OEM Dahua NVR - Newest Web UI design is a disaster - NVR-NV42A16-P16-4K-S2L

[torinwalker]

My surveillance product vendor's supplier, Ameta Group, is very difficult to communicate with, even through the vendor. I ask a question and rarely get an answer. Usually it goes into a black hole unless I am annoyingly persistent, and then it's usually a non-answer like "we'll get back to you", or "give us access". I once tried calling them directly and they were rude and dismissive. If I can say it right now, you are better off buying an authentic Dahua system rather than saving a few bucks on an OEM knockoff.

I just pushed the latest OEM firmware and see that they significantly changed the UI design as of version 2024-05-08. Now the fonts and icons are disproportionately large and do not fit within the UI properly. The left nav bar titles are so large that they don't fit across the display (i.e. truncated and unreadable) unless I zoom the web page to 50%. Icons are much too large and are clipped by the lower screen boundary. Textfields and checkboxes are misaligned. Chrome and Microsoft Edge exhibit the same results. Yes, the playback plugin is installed, but that didn't help the layout. And that reminds me... I should monitor outbound traffic with wireshark (from that plugin) to ensure whoever wrote the firmware isn't exfiltrating data.

It appears they are trying to replicate the look/feel of the physical console, and I do appreciate it. They've added some nice features such as the ability to see multiple video tracks, synchronized playback, and a nicer clip-export feature. The time bar still cannot be scrolled or zoomed despite Dahua adding this feature in their latest firmware. I was really hoping for that feature.

The latest firmware for my particular Dahua OEM (DBase) NVR is 2024-10-18. Has anyone else had a different, better experience? If so, how?

If I could get my hands on the original source code for this OEM firmware, I would make the necessary changes to the UI to fix the proportionality issues, possibly add zooming via mousewheel to start, then publish the improved source on GitHub.

So... I would like to open the discussion by asking: Does anyone here know if there is an OEM firmware available from which we (I) can start working on an inproved version? Are any of you employed in the OEM consumer surveillance device manufacturing industry who also happens to have access to such source code?

It's a long shot, but thought I'd ask. I think I'll also call Dahua and see if I can get my hands on the base firmware through the developer program (if such a thing exists.)

Torin...

 

[Revo2Maxx]

Did you happen to do a Factory Reset after doing the update? At times the old files if no factory reset is done can keep living on the new and make things look bad? I mean I have OEM dahua that I installed Dahua FW on and after reset back to factory is working as expected. If you don't like the company anymore and able to find the FW for Dahua why not just update to the Dahua for your device and not worry about your OEM that your not happy with?

 

[torinwalker]

Did you happen to do a Factory Reset after doing the update? At times the old files if no factory reset is done can keep living on the new and make things look bad? I mean I have OEM dahua that I installed Dahua FW on and after reset back to factory is working as expected. If you don't like the company anymore and able to find the FW for Dahua why not just update to the Dahua for your device and not worry about your OEM that your not happy with?

No, I haven't done that yet. Documentation does seem to suggest performing a factory reset after a firmware update, so I will give it a try. As for why not update to Dahua?; because I don't have another $1000+ lying around... but at least I can warn others not to make the same mistake.

Anyway, thank you for your suggestions but I'd like to stay focused on my question which concerns getting access to OEM firmware.

 

[torinwalker]

Well that went as well as I expected. Backed up the config, reset to factory defaults, restored config, and I'm right back to where I was. Display is still as wonky as before.

 

[Revo2Maxx]

Well hate to say if there is an issue with a DVR/NVR or IP camera for me anyway, Doing a Backup aka Export when the device is not having a good day. Normally will put the device back into the not working so well after importing the bad data back into the device.. Sometimes after a Reset it is best to setup fresh to see if it is working any better then it was before the update and reset. 1k is a lot to be unhappy about... Hope you find a Solution that works for you.

 

[bigredfish]

Well that went as well as I expected. Backed up the config, reset to factory defaults, restored config, and I'm right back to where I was. Display is still as wonky as before.

Was the problem still there after the factory default but before you restored your config?

Also, what browser are you using? Try Edge in IE mode

Lastly, have you tried to reset the NVR default Display Resolution?

 

[torinwalker]

Was the problem still there after the factory default but before you restored your config?

Also, what browser are you using? Try Edge in IE mode

Lastly, have you tried to reset the NVR default Display Resolution?

You are both on to something. I will give it a go again, except this time I will check the web console before restoring the configuration. As for default resolution, I tried switching it but it has no impact on the web interface. To avoid any confusion in this conversation, I am differentiating between the physical console which works fine, by the way, and the web interface that one accesses over Chrome or Edge. Yes, I tried in IE mode, but need to do this all over again after a factory reset to see if the config itself is what's messing up the display.

While I'm at it, I will post a few quick annotated screenshots to show you what UI artifacts I'm talking about.
In almost all examples, the left hand nav menu font is so large that the nav titles are truncated. They only show up in full if I zoom out to 50%, but then the content of the main pane gets so small I cannot read it.

Maintenance -> Network Test: Notice the huge gaps (whitespace) pushing the table down the screen


In Alart -> Video Detection -> Region Setting: The sensitivity/detection graph spills past the right hand side of the dialog.

In Maintenance -> Update: Notice the Browse and Update buttons to the right of the Path field - they should be in line with the textfield.


And one last example: Notice the checkboxes at the bottom are pushed upward, while the zoom buttons are pushed downward. This sort of misalignment wouldn't pass QA. The outcome is the same on Chrome, Edge, and Edge in Internet Explorer mode.


None of these artifacts would have made it to a production release... but I am hopeful that it is me, not the firmware. That would be wonderful. In fact, I would love to hear from you guys that you see nothing of the sort on your OEM Dahua and that the web console displays better than this.

I'll reset back to factory and explore the web console before restoring the configuration. If it behaves well, I will reconfigure from scratch. I'll also try playing with the display resolution, but isn't that for the directly connected monitor, not the web console? I'll try it anyway.

I appreciate you guys helping me out here. Thank you.

 

[steve1225]

You didn't specify but are You a Mac user?
Have You installed Microsoft Office for Mac with included Microsoft Windows fonts?
This is source of the problem...

This problem started on 2023 Dahua NVR firmwares and it was much worse that now.. NVR UI was hardly useable on Mac on any browser...
All fonts on Dahua NVRs menus were very big or very small..

In 2024 firmwares Dahua fixes some css styles for Mac platform - it's much better but not ideal...

Problem don't exists if you use NVR web interface on Mac without Microsoft Office installed.

Microsoft Office installs lots of Windows fonts, some are duplicates to original Mac versions with different sizes & parameters..
in that situation Dahua web style sheets on NVR goes crazy - they try to support all platforms (Windows, Mac, iPhone, Android) but they don't support crazy mixes like Mac with some Windows fonts installed.

ps. you can try to use vector scaling in browser (Mac + and Mac -) - it usually helps a lot..