgraded the NVR, are there an special features that are available with the hikvison firmware?

The one option I wanted is the virtual host option, but I see several additional options that didn't exist before.

 

[alastairstevenson]

was able to successfully flash the Hik NVR firmware

Well done!
Now do an 'export device configuration' and save it suitably-named in a safe place. With a copy of the firmware that worked OK.