Support for "Generic" or "OEM" camera firmware from the main vendors
Answered
I'd like to start off with, I understand the support concerns around this. But from the end user/integrator side it's also a challenge.
I'll use Dahua as an example here, as it's where I have the most recent experience. Depending on the channel you purchase through you often get cameras with the "General" firmware loaded on them. In that they don't show a "Dahua" logo on them but instead show something else e.g. "IP Camera". They are however 100% Dahua cameras just OEM'd. And infact Dahua often have both firmware versions available directly for you to chose from on their website. They also show different camera vendor information e.g.:
What I'm starting to see now is that some of the vendors are working directly with Dahua to get bugs fixed and in some cases features added to these "General" firmware releases that are not finding their way to the Dahua branded firmware releases. e.g. Some PTZ's get autotracking the camera in the screenshot above getting a number of critical fixes for SmartIR. The issue for me now is that when using cameras like this in NX they don't get detected as Dahua and so you can't use the analytics features. I know there is a temporary way to fix this by overriding the camera vendor, but this gets overwritten periodically. Is there a permanent solution, even if it came with a relevant "This is not officially supported" warning to resolve this?
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Hi Campbell Steven,
Thanks for your comments and questions.
We can understand your concern and request, but so far, we don't think this is an issue.
Since Nx Witness is supporting Dahua which is the original brand, not their OEM brands, so it is the nature that the analytics on the OEM camera can't be used. Thinking while you are using H brand camera, there is no need to put a warning like : it is not a D brand.Even though it is an OEM or identical camera, from product point of view, it is different manufacturer still.
That would be the cost if a customer chooses to use OEM brand instead of the source brand. As it is different brands, the ""This is not officially supported"" is the fact that might not need to intentionally put a notice for that.The reasons that we can't always just put the General as Dahua are
1) General is general. Every manufacturer can use General, so it won't be an identifier.
2) If Dahua decides to have any change on their products, it is likely won't be applied to OEM ones.
3) If it is a firmware issue, Dahua might not be fixing the issue for EoL models or OEM models. That would cause back fire to every one.As a result, the Analytics support for Dahua OEM brand should be controlled very carefully.
There are several things needs to be verified and considered. So, the permanent fix could be -
1) The user uses real Dahua Brand camera.
2) While the fix is not working, contact the local distributor and raise the post/ticket for the requests.Hope this can explain the idea of the whole case.
Thanks. -
Hi Ichrio,
Kind of understand your response, however note that the "General" firmware is shipped by Dahua and is available from their website to download for alot of cameras, it's not just distributed by 3rd parties. So it is official firmware, it just happens that for a range of cameras it's a far more updated firmware with bugs fixed often don't make it into their other "Dahua" firmware.
Don't really understand your contention with the name of "General" it's not my preferred name either it's far too Generic, but it's the name Dahua have used, neither of us really have a say in that. Ofcourse i'd be expecting that you could use more than just the name "General" to identify/probe a camera to have the analytics features available.
As for points 2 and 3, I don't really understand what the concern is here. I see point 3 as an upside for the end user if they update the general firmware but not the other firmware to stave off EoL and increase the lifetime of cameras which already see short lifetimes for firmware releases. As for point 2, I've seen the reverse of this so far, the General firmware seems to get more releases and bug fixes than the Dahua branded firmware.
As for your last points, the cameras I'm using are branded Dahua, have a Dahua logo on the box and printed on the camera and have come from a Dahua distributor with Dahua branded firmware, I've simply loaded the "General" firmware on instead. My enquries thus far is that getting the same fixes that are present in the General firmware also ship in the "Dahua" firmware seems to simply be too difficult for anyone I've contacted to be able to arrange.
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Hi Campbell Steven,
If the General firmware and Dahua firmware are both available, it is suggested you can use the Dahua branded firmware for you cameras. Regarding your customer that refused to use Dahua firmware (but still download the firmware from Dahua website), unfortunately this would be the cost that they are using an OEM products.
The concern for the "General" manufacturer name is simply due to it is not unique.
If an identifier is not unique, then it would create lots of confusion. If there is someone also using "General" as the manufacturer name, but it is not coming from Dahua, then you would be confusing. This is not a good result for you either.In short, as we mentioned in the previous threads, the proper ways would be -
1) The user uses real Dahua Brand camera.
