Need help with bench testing cameras

[Arokcrwlr]

Hello all, I have been reading for a while now and have learned a lot about the various camera systems available. I ended up returning a particular brand of camera system based on the information shared here, so I am appreciative of the knowledge and experience from the brain trust on this site.

I am building a house and pre-wired with cat6 at several locations around the house before I discovered this site. Based on several recommendations from reading here, I order several Dahua IPC-HDW5231R-ZE cameras and a NVR5216-16P-4KS2E NVR. The order was delivered a couple of days ago and one of the boxes was busted open. Everything was there, but I want to make sure that the cameras are functional and that no damage was done during shipping. My house is not far enough along that I can install the cameras to test, so I am looking for some guidance on the best way to test the cameras at the bench. I have not purchased a HDD for the NVR yet - will it boot up and work to view live video without a HDD? Any other advice on testing the cameras will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[adamg]

I've ran a few NVRs without a HDD. They worked fine, connected and displayed cameras.

 

[catcamstar]

As with test benches, you don't need much: C13 power cable to power NVR, 1 UTP cable from POE port NVR to your CAM (30cm will do just fine), and either VGA/hdmi cable to a simple monitor/tv screen.

Only hickup I ran into with my first testbench: the HDMI resolution is "fixed" from within the device, my TV (not monitor) did not downscale accordingly. So I had to login through the webbrowser, change the hdmi resolution and off I went.

It is a best practice to dry-out your cams (eg to upgrade to latest firmware) on such a testbench, you won't be the first (nor the last) who has to break cams off the walls because they are in a bootloop.

Good luck!
CC

 

[Arokcrwlr]

Thank you both for confirming what I hoped/thought the process is. I'll be doing this tonight. I'll download the latest firmware as it would be a good idea to upgrade (if needed) while I have them on the bench.

 

[felzy5]

Follow up question on old post regarding testing camera.

I would like to purchase a 2231 starlight for testing around my new home build.

Problem is there is no power at house yet. I know I would need a laptop and POE switch but without electric on at house, is there anyway to test remotely without plugging the POE switch into an outlet?

 

[sebastiantombs]

You can test any camera, with power available, without an NVR. All you need is a PC and an appropriate 12VDC wall wart to power the camera. Simply power up the camera with the wall wart, plug it into your existing network and use the Dahua tool to access the camera and set an IP that will work on your network. Once that's done, you can use a browser, Chrome with the IE plug-in works well, to view the camera and adjust anything you need to in its' configuration.

Without power, you'd need a laptop and a 12VDC battery based power source. Note I say 12VDC, not a car battery which can run as high as 14VDC with no load or while the car is running.

 

[mikeynags]

Without power maybe something like this to plug your POE switch into?

Portable Power Station on Amazon