Alastair Stevenson and DemonicHawk,
Thank you both so much for your help with this. I finally got my Costco Swann 16 channel/8 POE 3MP NVR working with Hikvision firmware. It appears that the Swann/Costco model I have (CONV16-b3mp8c /
http://www.costco.com/Swann-16-Chan...h-115-ft.-Night-Vision.product.100144944.html) corresponds to the Hikvision 7816 series, not 7616, and not 7116. Thanks to DemonicHawk earlier, and a number of assists from Alastair late, I was able to load the 7816 series firmware onto my NVR and it seems to work well. There are a few glitches like I can't get all 8 cameras to show live feed on the same screen but I think this is a result of more configuration needed rather than a firmware issue.
A couple of important things I learned along the way (again thanks to you both for assisting with much of this info):
1. If using
TFTP, and you find yourself trying to get it to work repeatedly (numerous failures before getting it to work), I found that if you power on the NVR instantly after launching the TFTP executable it seems to work much better. So I would launch the TFTP executable, and instantly switch on the NVR and I guess whatever timing issue was occurring seemed to get resolved by this method. Your mileage may vary. I also set the IP Gateway on the NVR to an address that does not exist (on a completely different subnet) on my network just to make sure it doesn't automatically pick up an IP address from the router.
2. The firmware I used (and received from Alistair) is 7816N-E2_308_ML. Alistair, would be kind enough to provide a public place/link where others can download?
3. After loading the firmware I was allowed to choose my language directly on the NVR startup screen.
4. I did NOT need to update the firmware on my cameras. The newly branded Hikvision NVR picked up my Swann firmwared cameras automatically (you may need to upgrade cams if the different in firmware between NVR and cameras is too great).
5. Make sure your firewall is completely turned off while TFTPing (just in case).
6. With regards to the phony error (Missing
econt_Vision-AV2000 file) on the TFTP app we're supposed to ignore- I found that if I successfully was able to transfer the digicam.dav, I did not get the error. i only got the error if I TFTP was able to connect to the NVR but unable to transfer the digicam.dav file. This is just my findings, others have reported otherwise.
Thanks again guys!