2) While the fix is not working, contact the local distributor and raise the post/ticket for the requests.
3) If the manufacturer name and model name are unique enough, we can offer you a fix that lasts for awhile and when confirmed to work as intended, we can add it to the source code.With the suggestions above, it would be helping you to keep Dahua firmware in use, also give the flexibility if the "General firmware" is confirmed to work properly.
Hope this helps. Thanks.
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Hi there,
I have the same problem. I will in future only be buying Dahua branded cameras, not OEM Dahua cameras. However I have numerous existing OEM Dahua cameras which have analytics capabilities (as well as a handful of Dahua branded ones) and very much want to utilize the new analytics capabilities of NX 4.2, but when they just show as "General" Vendor, as discussed, their analytics don't work with NX.
Obviously they are the same camera, same features, but a different name on top.
It would cost many thousands of dollars to replace all these cameras.
Would it be possible/easy to enable in NX Witness, the ability to edit the vendor locally, so that an integrator, if needed, can edit the Vendor details on the NX Witness camera page so it can be called "Dahua" instead of "General", to get the analytics working?
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Hi Edward Dickey,
For us, it would be quite easy to enable the Dahua analytics for their OEM, but the issue is that the OEM name has to be unique otherwise it is very likely errors occur, since there are more brands that use General, Onvif, IP camera, IPC, etc. etc. as their OEM name. The best option would be to request your vendor to provide firmware with a unique Vendor name and/or a unique model name.
Sometimes we see that the vendor name is General, and the model name is unique, in such case we often can enable the analytics.
Can you share a screenshot of the Camera Settings menu, tab General and expand the More Info and share a screenshot?
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Yes, here are two different cameras, both Dahua OEM.
This first is a Dahua OEM SD50225U-H. It has tripwire and intrusion but these don't show in NX 4.2.
The next is a fixed camera with Tripwire and Intrusion analytics which you can see on its webpage, probably equivilant to a Dahua HDW2431EMP-AS-0280B-S2. On NX 4.2, it doesn't recognize any analytics available however.
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Norman - Nx Support I understand the annoyance of the name and I fully agree too it's a poor choice, but I feel that asking the vendor, Dahua in this case to make changes to this is unrealistic, atleast with my interactions via camera vendors as large as they are. So sadly I feel that we are stuck with this name, given how widely they use and supply firmware directly off their site with this name. I think that either some other method either with some combination of fields i.e. it's named General and the MAC is within a Dahua allocated range therefore it's likely a Dahua. Or simply offer the end user a way to override the detection, sure for whatever reason it might not work, in which case it's the end users problem to source the branded/tested firmware for their camera.
With my cameras I've been able to reflash to the "Dahua" branded firmware, but the camera performance, bugfixes and updates I find much better in the General releases. I've found that if you report a bug to Dahua (atleast with my vendors) the fix generally comes in a "General" branded release rather than the Dahua release. Others may have totally difference experiences, but that seems to be how it works with our Vendors in this part of the world.
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Hi Edward Dickey,
Please download THIS resource_data.json file.
When the file had been downloaded, please, follow the steps as described below:
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Remove the camera from the system.
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Stop the mediaserver application and paste the resource_data.json file which you downloaded at the following location:
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For Windows: C:\Program Files\Network Optix\Nx Witness\MediaServer
For Linux: /opt/networkoptix/mediaserver/bin/ -
Now start the mediaserver application again.
- Add the camera
To stop and start the media server, please do it as follows:
For Windows: Open the task manager, select tab ‘Services’ find the mediaserver application, right-click and select; Stop or Start
For Linux: Open the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and enter the following command;
sudo service networkoptix-mediaserver stop or sudo service networkoptix-mediaserver start.
After this, the request should be fulfilled.As mentioned before we cannot make this permanent for the General | IP Camera, but we can make it permanent for the General | ALV-C-PT50225U-H. So if this works for you, please confirm that is works and we'll add this model to our next patch.
@..., I wish it was so simple as you describe it, but there are a lot of hurdles created when people are able to change brand/model name, and therefore it is no option at this moment to offer such solution.
Although, Dahua is a large company, often OEM buyers are able to get their own branding instead of the current generic names. We have seen this before.
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Hi Norman,
Thanks very much for the json file and the instructions.
It worked perfectly! NX now recognizes great. (Very happy).
