This was just for fun and the interest of doing it - and shared for those other techy folk who might find it of interest.
Or of use for others - you never know.
A couple of months ago I bought a 'Spares & Repairs' HiWatch 4MP IPC-T140 turret from eBay - seller description suggesting a stuck IR filter.
I'd not had my hands on a HiWatch device and was curious what they were like compared wth the more familiar pro-level devices.
Well, it turned out to be very ordinary, with motion detection only, the familiar Hikvision 'smart events' missing.
I looked round for any published firmware, but found none.
Hooking up the serial console though did show something interesting :
That's the same board type as referenced in the DS-2CD2T42WD-8I , which is a 4MP R6 series device.
And the same amount of RAM and the same CPU clock speed.
Could it be the same hardware just running in a dumbed-down mode?
So I tried the R6 firmware and it worked perfectly.
But no new 'smart events' or other noticeable changes.
OK - so the dumbed-down HiWatch IPC-T140 runs on R6 firmware.
Presumably therefore the firmware adapts its capabilities based on the type of device it is running on.
Which prompts the thought 'Can the capabilities be improved by kidding the firmware about what it's running on?'
The answer is 'Yes' and there are several ways to do this, though it does need a tweak to the firmware as the 'bootpara data' isn't held in a flash partition that can be modified, like the R0 series.
What I ended up doing, which worked OK, was to modify the table that sets the device capabilities based on the devType thats coded in the security chip to give the same capabilities as the DS-2CD2T42WD-8I camera.
Other devType combinations can be used, provided the sensor type is also matched.
So the HiWatch IPC-T140 has been smartened up, and now has the very useful and familiar line crossing detection and intrusion detection smart events, and a couple of other additions to its repertoire.
Here are the after and before differences, as extracted using 'http://<camera_IP_address>/ISAPI/System/Capabilities'
And shown below are some before and after screenshots.
Or of use for others - you never know.
A couple of months ago I bought a 'Spares & Repairs' HiWatch 4MP IPC-T140 turret from eBay - seller description suggesting a stuck IR filter.
I'd not had my hands on a HiWatch device and was curious what they were like compared wth the more familiar pro-level devices.
Well, it turned out to be very ordinary, with motion detection only, the familiar Hikvision 'smart events' missing.
I looked round for any published firmware, but found none.
Hooking up the serial console though did show something interesting :
Code:
[ 0.000000] Machine: Ambarella S2L (Flattened Device Tree), model: Ambarella S2LM Kiwi Board
[ 0.000000] dev type:0x2261
Code:
[ 0.000000] Machine: Ambarella S2L (Flattened Device Tree), model: Ambarella S2LM Kiwi Board
[ 0.000000] dev type:0x0Could it be the same hardware just running in a dumbed-down mode?
So I tried the R6 firmware and it worked perfectly.
But no new 'smart events' or other noticeable changes.
OK - so the dumbed-down HiWatch IPC-T140 runs on R6 firmware.
Presumably therefore the firmware adapts its capabilities based on the type of device it is running on.
Which prompts the thought 'Can the capabilities be improved by kidding the firmware about what it's running on?'
The answer is 'Yes' and there are several ways to do this, though it does need a tweak to the firmware as the 'bootpara data' isn't held in a flash partition that can be modified, like the R0 series.
What I ended up doing, which worked OK, was to modify the table that sets the device capabilities based on the devType thats coded in the security chip to give the same capabilities as the DS-2CD2T42WD-8I camera.
Other devType combinations can be used, provided the sensor type is also matched.
So the HiWatch IPC-T140 has been smartened up, and now has the very useful and familiar line crossing detection and intrusion detection smart events, and a couple of other additions to its repertoire.
Here are the after and before differences, as extracted using 'http://<camera_IP_address>/ISAPI/System/Capabilities'
Code:
197c187
< <pictureSearchType opt="CMR,MOTION,LineDetection,FieldDetection"/>
---
> <pictureSearchType opt="CMR,MOTION"/>
199c189
< <recordSearchType opt="CMR,MOTION,EDR,AllEvent,LineDetection,FieldDetection"/>
---
> <recordSearchType opt="CMR,MOTION,EDR,AllEvent"/>
212c202
< <isSupportFieldDetection>true</isSupportFieldDetection>
---
> <isSupportFieldDetection>false</isSupportFieldDetection>
220c210
< <isSupportLineDetection>true</isSupportLineDetection>
---
> <isSupportLineDetection>false</isSupportLineDetection>
242c232
< <isSupportSmartCalibration>true</isSupportSmartCalibration>
---
> <isSupportSmartCalibration>false</isSupportSmartCalibration>And shown below are some before and after screenshots.
