Wireless adding to NVR?

[Stonework2]

Hello guys!

A vendor had installed Hikvision CCTV cameras in my small office 4-5 years ago and since then we have faced nothing but problems, blurry view, lines, double vision (ghost vision), recording stopping randomly, camera view being kinda zoomed-in etc. When I last talked to the vendor, he simply said "sir, CCTV life is hardly 2-3 years and you have already used them for 4-5 years you have to upgrade to IP cameras now", even though, we have faced issues since the very beginning of installation.
Current cameras are the older ones (non-IP) using analog cables, though the same vendor also upgraded our cabling to Cat6 few months ago claiming that most of our issues will resolved by this upgrade.

So by now I am convinced that the vendor is dishonest or simply lacks the technical know-how. I searched and found another guy who, to some point, resolved our blurry view issues and the reason was lack of earthing connection. So, at the moment we do have some working CCTV but now I need to add some more cameras, for redundancy and to cover some blind spots.

I am in favor of IMOU Rangers 2 Cameras (4 MP) as I have already been using them for some time now with local WD's purple 128GB SD Card. Though they are not very reliable either as I have noticed that few cameras stopped recording once the SD card was full (though camera is supposed to auto-delete older recordings) but still, they are easy to install and have much better clarity than the hikvision CCTV installed and most importantly requires no cabling.

So now my question is, can a NVR (connected via Ethernet) detect & add these wireless cameras and save the recordings wirelessly? or should I just continue using the local SD card and use the native IMOU mobile/windows app, OR the very last option that I am trying to avoid is that is that I should actually throw away my current setup and just bear the high expense of a new IP cameras setup.

Thanks for reading through, I hope someone can guide me through this

 

[wittaj]

Nobody here is gonna recommend wireless cameras for mission critical deployment.

You having issues with the SD cards is least of your concerns. It will miss action that you don't realize. Or someone comes in with wifi jammer and cleans your office out.

An NVR is going to prefer 24/7 video being sent to it and a wireless camera will only send during triggered events.

But IF the cameras are ONVIF compliant and IF they are on the same IP subnet as the NVR, you could manually add them to the NVR. But again moat here will not recommend wireless cams.

 

[Stonework2]

Nobody here is gonna recommend wireless cameras for mission critical deployment.

You having issues with the SD cards is least of your concerns. It will miss action that you don't realize. Or someone comes in with wifi jammer and cleans your office out.

An NVR is going to prefer 24/7 video being sent to it and a wireless camera will only send during triggered events.

But IF the cameras are ONVIF compliant and IF they are on the same IP subnet as the NVR, you could manually add them to the NVR. But again moat here will not recommend wireless cams.

hi thank you for replying.

I am not much concerned about wifi jammers as they are not really that common here and even if it were, I am sure someone using that will also simply take the NVR with them too. So security wise, they are kinda similar.

But I do agree with sd card being unstable/unreliable and that is the reason I posted this question and am considering installing NVR.

ONVIF is mentioned in the specs for these cameras and yes, there is only NAT at our location.

So if I two further questions, if you may.
1. Is ONVIF enough to check compatibility of cameras and NVR or do I have check something else too?
2. Can I add the cameras to NVR wirelessly while NVR is connected via Ethernet to the router.

 

[Revo2Maxx]

To answer your question a Wifi camera that is connected to the same network as your NVR can infact connect to a NVR that has the ability to connect such devices. Like Dahua 41xx, 42xx 44xx 52xx and the like.. As stated before Wifi isn't a great choice for main interest points and the cameras normally have an ethernet connection that would be good to connect to your NVR using a Local Switch or router ethernet ports..

