Feature suggestion: Time Sync

giblets

I noticed with the recent change to BST that my HK Vision cameras don't support DST - I had to manually change them to GMT+1 to show the correct time and still use NTP to sync the time.

How about SS provides an NTP service? This could be useful for cameras which cannot route to an internet NTP server and the option to provide the local system (Mac) time (rather than UTC) would mean cameras like mine work without DST support.

Thanks,
Gareth

Ben

Hi Gareth,

That's unfortunate that the Hikvision cameras don't know about daylight savings time. This seems like somewhat of an oversight with their firmware design, perhaps it would be a good idea to contact Hikvision support, as this may be something that they have since corrected in a firmware upgrade. If not, they really should.

I don't think we'll be implementing a NTP server in SecuritySpy - if the Mac has an internet connection in order to keep the right time then the camera also has an internet connection, and you can simply point the camera to one of the many free NTP servers available online (for example time.apple.com). Plus, this won't actually solve the problem: the NTP protocol doesn't include time zone information: it simply conveys the current time in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) and it is up to the device to translate this to local time. Therefore the device itself must know what time zone it is in, and know about daylight savings, in order to display the correct time, even if it uses an NTP server.

giblets

Hi Ben,

I'll check with Hikvision for a new firmware. I did manage to make OSX provide a usable NTP service for the cameras but as you said it provides UTC - I thought it might be possible to create a secondary NTP service (on another port) which provides the local time with DST "built in"

Let me see what Hikvision can do...

doodah

I have 4 Hikvision cameras and the firmware on them supports DST. When logging into the camera there is an option on the left side of the web page for Advanced configuration. Selecting System then gives some tabs over the center part of the page and there is a tab for Time Settings and another tab that is for DST. Under Time settings I set the NTP server and time zone. Under the DST tab you can tell it to enable DST, and set the month, day of the month, day of the week, and time for both start and stop of DST. It also provides a pull down to select the bias of the DST ( in my case 60 minutes ).

All my cameras have this firmware installed: V5.1.6 build 140612
I had bought my cameras from Nellys Security and they provided me this firmware. I believe it was a beta version... I wanted it because it let me set the color of the date / timestamps to whatever I wanted instead of the camera toggling back and forth of white /black based on the background image.

The previous version of firmware I had was V5.1.2 Raptor build... and I believe that it also had DST configuration. You can download that version I believe from Nellys website under support and downloads and firmware.

Looking at gthe Hikvision website they now have a V5.2 version of firmware that contains the things I got the 5.1.6 beta for.... The documentation with V5.2 specifically calls out the NTP setting. I just downloaded it and updated one of my cameras. Looks good and the NTP and DST settings are available under Advanced Configuration. And its tasty too. :-)

Hikvision seems to have one firmware version for all cameras that I've encountered so far. I have been pleased with the Hikvision over the Dahua cameras I have at another house.