New RCA HSDB2A 3MP Doorbell IP Camera

David L

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Thanks David. I have tried holding the reset button for a very long time (60s+) to no avail. Also i have had the unit powered down for hours and powered it back up, with no luck. It turns on with the solid red ring. No boot up or flashing. just solid red once powered. I reached out to EzViz and Nellys in case they know some trick that no one else does. I'll keep you informed if anything changes.
Can you update us on what you ended up finding out/doing? Thank You...
 

David L

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Checked once again to see if RCA Firmware File Date Changed (Still shows Jan. 30, 2019):

1579311173855.png
 

jrinco11

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ahh I'm bricked! I recently bought a RCA DB2, was on RCA firmware (Jan 30, 2019) Build 190124 and it worked great. Then, using batch config, tried upgrading to Nelly's (Nov. 22, 2019) Build 190625 (ONVIF Support). Batch config showed it 100% completed, only to find that the bell is now at the red ring of death. Tried powering off the circuit for 2+ hours, held reset for over 60s, still solid red ring. I also tried putting the original RCA firmware in the root of the SD card and reboot (breaker off and on), still straight to solid red ring. Unfortunately, I tried the firmware upgrade before the new message of "don't upgrade RCA" was put up, haha. If there is any other info I can provide to help anyone come up with any ideas for me to try to fix it, please let me know!

edit: just realized when I turn off the breaker, the bell is still powered (should have known, seeing as how folks said to power it down for ~1hr due to internal battery), so putting the firmware on the SD card attempt wasn't a real attempt. Currently waiting for it to power off and will try the SD method again (not getting my hopes up though :-\ )

edit 2: sd method didn't work (made sure to rename to digicap.dav). Does the SD card need to be empty other than the firmware file? (I kept all the .bin and recordings on it)

edit 3: tried with a freshly reformatted (fat32) card with only the digicap.dav, still no luck
 
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David L

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ahh I'm bricked! I recently bought a RCA DB2, was on RCA firmware (Jan 30, 2019) Build 190124 and it worked great. Then, using batch config, tried upgrading to Nelly's (Nov. 22, 2019) Build 190625 (ONVIF Support). Batch config showed it 100% completed, only to find that the bell is now at the red ring of death. Tried powering off the circuit for 2+ hours, held reset for over 60s, still solid red ring. I also tried putting the original RCA firmware in the root of the SD card and reboot (breaker off and on), still straight to solid red ring. Unfortunately, I tried the firmware upgrade before the new message of "don't upgrade RCA" was put up, haha. If there is any other info I can provide to help anyone come up with any ideas for me to try to fix it, please let me know!

edit: just realized when I turn off the breaker, the bell is still powered (should have known, seeing as how folks said to power it down for ~1hr due to internal battery), so putting the firmware on the SD card attempt wasn't a real attempt. Currently waiting for it to power off and will try the SD method again (not getting my hopes up though :-\ )
jrinco11 This is a Great puzzle to us here since you can go back to New RCA HSDB2A 3MP Doorbell IP Camera and from there read many, many successful upgrades for RCA owners going forward. I am going to spend as much time necessary to go back on all the RCA to Nelly firmware upgrades and see if I can see if anything was missed. I went to Nelly's site and downloaded their latest firmware, still the same build 190625 (Nov. 22, 2019) date even though the have a wrong date 06/25/2019 listed. Nelly's was the second DB to add ONVIF, after LaView.

jrinco11 Thank You for making note of the firmware versions, this gives us a starting point. I am sorry you missed the Warning, but in your defense, we just put that Warning up 2 day ago when a second RCA owner mentioned their same SOLID RED LIGHT RING issue when upgrading. After looking back, I found one more that I missed, but we never heard back of his results. I am hoping the SD-Card works for you. Make sure you rename the RCA firmware to digicap.dav


1579358916570.png

Upgrade instructions on Nelly's Site:
 

David L

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ahh I'm bricked! I recently bought a RCA DB2, was on RCA firmware (Jan 30, 2019) Build 190124 and it worked great. Then, using batch config, tried upgrading to Nelly's (Nov. 22, 2019) Build 190625 (ONVIF Support). Batch config showed it 100% completed, only to find that the bell is now at the red ring of death. Tried powering off the circuit for 2+ hours, held reset for over 60s, still solid red ring. I also tried putting the original RCA firmware in the root of the SD card and reboot (breaker off and on), still straight to solid red ring. Unfortunately, I tried the firmware upgrade before the new message of "don't upgrade RCA" was put up, haha. If there is any other info I can provide to help anyone come up with any ideas for me to try to fix it, please let me know!

edit: just realized when I turn off the breaker, the bell is still powered (should have known, seeing as how folks said to power it down for ~1hr due to internal battery), so putting the firmware on the SD card attempt wasn't a real attempt. Currently waiting for it to power off and will try the SD method again (not getting my hopes up though :-\ )

edit 2: sd method didn't work (made sure to rename to digicap.dav). Does the SD card need to be empty other than the firmware file? (I kept all the .bin and recordings on it)
Only thing was mentioned by Hikvision is it needs to be in the root directory.
 

phatboyj

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@jrinco11

I'm not sure of how exactly the SD method works, if it works at all for these Doorbell Cams from my understanding it has not been verified as working for anyone on these Doorbell cams.

That being said
if I found myself in your situation I would be trying everything exactly as you are.

if placing the .dav file in the root directory of a freshly formatted fat-32 s-card fails

Something I'd try would be to
dd the contents of the .dav file to a freshly formatted fat-32 sd-card and try to boot from that
this is the process used for restoring a lot of Samsung android phones from a sd-card

Good Luck
 

phatboyj

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@David L

to your knowledge has anyone tried to Dump any of these doorbell cams using Linux tools like parted if we can get the partition table and get dd access to the device unbricking could be solved
 

David L

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@jrinco11

I'm not sure of how exactly the SD method works, if it works at all for these Doorbell Cams from my understanding it has not been verified as working for anyone on these Doorbell cams.

That being said
if I found myself in your situation I would be trying everything exactly as you are.

if placing the .dav file in the root directory of a freshly formatted fat-32 s-card fails

Something I'd try would be to
dd the contents of the .dav file to a freshly formatted fat-32 sd-card and try to boot from that
this is the process used for restoring a lot of Samsung android phones from a sd-card

Good Luck
The hope was that this would work on our DBs like the Video Intercom.

 

phatboyj

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David L

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@David L

to your knowledge has anyone tried to Dump any of these doorbell cams using Linux tools like parted if we can get the partition table and get dd access to the device unbricking could b solved
I know there has been mention of this in a few previous messages, but no one has shared if they were able to.
 

David L

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I totaly get that I've read the entire thread took 3 days to catch up back when there were only 80 pgs LOL
Haha, I understand. I am trying to go back and search for RCA owner's who have successfully upgraded to Nelly's and this is going to take awhile. I found many who have upgraded to LaView's firmware so far. Thank you for your help. I feel helpless in trying to help these guys. Hopefully someone with a RCA running Nelly's firmware will chime in. Something has changed and is causing this.
 

David L

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I found this message from pete_c, figured I would read on from there...

1579366023758.png
 

pete_c

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First purchase of Video Doorbell here was the RCA version HSDB2A. Purchased it on Ebay as a new Openbox.

Called RCA and they told me I purchased a used one that was already registered.

I returned it via Ebay return policy.
 

pete_c

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Installed the EZViz Studio application today on my Windows laptop.

You can download it here ==> hxxp:/download2.ezvizlife.com/assets/deps/EzvizStudioSetups.exe

It allows you to view cameras registered on their cloud app or just local network connected cameras.

You can view local events on it quickly. It also loads the HikVision batch configuration program on advanced settings.

It resembled the Hikvision iVMS 4500 application.

The application is very light.
 

phatboyj

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@David L

Background

I've been following this thread for some time now, As I stated in an earlier post it took me 3 days to read the entire thread back when there were only 80 pages, and I've stayed current to now, as a result, I too purchased an EZVIZ-DB1, about a month ago, I just haven't gotten around to installing yet.

I'm also thinking of buying a second EZVIZ to use indoors for access to 2 side by side bedrooms. I will be installing the first one traditionally, with an existing chime, and the second, I will probably attempt to power via DC power, and use a relay, like discussed by others here to announce over Ggl and or AMZ speaker and or chromecast devices in both bedrooms simultaneously, if both bedrooms are occupied it can then be determined by the occupants of the intended bedroom to respond.

I have just a couple clarification type ?'s, I'm hoping you can clear up for me?

