Adding an NVR - what's the best way to connect it?

[vlct]

I'm looking at adding an NVR to my system.

Currently my system is connected like in the pic I attached with the green line.

I use iSpy for live stream, iVMS-4200 for playback.

When the NVR is added and connected as red line in pic will iSpy still receive the stream 'through' the NVR just the same as being connected without the NVR?

 

[JB1970]

Im looking at adding a NVR to my system.

Currently my system is connected like in the pic I attached with the green line.

I use iSpy for live stream, iVMS-4200 for playback.

When NVR is added and connected as red line in pic will iSpy still receive the stream 'through' the NVR just the same as being connected without the NVR?

No, it won’t receive the stream from the camera directly, as the NVR PoE ports are on their own network blocked from the internet.

You could keep the NVR and camera connected to the router; there’s no problem with that as the NVR can connect to the camera through your network to record the stream. Alternatively if you wanted to connect the camera directly to the NVR, you would remove the camera from iSpy and then add the NVR itself to iSpy so that iSpy accesses the camera via the internet connected NVR.

 

[vlct]

Thanks JB1970.

 

[vlct]

So I have added the NVR, with camera still plugged in the router, all was good.

Then tried the camera straight to the NVR, all worked good.

But when plugging the camera back to the router, no matter what I tried the cam's IP would not show up in the router??
So I had no access at all to the camera now, so had to do a factory reset on cam so it would show up again.

Did I do something wrong when disconnecting the camera from the NVR??

 

[Dan]

Hi @vlct

You didn't do anything wrong.

When you plug cameras into the NVR directly they are assigned IP addresses from the NVRs subnet IP range (for Hikvision NVRs it is usually 192.168.254.xxx) which is usually different and not accessible from your router's local IP address range.

When you move directly connected cameras to your router or a switch connected to that router you won't be able to access the camera while it is on that subnet IP address, but if these are Hikvision cameras you should still be able to detect these cameras using the iVMS-4200 software or SADP Tool and you can use these to change the IP address of the cameras so they are on your router's local IP range.

 

[vlct]

Thanks Dan,

Yes the Camera and NVR are Hikvision.

So when the camera's disconnected from the NVR it still keeps the 192.168.254.xxx IP, and this will happen every time its plugged into the NVR?

So in iVMS I take it I would see the cam's IP 192.168.254.114, (like in pic) and then just edit it there?

 

[Dan]

Hi @vlct

When the Hikvision cameras are new out of the box or have been hard reset then they will be assigned a subnet IP address when they are plugged into the NVR ports and they will hold onto that IP address.

If you then move that camera to an external PoE injector or switch, you will need to manually change the camera's IP address to your local network range. Once you've done this the camera will hold onto this IP address even if you try and move the camera back to the ports on the NVR, if you wanted to move the cameras back to the NVR ports you would need to again manually change the camera's IP address to the NVRs subnet range.

You shouldn't need to manually add the cameras to iVMS, if you have these cameras connected to a separate PoE switch then the cameras with their 192.168.254.xxx IP addresses should automatically appear in the online devices list in the iVMS software.

Can you please share a screenshot of your online devices list in the iVMS Device/Camera Management menu?

 

[vlct]

I didn't need to manually add the cam to iVMS, after the factory reset, it showed back up as 192.168.1.64 as it was before.

My question was instead of the factory reset, is it all I had to do was go into iVMS and change the IP from 192.168.254.144 back to 192.168.1.64 in the menu, like in Pic 1 and Pic 2 ?

 

[Dan]

Hi @vlct

Yes, if you are moving the camera from directly connected to the NVR to a separate switch you can use iVMS to change the IP address to a local IP address.

If you have multiple cameras on the local network they will each need a unique IP address (e.g. 192.168.1.64 / 192.168.1.65 / etc...), you can check which IP addresses are free to use on your network by following this forum guide.

 

[vlct]

Thanks Dan,

That would have saved me some work getting the settings back to where they were, as I only had an older config file after the factory reset.

Ok I will get to my next problem.

I have a another cam (like the one in the pic below) which is also connected to the router.
This cam is pretty restricted in accessing or changing any of its software settings even in Onvif Manager.

The NVR can see the cam and I can get it to record continuously in the NVR but I wanted to try to get this to record on motion which no matter what I have tried so far hasn't worked (I haven't connected it directly to the NVR yet).

Would connecting this to the NVR give me the motion/ event recording option??

Also if I needed to plug this cam back to the router how would I go about changing the IP back to 192.168.115 as iVMS cant see this cam??

https://community.arlo.com/t5/Arlo-Essential-Wire-Free-Cameras/Record-continuously/td-p/1886542​

 

[Dan]

Hi @vlct

We always recommend that ONVIF/3rd-party cameras are added remotely rather than directly because when adding directly you lose access to any camera-specific settings that you would usually access by logging into the camera with a browser.

Lots of cheap, commercial cameras don't offer full ONVIF support and this means they can be lacking support for features like motion detection or other smart events.

I don't think it will be possible to get this 3rd-party camera recording on motion detection.