Skip to content

Cameras: Hikvision

Jump to bottom Edit New page
Clyde Stubbs edited this page Sep 28, 2021 · 6 revisions

Note: Moonfire NVR's author discourages buying Hikvision cameras for ethical reasons. He believes that Hikvision is writing custom software to support the Uyghur genocide. Keep using any Hikvision cameras you already own, but please don't buy more!

Hikvision DS-2CD2032

This model was released in 2013; it's long since been surpassed in video quality. However, if you own one, it does work with Moonfire NVR.

See review thread on networkcameracritic.com.

This camera model is resold under a couple other names:

  • Lorex MCNB2151
  • Swann SWNHD-820CAM

RTSP paths:

  • main stream: /Streaming/Channels/1
  • sub stream: /Streaming/Channels/2

Security: as with many cheap cameras, this one is hopelessly insecure. Moonfire NVR's author has it installed on a separate LAN segment such that the NVR can initiate TCP connections to the camera, but the camera can not initiate connections to the NVR, LAN, or Internet.

Configuration:

  • Web UI: partially functional in a modern web browser. For full support (including viewing the streams and configuring on-camera motion detection) you need an old web browser. Moonfire NVR's author uses a Windows 10 virtual machine with Internet Explorer and Dahua's ActiveX plugin.
  • Desktop software: Hikvision's iVMS-4200 software appears to mostly work on macOS and Windows.
  • ONVIF: works in limited testing. Likely doesn't support all features of the camera.

Reliability and bugs:

  • these cameras occasionally error out and reconnect after a few seconds. Sometimes this happens zero or one time a day; sometimes a dozen or more, perhaps depending on heat. A typical error looks like: pts not monotonically increasing; got 680983216 then 680977948.
  • after a DIGEST authentication failure over either HTTP or RTSP, the camera will reject all authentication attempts until it's rebooted.

On-camera motion detection: In progress (see issue #29). There are various APIs for this:

  1. Hikvision's proprietary API, described in IP Surveillance API User Guide, Version 2.0, Revision 4, 2013-12. The experimental camera-motion program uses this successfully.
  2. ONVIF PullPoint API. The camera appears to support this properly. Moonfire NVR doesn't currently implement it.
  3. ONVIF Basic Subscriptions. Untested. This is a poor API, as described here.
  4. ONVIF/RTSP Metadata Streams. Note that Moonfire NVR doesn't support configuring or using these streams yet. In experiments, they appear to work on this camera with one caveat. The metadata configuration must have an Events element set, even though the ONVIF Media Service Specification section 5.23.31 says it's optional. Otherwise a DESCRIBE command will include no metadata stream.

Hikvision DS-2CD2043G0-I

A more recent camera with similar resolution but a wider image. The same RTSP urls as for the DS-2CD2032 work with this camera. It can be configured with modern browsers.

It has settings for Space and Time DNR (Digital Noise Reduction) which if used in conjunction with VBR can greatly reduce the bandwidth and thus the required storage, with minor impact on image quality.

Add a custom footer
Add a custom sidebar
Clone this wiki locally