HikVision NVR/DVR

DaveGarratt

I see SecuritySpy seems to have support for these devices in its list and I tried to connect to one recently. However, I didn't succeed and I have an idea why it didn't work. I enabled ONVIF and set up a username and password for it, but Hikvision seems to have this concept of a stream encryption password as well - is that something SecuritySpy can handle?

Ben

Hi Dave, even though we don't officially support DVR/NVR devices, every Hikvision NVR that we have come across thus far has worked with SecuritySpy. The first thing to check is that the "Profile" setting in SecuritySpy under Preferences > Cameras > Device is set to "Hikvision NVR".

Note that when using this profile, the ONVIF account(s) set up in the camera are not used - the username/password given to SecuritySpy should be the same one used to log on to the cameras's web interface.

SecuritySpy does support encrypted RTSP streams if supported in the device. This runs over standard SSL that is negotiated at the start of the connection - I have never heard of some kind of separate "encryption password" and SecuritySpy doesn't support such a concept.

DaveGarratt

I have turned off what Hikvision describes as "Stream Encryption" and SecuritySpy now works perfectly and I can access all cameras.

I do have one question / request however.

If I am using the DVR for all recording and only using Security Spy for viewing in real time as and when needed would it be possible to have a feature withing the software so that its only pull data from a camera when needed. I've told SS not to record continuously or look for movement or anything like that but as it's able to access 12 streams/camera from the DVR it seems to be pulling a lot of data over the LAN when in effect it could be idle - because nobody is viewing any cameras.

DaveGarratt

You maybe unaware of this but with the Hikvision systems you can't view video from their NVR/DRV's using a web browser these days as the plugin / network protocol it relies upon is no longer supported by apple and microsoft and as such you have to use their app which is rather clunky and CPU intensive. If you make SS known in the Hikvision community and told them you could access video using a browser and SS I'm sure the would be a lot of interest.

Ben

Hi Dave, good to hear you go this working, I will make a note that this "stream encryption" setting must be turned off in case other users also have this issue in the future.

It's quite common for video (live and playback) features to be unavailable via Mac web browsers - but as long as the settings are all available (which is the case for Hikvision devices) then this provides enough access to set the device up in order to use it with SecuritySpy. If you have any ideas about how to make this known in the Hikvision community I'd like to hear them - generally this information is available via a quick google search, so I do think a lot of users come across this themselves.

SecuritySpy is designed as an NVR itself, so it keeps active connections to all devices that are set up. If this instance of SecuritySpy is for viewing your Hikvision NVR only, then the best thing I can suggest is to simply quit it when not in use. Otherwise, there is no easy solution to completely disable and then re-enable a set of cameras together in SecuritySpy I'm afraid.