It is my current understanding that because certain feature compatibility is somehow tied to the EZVIZ hardware serial
#'s that one can, "possibly" have access to all 3 capabilities, (AMZ + Ggl + ONVIF) with the combination of the EZVIZ and the Nelly's or Lav firmware


Main ? being

Because, the EZVIZ is both AMZ & Google capable, "out of the box",

If I were to install the Nelly's or Lav firmware on the EZVIZ would it then continue to be AMZ & Google capable + have the added ONVIF capability?

Or would the EZVIZ lose Google capability because of the Nelly's firmware, or lose AMZ capability if the Lav firmware were used to upgrade the EZVIZ for additional ONVIF support?

same ? In other words

Is their a scenario where,

AMZ= Yes Ggl=Yes & ONVIF= yes

I hope my question is clear.


On the subject of debricking these Doorbell cams


Is there a usb interface?
 
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digdoug

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Try a live stream in VLC

⦁ RTSP Streaming for VLC (VideoLAN Media Player) Under Media/Open Network Stream (Ctrl+N)...Enter your RTSP Link/Info for Live Video Stream
I've been busy and haven't had time to troubleshoot anything. My doorbell is currently offline, however, there appears to be this weird behavior that the doorbell becomes active for a short period of time. I'm going to try resetting it.
 

cool77

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Hello,

Thank you for everybody who gave info about these cameras. Obviously special thanks @David L ! for his 101 guide.

After reading all the pages, I bought the Ezviz DB1.

Here some specific info for port opening in my firewall. It might be helpful for some.

My network is pretty closed and these cameras talk a lot... At the beginning I placed the cam in my standard network but I needed to open too many ports. And even doing so, I had hard time getting 2 ways communication after someone rang the bell.

I decided to place the camera on my guest network (VLAN). This vlan has full internet access but all traffics are blocked TO my local lan devices. In another words, guest devices cannot talk to my internal lan devices but lan devices can talk to guest devices. I don't care about somebody being able to look outside my house but I care about my internal access.

And at the end I wanted the 2 ways communication feature of this cam. If not I would have bought a standard cam.

In order to view the video from Ezviz app I needed to allow traffic from my local_devices_ip TO any external ip at port : 6500, 7100 and 10554
In order to answer a ring call from Ezviz app I needed to allow traffic from my local_devices_ip TO any external ip at port : 9664

I already had a rule that allows traffic from my local_devices_ip TO all_internal_ip at port : 554. So streaming was already working thru zoneminder(NVR).

I will follow closely for the next few days if I need to open more ports but these are the ones I found so far!

If you want more info about securing your network with pfsense, here is a really good guide . This guy did a really good job to explain networking for people building their network rules.

Cheers!
 

pete_c

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Good news to see a fellow PFSense and Zoneminder user!!!

Here also have upgraded home LAN to using managed switches. Here went to using IPSec VPN on my PFSense box for remote access to my security, automation and CCTV.
 

David L

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Installed the EZViz Studio application today on my Windows laptop.

You can download it here ==> hxxp:/download2.ezvizlife.com/assets/deps/EzvizStudioSetups.exe

It allows you to view cameras registered on their cloud app or just local network connected cameras.

You can view local events on it quickly. It also loads the HikVision batch configuration program on advanced settings.

It resembled the Hikvision iVMS 4500 application.

The application is very light.
Has anyone using the EZVIZ App, logged into their account via Internet Explorer? Or has anyone used the EZVIZ Studio PC program? I just discovered all of this playing with linking EZVIZ to Google Home App., which in the Google Home App it does not show I am linked, but in Chrome Browser it does.
View attachment 52808

EZVIZ Studio
View attachment 52807

I know this is all connecting to EZVIZ's cloud, just like the App, but trying to get the Doorbell to show as a Device in Google Home App, looking for any different settings. I could not get it to work in Firefox or Chrome, it suggested Internet Explorer (A Browser I Do Not use), and had me install a Plug-In (I assume active-x). I was able to see everything that I do in the EZVIZ Phone App. Interesting, in my brief look, nothing stood out at me, new settings that is, even hoping to find how to turn of Ding-Dong sound at Doorbell. Oh Well...

View attachment 52809View attachment 52810View attachment 52811


Hey Look at what I found in Advantaged Setting in EZVIZ Studio PC Program....The Batch Config. Tool, haha...
View attachment 52812

EZVIZ Studio PC Program
View attachment 52813
Funny Pete, I ran across Studio myself. I actually like it...
 
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