mroek

So you turn the auto reboot feature off, then?

But if someone is bruteforcing the passwords, how can a reboot help? They could just continue the bruteforcing after the camera is back up again? Or am I missing something here?

I don't know the answers to all your questions, but I can answer a couple, I think: 1) CBR means constant bit rate, while VBR means variable bit rate. VBR may conserve some bandwidth and disk space, but I believe that the best quality would be achieved with a high CBR. I don't think it makes much sense to go over 4096 on a 1.3 MP camera of this quality. 3) See 1. 4) I am not certain, but I believe that H264B uses the baseline profile, while H264 uses the main profile. The latter should be better, theoretically.

The bigger issue is that the combination admin/admin works for Onvif access no matter what password you have set for the admin account...

You were right! The limit is 8, but only for access on the 37777-port. Login on the web interface works with longer passwords also. Anyway, thanks a bunch! I'm going to change all passwords to 8 characters on these cameras, just to be on the safe (kind of an oxymoron, don't you agree) side.

9 characters in my password. Is there a max limit less than that, perhaps? I'll experiment, perhaps you're onto something. I remember some Linux-version I worked with that ignored anything over 8 characters.

When you mark areas in the grid, you should see the underlying image, so I'm guessing there's something wrong with your ActiveX-setup. You are using Internet Explorer, right?

I am using the latest version, and I have tried deleting the camera and re-adding it. The problem is not that the password is incorrect, I'm not that bad at typing passwords. I also tried connecting to the camera via IP Cam Viewer on Android. Works fine with RTSP, but if I try the dedicated driver for Dahua HFW-cameras (which then tries to use port 37777, just as PSS), the same thing happens. IP Cam Viewer reports password error. One other thing I've discovered, is that if you try to access the camera via Onvif Device manager, the user/password of admin/admin works regardless of how the user accounts are configured (major security flaw). I meant to mention this in my first post, but I forgot. If I try my real admin password in Onvif Device manager, then I get an error message that the login fails...

I observed this very same issue yesterday while playing with some online demo cameras. I would hazard a guess that this is somehow a bug in the ActiveX-control for these cameras. It's a shame that (many of) the Chinese vendors sticks with a proprietary technology like ActiveX, and not something more modern that also works in other browsers than the dreaded MSIE.

Hi, I have some Dahua 2100 bullets on order, and I would like to be able to fetch images from them at regular intervals (i.e time lapse), and have the images stored on a Synology NAS. I've read the camera manual, but it isn't entirely clear whether this can be set up from within the camera itself. Is it possible to set up the camera to upload a snapshot image to a FTP-server at, say, 1 minute intervals? If not, then I could possibly set up a script with wget on the Synology to download the images from the camera snapshot URL. Has anyone tried that method? What does the camera actually return at the URL: http://ip-address:9988/onvif/media_service/snapshot Does it give you a JPEG-image? Any insight appreciated.

Ok, but that means if you forward port 80, then anyone will be able to access the Onvif-server of the camera? Does the web interface server listen to port 37777 also? So if you forward that port, you can access the web interface but still be protected by the user accounts (provided you have proper passwords on all of them)? On a related note, I took a quick look at a Dahua firmware file that I downloaded, and it contained a number of file system images (squashfs and cramfs), so I guess that it might be possible to pre-modify a firmware to change both default passwords and other stuff. Of course, these images will be mounted on some flash memory in the camera, so it might be possible to modify stuff by manipulating the flash directly, perhaps with the dd command (if it is included).

In general, newer firmwares should be better than older, and I feel quite strongly that Dahua should tighten up the security a little on these things. Regarding the snapshot issue, GMaster1 reports that on his firmware, it works on the web port, but in generel it looks like it should only work on a specific port (9988). Could anyone confirm if that feature is restricted to port 9988 on the newest firmwares? If so, it will at least not be available on the WAN side unless this port is forwarded.

Well, I'm the OP, and I don't mind. It is scary, no doubt. Not really sure what can be done about it either. Did you test with Onvif Device Manager and just using admin/admin on your own camera, and got access?

Hmm, that's not good.I agree it has to use the web port, since when you omit a specific port number in the URL the browser will default to port 80. It does seem to me as if the security aspect of these cameras isn't well taken care of. I don't have any cameras yet, but I have a shipment on it's way, and when I receive them I am going to look very closely at these things. I most certainly do not want to allow the entire internet to fetch snapshots from my cameras. On a related note, I tried this with some online demo cameras that I found, but it didn't work. Could be because those had the web interface redirected to a different port. What did work, though, was to connect to it via Onvif Device Manager using admin/admin as user/pass. From there I could do lots of stuff, like reboot/reset/update firmware etc. Didn't actually do anything, of course, but I probably could have. I gather that this would not have worked if the admin user had had a real password, but I'm not sure.

I don't know, but I agree that it should be possible to turn it off (or protect it by user/pass). However, the feature will not be available outside your LAN as long as you don't port-forward the port it uses. And if you need it to be invisible on your LAN, you could always block access in your firewall/router.

Thanks! The interval you can set seems to range from 1 second to 1 day, which is fine. Is this feature available on all the Dahuas? Which camera/firmware was that interface screenshot taken from?

Thanks! You have reviewed quite a number of Dahuas, so if it was possible from the interface I'd imagine that you'd have noticed. My other plan should work, though. A script on the Synology NAS that invokes wget to retrieve snapshots from the camera should be feasible, I think. Perhaps even a better solution, since it would require no special configuration of the camera itself.

From this video: ...it looks like at least the HD2100 has a full range of adjustments. I would guess the HDB3200C is similar.

Again, thank you very much for the detailed information! I will probably do some testing with just one camera first, because I think the prices of additional camera licenses for the Synology is ridiculous, at least when the product is very much less than perfect. Your Synology is also a lot more powerful than mine (DS213+), so I might have to go for a dedicated solution, like an NVR or a computer with surveillance software on it. The ideal solution would be if the cameras could do motion detection internally, and only stream video to the Synology when motion was detected (or if live view was requested from the web interface of the Synology). In that scenario, both network bandwidth and CPU load would be preserved under normal circumstances. Pre-event recording would have to be buffered in the cameras themself though, and I guess these cheap cams don't have enough memory for that.

It does say MEGA, it's just that the letter M is masked by the camera flash highlight.

Thanks for that piece of info. Setting video recording to MJPEG is a significant downside, though, as it will make the recordings a lot bigger. How much CPU and RAM does the motion detection consume for 6 cameras when everything is running?

Has anyone tried using the Dahua PSS software to just read files (stored by the cameras on motion detect events by FTP) from a NAS? What kind of functionality would that give? Could the PSS software read the directory structure (from the NAS over CIFS/Samba) to provide an easy overview and a timeline, allowing fast searching and playback? I don't have any Dahua cameras (yet), so it doesn't make much sense for me to install the PSS software as I would have no camera data to look at, so I'd appreciate any feedback.

Dahua specs say that it should use less than 6W, so for 12 V that would be a maximum of 0.5 A.

The downside is that I would then have to assign a computer to the task. My reason for using the NAS is that it is easier, already installed, and always on anyway. I'm not sure I understood what you mean, surely the PSS software have to be running in order to receive and store the video events from the cameras?