scn101
Getting the hang of it
I want to share my observation in case it helps anyone.
Chinese NVR, DS-7816N-E1 (ostensibly the same hardware as the 76xxNI-Ex but made for China only). Unit came with 3.0.10 in English from AliExpress. Using the web GUI I successfully upgraded to 3.3.2, 3.3.4, and finally 3.4.0 (all digicap.dav files had Lang=2, Lang 1 is rejected by the NVR) all the while maintaining the English interface. I wanted to try 3.4.2 and loaded it via the web GUI. This caused the NVR to revert to Chinese. The unit would not accept a FW downgrade, either by GUI or the HV tftp. Lovely. Took the NVR apart, attached a TTL UART and was able to stop u-boot <ctrl-u>. U-boot was from 2010 and it would only allow for a FW upgrade, I couldn't see how to get to the normal u-boot commands. I used a lightweight tftp server to send a backup of my original 3.0.10 I created using hiktools and my original mtdblocks but u-boot reported something like FW not in cramfs format. I successfully loaded 3.4.0 but the NVR remained in Chinese. Next I tried a 3.0.10 from HV Europe, EN only, and that worked. English interface back. Starting with 3.3.2 via the web GUI, then 3.3.4, I ended up back at 3.4.0 in English.
I tried to load my saved config file via the web GUI but it had produced an error so I had to reconfigure the NVR. In fact, saving a config file and reloading it never seems to work via the web GUI. I might try it from the NVR's GUI.
Oh, and now for my (even more) idiotic endeavour, read only if you want to laugh (or cry, like I did):
All 11 of my 2xx2 IPCs are on my LAN and I left them connected figuring that they won't be in tftp mode as they are fully booted. However, to reboot the NVR I turned off the UPS taking all of the IPCs down (I should have used the NVR's power switch). When power was restored the IPCs saw the HV tftp server I left running on my PC and loaded the NVR's FW. 5 out of 11 IPCs went min system, the other 6 luckily didn't take the "new" FW. I recovered all of them but of course I had to reconfigure all of their settings. What a pain. In total, all of the above took over 9 hours to resolve but I'm back online.
Feel free to comment!
Chinese NVR, DS-7816N-E1 (ostensibly the same hardware as the 76xxNI-Ex but made for China only). Unit came with 3.0.10 in English from AliExpress. Using the web GUI I successfully upgraded to 3.3.2, 3.3.4, and finally 3.4.0 (all digicap.dav files had Lang=2, Lang 1 is rejected by the NVR) all the while maintaining the English interface. I wanted to try 3.4.2 and loaded it via the web GUI. This caused the NVR to revert to Chinese. The unit would not accept a FW downgrade, either by GUI or the HV tftp. Lovely. Took the NVR apart, attached a TTL UART and was able to stop u-boot <ctrl-u>. U-boot was from 2010 and it would only allow for a FW upgrade, I couldn't see how to get to the normal u-boot commands. I used a lightweight tftp server to send a backup of my original 3.0.10 I created using hiktools and my original mtdblocks but u-boot reported something like FW not in cramfs format. I successfully loaded 3.4.0 but the NVR remained in Chinese. Next I tried a 3.0.10 from HV Europe, EN only, and that worked. English interface back. Starting with 3.3.2 via the web GUI, then 3.3.4, I ended up back at 3.4.0 in English.
I tried to load my saved config file via the web GUI but it had produced an error so I had to reconfigure the NVR. In fact, saving a config file and reloading it never seems to work via the web GUI. I might try it from the NVR's GUI.
Oh, and now for my (even more) idiotic endeavour, read only if you want to laugh (or cry, like I did):
All 11 of my 2xx2 IPCs are on my LAN and I left them connected figuring that they won't be in tftp mode as they are fully booted. However, to reboot the NVR I turned off the UPS taking all of the IPCs down (I should have used the NVR's power switch). When power was restored the IPCs saw the HV tftp server I left running on my PC and loaded the NVR's FW. 5 out of 11 IPCs went min system, the other 6 luckily didn't take the "new" FW. I recovered all of them but of course I had to reconfigure all of their settings. What a pain. In total, all of the above took over 9 hours to resolve but I'm back online.
Feel free to comment!
Last edited by a moderator:
