New Member w/OLD Night Owl PoE System (NVR7). Need Help

uniqueflh

n3wb
Dec 25, 2020
1
0
StL, MO. USA
Good morning all, and a ‘Merry Christmas to anyone who celebrates it!

Being unfamiliar with this forum, please tell me if I will have better luck getting help if I ask the question(s) in a specific section of the site.
And. Thanks in advance for any guidance.

Oh. Sorry in advance for the long post. I want to provide as much info as I can to anyone who can assist me.

* My equipment:
Hardware is a (2014-ish) Night Owl NVR7P-4 with four (4) 720P PoE cameras. The system works fine. Video quality is adequate. It has been a good solution for my needs. Zero problems viewing feeds via the monitor I have connected directly to the NVR.

* My issue:
Remote viewing.
For years I have simply used the Night Owl Pro App on my iPhone to view a LiveStream of my property when necessary.
Well. On Dec 5th of 2020 Night Owl discontinued support of anyone their ‘Legacy’ systems - which includes ending the DDNS support. So. My App will no longer connect to the NVR.

* My ‘want’:
Remote viewing.
Ideally, I’d like to just use my current cameras...and view them through Apple HomeKit using the HomeBridge and the Ffmpeg plug-in. But. I think I’d be fine with just getting the Night Owl Pro App to work as it did before.
I have searched The Googles a LOT but cannot seem to locate the info needed to make this happen.

* Troubleshooting:
A LOT!
1. I subscribed to a 3rd-Party DDNS provider and applied all the appropriate Server information into the NVR to bypass the Night Owl provide DDNS. No worky.
2. Deleted & reinstalled the App (many times) and made sure all input info was properly entered.
3. Verified ALL connections & Network paths were configured properly.
4. Went back thru steps 1-3 countless times.
5. Purchased a PoE switch.

* Current situation:
NVR has its IP Address statically assigned from my router. Internally, NVR redirects to the the cameras and assigns them 10.100.100.xxx IPs and directs them to port 9006.
When I unplug the cameras from the NVR and plug them into the PoE Switch - and plug the uplink from the Switch into the router - I get ZERO indication of data transfer on the Switch. It’s as if nothing is connected.
I get LED activity on the uplink port. Nothing at all on the camera ports.
- When I plug the wires back into the NVR...all is proper.

Also. Using Network Scan Tools, like Angry IP shows nothing.

I am getting no indication of issues with ‘odd’ IP Address on my router when the cameras are directly (via the PoE Switch) connected to the Network.

* In a weird troubleshooting endeavor, thinking that ‘somehow’ the IP Address’ for the cameras are locked (into an eeprom or whatever?) - I went into the NVR and changed them from their assigned 10.100.100.xxx to 192.168.xxx.xxx that matches my Network. No worky.

Basically. I’m at a standstill.

I would SO like to continue using the cameras I have. Not because they are awesome. But because they are installed insuch a way that it’s going to be a nightmare to swap them for new stuff.

Again. Sorry for the insanely long ‘first’ post. If you made it this far, thanks. If you can assist, thanks more.
If I need to clarify anything, just ask.

Thanks,
Brad
 
Hi Brad,

I had a similar issue with my 2018 Night Owl Hybrid (4 hardwired cameras, 2 wireless cameras) system that I purchased from Costco. Everything was working fine up until a few days ago (4/6/2021) when I completely lost the live view on all three of my remote devices. However, the DVR indicated that it was still connected to the internet.

I thought my issue was with Night Owl discontinuing DDNS, and started to go down the path of using a third party server. However, in the configuration menu under "DDNS Type," there is no option to chose anything but "NIGHTOWL", so I couldn't select "NO-IP" or other third party DDNS.

When I was about ready to give up and buy a competitor's brand, I did a "factory default" under Maintenance>Default. After going through through the setup prompts, I was able to see live view on all my devices! Maybe there was some IP address conflict that was the real root cause for me. I'm not sure....

Anyway, good luck and hope this helps!

Doug