Net Time / Date off!

[gfaulk09]

I just can't figure out how to fix this. Out of nowhere, all 33 of my cameras started reporting the wrong date. The time is correct. I don't know how to fix it. any advice?
Some Cameras are saying its Tuesday (today is Monday). Some cameras are even saying its Wednesday! but all have correct time..

 

[jmhmcse]

What steps have you completed to test/validate the environment? Anything else not working as it should?

Probably unrelated, but overtaxing the time server is the every minute request to set time. Camera time does drift, but usually once a day is adequate to keep everyone in sync.

 

[gfaulk09]

What steps have you completed to test/validate the environment? Anything else not working as it should?

Probably unrelated, but overtaxing the time server is the every minute request to set time. Camera time does drift, but usually once a day is adequate to keep everyone in sync.

it was only set to one minute as a test for that camera.. I have them set at every 12 hours I believe on the others.. and honestly. its just the hikvision cameras that are off. My 3 Reolink cameras are synced perfectly..

 

[bp2008]

Don't worry about overtaxing a time server you run yourself. It is a teeny tiny amount of work even when you multiply it by 33 cameras.

 

[jmhmcse]

Different HK interface than mine...





Presume "Refresh" is equivalent to "Test"; does it return a success or failure status message?

Very strange, perhaps a reboot of the camera to see if that has any affect

 

[pozzello]

Memphis uses DST, no? Still, that wouldn't account for being a DAY or two off. Now, NTP will not 'take' if the time reported by the NTP server is
too far off from what the cam thinks the current time is. this failure generally happens silently and can be confusing...
so perhaps you accidentally did a manual sync from a PC or other device that was a day off and that caused them to be too far off?

another possiblity is that your cams have been hacked. seems pretty benign, if so, but best to make sure your cams are NOT accessing the cloud
(I disable all cloud services on the cams as well as have a firewall rule in my router that does not allow the cam IP's to reach the internet)

 

[gfaulk09]

Memphis uses DST, no? Still, that wouldn't account for being a DAY or two off. Now, NTP will not 'take' if the time reported by the NTP server is
too far off from what the cam thinks the current time is. this failure generally happens silently and can be confusing...
so perhaps you accidentally did a manual sync from a PC or other device that was a day off and that caused them to be too far off?

another possiblity is that your cams have been hacked. seems pretty benign, if so, but best to make sure your cams are NOT accessing the cloud
(I disable all cloud services on the cams as well as have a firewall rule in my router that does not allow the cam IP's to reach the internet)

when I manually sync from the pc the time actually works. And doubt that I am hacked. The cameras are on its own separate network isolated from the cloud. The computer then sits behind a fortinet router.Plus your normal security type software.

when i actually do the test to the Ntp is when it is off by days

 

[pozzello]

what NTP server are you running? any way to test that? sounds like its giving out bogus timestamps...

 

[gfaulk09]

what NTP server are you running? any way to test that? sounds like its giving out bogus timestamps...

I don’t have it right in front of me but it’s the one that is highly recommended on this forum. NPTtime I think is the name

 

[looney2ns]

I don’t have it right in front of me but it’s the one that is highly recommended on this forum. NPTtime I think is the name

Make sure it's updating correctly. Windows update could have changed a firewall rule that's affecting the NTP server.
Or check and make sure the Windows time server didn't get turned back on.

 

[vdawg]

I have a similar problem -- date off by 2 days (into the future) on all cameras, but time is correct. I just noticed it this week, but looking back at recordings, it goes back for the whole month of February. Since it was all cameras I thought the DVR was to blame, but then I did some tests on an individual camera in Onvif Device Manager and it seems to be the camera causing the issue. I have my cameras' network properties set so they can't see the internet. Only the DVR can see them. If I go into ODM, I can set the TZ properly (EST) and then tell it I want to set the time manually, which I do with today's date, 2/28/2020. Then I apply/save and when the date page refreshes, it shows a date of 3/1/2020 (with the correct time). This same issue occurs on any of my 12 cameras that I test (SV3C IP cameras). They've worked flawlessly otherwise, but apparently some time ago this happened and I never noticed it. Rebooted cam, reset it to factory default and reconfigured, etc., but same issue occurs.

PS: I just noticed the OP's screenshot -- my cameras have the exact same user interface, so I wonder if there is some firmware bug with various cameras that use this firmware. Even though my cameras are not Hikvision, perhaps they have the same components and use the same firmware?

 

[pozzello]

nobody with Hikvision cams seems to be having this problem that i can tell, so it must be limited to the firmware in the SV3C (and probably other) brands...

 

[vdawg]

Seems like the OP was having this issue with his Hikvision cameras:

Post #3:

its just the hikvision cameras that are off. My 3 Reolink cameras are synced perfectly

 

[pozzello]

i missed that. my bad. tho the original screen shot doesn't look like any Hikvision UI i've seen, so i plead confused...

 

[vdawg]

UPDATE: I did some experimenting with my cameras and found something interesting: If I go into the camera date/time configuration page and set the date to 2/26/2020, then click Save, it changes it to 2/27/2020. Entering 2/5/2020 and saving changes it to 2/6/2020. But if I enter 1/26/2020 and save, it remains at that date. If I enter 3/4/2020 and save it, it stays at that date. Basically, any date in February gets incremented when I save it. Dates in Jan or Mar (or other months) don't display the bug. I even tried Feb dates in 2019, and they also saved properly without adding a day. Finally, I tested other years, Feb dates always saved correctly without changing. Until I got to 2024. Then Feb dates were automatically incremented again after saving; but only Feb dates -- no other months.

So, these test results strongly suggest that this firmware has some type of bug when handling leap years, and in particular, any date in February in a leap year. Whenever my DVR syncs its internal date during February, it sends it to the cameras to update them, and they increment it (by two days) and show the wrong date. Looking back at Feb footage, all recordings are displaying camera dates two days in the future. It's a bit of a different bug when the DVR sends the date over to the camera since the camera increases it by 2 days. I found a similar result when setting the date via Onvif Device Manager (increases date by 2 after setting it). Setting it internally only increases it by one day...

Regardless, I'm convinced there's a firmware calculation trying to handle February leap year dates and it does it incorrectly. I noticed yesterday that my cameras all showed 3/1/2020 (two days after the real current date). Today they still show 3/1/2020. It doesn't seem to increase the date past March 1st due to this bug. I have a feeling tomorrow they will correctly show 3/1 again, and then start showing the proper current dates on Mar 2nd, 3rd,, etc. until the next Feb in a leap year (2024), since manually setting them to any date in any month besides February in a leap year leaves the date at the set date and does not try to increment it improperly.

 

[vdawg]

If you can find the firmware version of your cameras, you may be able to update it to resolve this issue. I contacted Anjvision, who is the manufacturer of the hardware in my SV3C cameras. They have a corrected version of the firmware available here:

http://www.anjvision.com:8021/firmware/

The newest version is 3.0.1.14 for most of their devices. You look in the 3.0.1.14 directory for the file that contains the model number of your camera. In my case, one of my cameras is based on their "MC200E2" hardware, so it shows that model in the camera's configuration page:
MC200E2_200W_V0_BU-TAOS-H5 V3.0.1.14 build 2020-02-03 16:52:37
I was able to download the latest firmware from their site and update the camera, and when I tried entering a February date, it didn't increment it when I saved it, so it appears to be corrected. Hopefully your cameras use this same hardware and these firmware updates will help.