I have found I have one other different Dahua OEM PTZ with analytics, which is:
Vendor: General
Model: ALV-C-PT59430U-HN
Is it possible to include this in the json file too?
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Hi Edward Dickey,
Sure, no problem. Repeat the steps I mentioned in the previous message with THIS file. Please confirm if it works for the ALV-C-PT59430U-HN as well, and I'll add both models to our source code to make the fix permanent.
Be aware that I added the General | IP Camera also to this file, but this will break eventually, since we cannot add it to our source code for the reasons we mentioned before.
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Im not sure if this is the correct place to request this but its the best I could find. I am in the same situation as the OP. I spoke with my OEM vendor about Dahua badged firmware. They have not released a Dahua badged firmware that supports Smart IR for these this firmwares on these cameras. The "general" ones DO support smart IR. I'd hate to give that up, but I need the Dahua Analytics plugin to work. Could someone at NX add these two models to the Dahua plugin list and post the file I need to put in the media server folder? I'll report back so you can list as officially supported as well.
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Hi Calvin Wientjes,
Please follow the steps as described below:
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Remove the device from the system.
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Stop the mediaserver application and paste the resource_data.json file in THIS download link at the following location:
For Windows: C:\Program Files\Network Optix\Nx Witness\MediaServer
For Linux: /opt/networkoptix/mediaserver/bin/ -
Now start the mediaserver application again.
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Add the device again.
To stop and start the media server, please do it as follows:
For Windows: Open the task manager, select tab ‘Services’ find the mediaserver application, right-click and select; Stop or Start
For Linux: Open the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and enter the following command;
sudo service networkoptix-mediaserver stop
sudo service networkoptix-mediaserver start.After this, the request should be fulfilled. Please confirm, and we will add it to a future patch.
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Norman - Nx Support I can confirm that worked for those two models. Thank you!
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Thank you, Calvin Wientjes, for the confirmation.
I have requested our team to add this model permanently in the following 4.2_patch.
JIRA-VMS-27275
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Hi Lucas,
Sure, please can you share a screenshot of the Camera Settings menu, tab General and expand the More Info and share a screenshot?
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I got one for you.
Hikvision Encoder/DVR. It would be awesome if there was a setting (even if i had to ssh into the server) where i could adjust this without a huge amount of pain. this is a constant battle of getting "OEM" or "GENERAL" or "Insert brand here" NX witness will work fine if the vendor id is correct. but it is can be a overwealming task to get it to force identify the vendor
Thanks!
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Hi Brad D,
Please download THIS resource_data.json file.
When the file had been downloaded, please, follow the steps as described below:
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Remove the camera from the system.
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Stop the mediaserver application and paste the resource_data.json file which you downloaded at the following location:
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For Windows: C:\Program Files\Network Optix\Nx Witness\MediaServer
For Linux: /opt/networkoptix/mediaserver/bin/ -
Now start the mediaserver application again.
- Add the camera
To stop and start the media server, please do it as follows:
For Windows: Open the task manager, select tab ‘Services’ find the mediaserver application, right-click and select; Stop or Start
For Linux: Open the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and enter the following command;
sudo service networkoptix-mediaserver stop or sudo service networkoptix-mediaserver start.
After this, the request should be fulfilled.If you confirm it, we'll make sure to add it to the source code, otherwise the fix will break over time.
At this stage we don't consider 'a setting' to allow the user to do this themselves since it could affect the reliability of the system as a whole when people make mistakes.
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Hi Norman,
I have just upgraded another site from version 3.2 to 4.2.
This site has several PTZes which are an OEM Dahua that NX sees as General but with a specific model type.
It shows on NX as:
Vendor: General
Model: ALV-C-PT65F230F-HNI
Would you be able to add this into a json file?
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Can you add the attached camera vendor and model names to the json file to get the Dahua analytic plugin working. Its essentially the same Dahua camera as the one in the OP just with a motorized lens.
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Hi Calvin Wientjes,
Sorry for the delay, I was on a holiday last week.
HERE is the link to the file for the ALV-C-PT65F230F-HNI.
Please follow the steps as mentioned in THIS comment to enable the Dahua Analytics for the OEM PTZ cameras. Please, do not forget to confirm, so I can add the fix to the source file.Regarding the Dahua IPC-T5442T-ZE camera, if the vendor name is Dahua, it should work as a Dahua and analytics should be present if these are based on the mentioned Dahua API in THIS support article.
