Hik 4k NVR Discussion

[horseflesh]

Since there wasn't an official thread for this unit yet I thought I'd start one. I have had one for a few days, and posted some unboxing and GUI images the other day. The unit is really nice so far, though it's my first NVR and so I don't have a point of comparison... but every time I think, "gee I wish it did X," it seems that it does X. It even has disk health checks built in, very nice.

I've been running mine with just one camera and a tiny old hard drive for a shakedown cruise. Today something strange happened, and I think I may have found a bug in the unit--or at least, a feature which is not well explained. If anyone's really familiar with this unit I'd love to hear what you think.

Here's the issue:

After a factory reset, you need to create an admin password, and you're led through a wizard for formatting the hard drive, etc. One of the steps in the wizard lets you turn on continuous or motion detection recording, but you are not forced to activate either option. If you just click "Next" without explicitly activating recording, any attached camera will show up in Live View... and it will begin recording anyway. There are no red dots in Live View or on the Record controls, but you can do the Instant Replay, or even go into the web browser GUI and review the recordings. The timeline will show pink marks for motion events. This is all possible even though if you look at camera recording status in MENU>MANUAL, recording is listed as being OFF!



To a new user, who just turns the NVR on, it appears to be functioning correctly. You're recording, and you can play back, and you see motion alerts... but as far as I can tell, if you haven't explicitly activated recording and it runs out of disk space it simply stops recording without alerting you. That is what happened to me, and why I made a very confused post earlier today. R/W was set, Overwrite was set, yet it simply stopped recording for me.

After poking around after a few factory resets, I think this may be a bug. If you haven't activated recording in the setup wizard... and if the recording indicators say "OFF"... then it shouldn't record anything, I would think. Yet it does record in this situation, without the safeguard of overwriting old data. This can easily fool you into thinking it's working properly, when in fact it's just going to stop recording eventually.

I'm going to explicitly turn on continuous recording now and I'm sure it will work as expected. Hopefully this saves another newb from making the same mistake I did.

Or, if I made a different mistake than I think I did, hopefully someone will explain it to me!

 

[hook3m]

Thanks for the information! I will be ordering one tomorrow provided Milk can get to the office. I'm really looking forward to getting it up and running.

 

[horseflesh]

I am sure you will like it. If you learn anything cool, please post!

 

[zero-degrees]

I don't believe this is a bug as you call it - maybe a confusing factory setting for some, but that's the point of the startup guide to step you through basic settings, you shouldn't blindly step through them or click cancel unless your familiar with the hardware. Out of the box without going through the guide all active channels have motion apart/record active. This is why when viewing from the main live view screen on the NVR you will see the yellow running man, but no active "red dots" because that signals your channels with continuous recording going on.

hopefully everything is up and running now for ya, they make some great hardware and have wonderful support. If there is a bug it would be resolved quickly, but again reading your description above I don't believe it is a bug.

 

[horseflesh]

I'm getting the hang of it. Even for a gadget lover like me this is somewhat daunting, there are so many options and a few things are not intuitive.

Out of the box without going through the guide all active channels have motion apart/record active. This is why when viewing from the main live view screen on the NVR you will see the yellow running man, but no active "red dots" because that signals your channels with continuous recording going on.

Yeah, that was the part that was very confusing... you're recording, but I guess not really recording until you choose one of Continuous or Motion? As best as I can tell now you're intended to use one of those two modes for normal operation and the schedule won't work as expected if you don't--is that fair to say?

I do feel like the unit recording in any way but not respecting Overwrite counts as a bug. But as much as I love filing bugs at work I have to let it go, heh.

Anyway I left it on Continuous Record, but that brought up another issue that I can't figure out. With Continuous on, the timeline shows a blue bar in the web UI. The blue overrides the pink alarm marks, so you can't see when you had motion events.



On the NVR console you can go to MENU>PLAYBACK>EVENT and review motion events from a Continuous Record period. I cannot find anything like that on the web UI.

It may be the case that I should be using Motion Record, I don't know.

EDIT: I'm struggling with scheduling but made a new post for that, as it may not be specific to this 4k NVR.