About Micro SD cards while again shouldn't be only format of recording done and I am not sure that your issue is the card it self. I use WD Purple and they have been the best cards. I don't use them on all my cameras only the ones that I want more footage stored that I don't format them often but one of the issues that can happen is that in the camera there is an area where you choose to Overwrite or Stop and if your camera didn't record after the card got full then sounds like it is setup for STOP.. If you look at my Alibi 4mp Ai PTZ that only records Ai events and Ultra Motion events few as it may it also captures images.. I get about a month on 128gb WD Purple on h.265.

I think the issue you might be having is that you are trying to access Wifi and doing so with Micro SD as only form of storage can be problematic.. I would move Ethernet to the camera and connect using Ethernet and playback will improve.. On your camera not sure if it is Smart Home device if it is I wouldn't use them as only format of Security Period.. No WebUI normally at least for the ones I own.. Even my PT Smart Home camera is on an ethernet connection and no issue with streaming video to multi NVR, Apps and even to Blue Iris.. On wifi I would pull my hair out long ago lol..

I would make a habit of looking over your footage and formatting your Micro SD card before it gets to the end if you don't have access to a WebUI where you can make changes to the cameras record as you can see in my Dahua cameras on the 3rd picture.. Again with Wifi at the cameras current location wifi is problematic for me so I ran Ethernet cable to the location and camera was like a different camera all together.. No drop outs and as I said full streams to multi locations..

 

[Stonework2]

T

To answer your question a Wifi camera that is connected to the same network as your NVR can infact connect to a NVR that has the ability to connect such devices. Like Dahua 41xx, 42xx 44xx 52xx and the like.. As stated before Wifi isn't a great choice for main interest points and the cameras normally have an ethernet connection that would be good to connect to your NVR using a Local Switch or router ethernet ports..

About Micro SD cards while again shouldn't be only format of recording done and I am not sure that your issue is the card it self. I use WD Purple and they have been the best cards. I don't use them on all my cameras only the ones that I want more footage stored that I don't format them often but one of the issues that can happen is that in the camera there is an area where you choose to Overwrite or Stop and if your camera didn't record after the card got full then sounds like it is setup for STOP.. If you look at my Alibi 4mp Ai PTZ that only records Ai events and Ultra Motion events few as it may it also captures images.. I get about a month on 128gb WD Purple on h.265.

I think the issue you might be having is that you are trying to access Wifi and doing so with Micro SD as only form of storage can be problematic.. I would move Ethernet to the camera and connect using Ethernet and playback will improve.. On your camera not sure if it is Smart Home device if it is I wouldn't use them as only format of Security Period.. No WebUI normally at least for the ones I own.. Even my PT Smart Home camera is on an ethernet connection and no issue with streaming video to multi NVR, Apps and even to Blue Iris.. On wifi I would pull my hair out long ago lol..

I would make a habit of looking over your footage and formatting your Micro SD card before it gets to the end if you don't have access to a WebUI where you can make changes to the cameras record as you can see in my Dahua cameras on the 3rd picture.. Again with Wifi at the cameras current location wifi is problematic for me so I ran Ethernet cable to the location and camera was like a different camera all together.. No drop outs and as I said full streams to multi locations..

Thank you so much for the confirmation that I can add the cameras to a NVR wirelessly.

So for now I'll simply install the cameras without a NVR and whenever I find a reliable/trustable new vendor to install and maintain the cameras, I'll add the cat6 and a NVR.

BTW, I am using WD purple cards too and cards are still fine after almost a year of use. It's the camera app/setting that is defective. The camera/app is supposed to overwrite older recordings as the card becomes full but in a few cameras that feature didn't work and those affected cameras simply stopped recording, although live view was obviously unaffected.

Also, i have no issues viewing the past recordings on wifi but yes, I'll have to start checking these cameras every 2-3 days to make sure that these cameras are still recording/overwriting.

And lastly, I'll have to check out the "blueiris" app you linked.

Thanks again

 

[wittaj]

You will want to match brands, so either an IMOU NVR if they make one or a Dahua OEM NVR since Dahua makes IMOU.

 

[Stonework2]

Great will do that then.

Thank you