If you can forward the device through port forwarding, I'm more than happy to investigate the issue and I would convert your request into a support ticket, so you can share the login credentials privately. Please confirm, and I'll create the ticket on your behalf.
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Shoot I completely forgot that I had already switched the firmware. The analytics are working just fine with the Dahua firmware but I would like to switch back to generic to regain the smart IR function. So the model number will remain the same but can you add the AI plugin for that camera model but the vendor being generic.
Calvin
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Hi Calvin Wientjes,
HERE you are. This file contains the fix for a camera with Vendor name General and model name IPC-T5442*.
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Hi Norman,
Thanks. I used this latest file to fix
Vendor: General
Model: ALV-C-PT65F230F-HNI
but it did not take effect.
This site has two NX Witness Servers which are merged together. I put the json file into just one first and added the PTZ back into that one but this didn't work. Then tried with adding the file to both. But could not get it to change to Dahua ALV-C-PT65F230F-HNI.
Would I need to delete the PTZ and stop both servers then add it back to one server. Or is there something else I'm missing?
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Hi Edward Dickey,
You have to follow the steps in THIS reply.
By removing the camera from the system, it means you have to delete it, not moving it to another server within the same system
Regardless of the number of servers in the system, if you add the resource_data.json file to one server, and the file has a higher version number than the online resource file, the one on the server applies for all servers within the system. And that also explain why we want the confirmation, since in that case we add the fix to the source file, which also gets a higher version number and eventually will overrule the file you added to the server, but you won't notice that.
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Hi Norman,
OK. I tried following those steps, including deleting the camera from the system.
This procedure worked fine previously for my other site. However for some reason, this site still just keeps it as:
Vendor: General
Model: ALV-C-PT65F230F-HNI
Is there anything else I can do re this?
I tried adding the camera just as RTSP so I could get both streams, otherwise I have to force motion detection through the primary stream and that tends to get lots more unneeded detections (i.e. way more sensitive, even with me lowering the sensitivity a lot), but if I do that it doesn't have any PTZ function, just fixed camera only.
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Hi Edward Dickey,
The name of the device remains the same. That is expected.
The fix we offer, doesn't change the name in Nx.What we do with the file is enabling the Dahua analytics for the General ALV-C-PT65F230F-HNI camera.
Please check in the rules engine if you can select the analytics. -
I have some more Dahua OEM IPC-T5442T-ZE cameras installed into a Wisenet wave system. Dahua analytics are not pushing to this model. See the screenshot. You had added it to the JSON for me before but in your post stated IPC-T5442*. Maybe since the "T" is left off the end it isn't working? Or that JSON was never added to the software code and I need to manually do it.
Also with this camera model it is a 4MP model and Wave alway sets it to 1080P with automatic settings. I like using auto settings but have to disable it when I use these cameras because it puts it to the wrong resolution. IS there anyway to fix this. It happens whether or not it is Generic badged or Dahua badged firmware.
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Hi Calvin Wientjes,
The reason the IPC-T5442T-ZE stopped working is since we never got the confirmation it worked, and therefore if wasn't added to the source file.
I added the fix again to the resource_data.json file. You can find it here: LINK
Please follow the steps as described below:
1 - Remove the device from the system
2 - Stop the mediaserver application and paste the resource_data.json file in the attachment at the following location:For Windows: C:\Program Files\Network Optix\Nx Witness\MediaServer
For Linux: /opt/networkoptix/mediaserver/bin/3 - Now start the mediaserver application again
4 - Add the device againTo stop and start the media server, please do it as follows:
For Windows:
1 - Open the task manager
2 - Select tab ‘Services’
3 - Find the mediaserver application, right-click and select; Stop or StartFor Linux:
1 - Open the terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T)
2 - Enter the following command;sudo systemctl restart networkoptix-mediaserver.service
After this, the request should be fulfilled.
Please confirm, and we will add it to a future patch.Regarding the asterisks (*). It is a wildcard character. We typically use them in case of Dahua and Hikvision devices, since the characters typically indicate features that are irrelevant to the items we influence with the resource_data.json file. To enable analytics, it is not relevant if the device had audio or not, or I/O or not, etc.
Regarding the second issue, this is caused by the camera firmware, but I'll check if we can overrule this.
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