 

[magga]

The issue you describe above is normal and happens on non 4K web GUIs too.

 

[horseflesh]

Thanks magga, good to know it is a feature I don't understand versus a bug.

 

[zero-degrees]

Best advice.

1. Set record to 24/7 on all channels. I am a fan of this to assure nothing is missed.
2. Now configure your email settings on the NVR with a gmail account.
3. Now setup "motion detection with email alert enabled" for the areas/channels that you are really worried about motion - for example my doors/entry points. Once that is done, set the motion zones nice and tight and with a sensitivity of 2.
4. Now when motion is activated/triggered you will get an email with 3 snap shots spaced several seconds (your choice) apart from one another. Once dialed in tightly you can get this to 0 or maybe 1 false alarm a day. To me I would rather have a still make me go look at something then have to review "motion alert clips" daily or when an event occurs. The snap shot email will let you know if something warrants a review, not to mention if you get an email with snap shot with the remote app you can very quickly and easily start a playback.

Just a suggestion, the way you are trying to set up things now will require you to always run a query or search for that days motion alerts when you get home, then review what is saved. VS this option you don't even have to review anything, let alone even log in to check. If no emails arrive, nothing needed, email arrives you can see instantly what and if action is needed.

Your posting a lot in the moment - which is awesome but this may also confuse others or makes trying to help you a little difficult with mult OP's and bouncing around. Take some time and really spend some time with the device, get it dialed in how you want, then maybe write a review. Most of what your discussing you will most likely figure out as time goes on. Also the messing with scheduling and trying to assign mult modes to single channels etc is just WAY over complicating things and sorta whats causing a lot of your confusion and issues. Also, you will find several settings and screens in the NVR that are not in the web GUI, that is pretty standard with any NVR.

I'm trying to be positive here and help, but best advice is take it slow, spend some time with the device and post less until you understand the unit. These are not overly complicated NVR's but I think when your posting, screen capturing, and jumping all over you're causing a lot of your own confusion. Just a thought, honestly not trying to sound rude I promise, just an observation.

As an additional note - your hardware is LTS, not HIK. As you post and ask for help you may want to clarify what you have. While LTS is private label HIK they write there own firmware and there firmware does not have access to everything the HIK firmware does so there are some subtle differences which also can cause confusion when calling this an HIK NVR.

Good Luck

 

[hook3m]

Ordered the 4K NVR with (2) 5TB hard drives pre-installed and (10) 4MP Turrets. Scheduled to be here on Friday! Got a sweet deal on the hard drives too. Milk knows how to upsell. Now I just have to return the (2) 3TB HD I bought to Amazon.

 

[zero-degrees]

@hook3m did you order WD purple drives from LTS with the NVR? That will make for a nice setup especially with what you already have if you're keeping all those HIK Cams and just killing the HIK NVR.

 

[hook3m]

@hook3m did you order WD purple drives from LTS with the NVR? That will make for a nice setup especially with what you already have if you're keeping all those HIK Cams and just killing the HIK NVR.

Yes, I did get the purple drives. Unfortunately this gear isn't for myself. I do get to install and maintain it though.

 

[horseflesh]

That's good advice, thanks. I definitely do not want to be forced to manually review events and was going to get email set up shortly so your setup is actually right in line with what I was hoping to accomplish.

I probably should give myself a 24 hr waiting period before posting a question, heh. But a few things have been (and still are) pretty confusing despite most of the features being very straightforward. The big head-scratcher at the moment is why scheduled motion recording does not indicate the schedule is in use as continuous recording does... and being new to the gear I don't know if that's actually a problem or not. Your recommended setup helps me dodge that issue though.

Re Hik vs LTS -- I will keep that in mind. I thought they were basically identical from some other reading but being specific is a good idea either way.

 

[zero-degrees]

@hook3m as much as I like LTS there hard drive pricing used to suck and wasn't worth it. Maybe its changed all of a sudden but normally you can save some coin by just ordering the purple drives online and tossing them in yourself. Again, maybe something changed or you were under the gun on timing but wanted to share that info with ya.