QNAP NAS as a DVR

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I thought I would document my experience With QNAP's Surveillance Station software running on a QNAP 563 NAS. This was my first time setting up a surveillance system and there were lots of unanswered questions. I decided early on not to use Wi-Fi due to my concern for privacy and the better reliably of a hard wired system. Wi-Fi would have been a lot easier to install and after spending 3 days fishing wires, I can see why it is popular.


The hardware used for the cameras was an add on to my home network and consisted of two Hikvision 2CD2333-1 3MP cameras purchased from Nelly's Security, a TP LINK TL1008SG 8 port PoE switch, and two CMVision CM-IR110 Infrared illuminators all purchased from Amazon. The CMVision illuminators are showing signs of water condensing on the inside of the glass cover plate even with its IP66 rated enclosure. I wonder how long I can expect them to last? The illuminators send out a 850 nm IR beam and work well with the cameras. The 2CD2333-1 cameras were listed in the QNAP recommended camera list and run firmware version (V5.2.0 build 140721). I didn't have the guts to try one of the newer 4 MP cameras with newer firmware because they were not on the list.





The top half of this diagram shows what I added to my home network. My family has music, movies, and homework stored on the NAS.


I went down a few blind alleys. One of the many mistakes I made was to connect both the camera and lamp to the same cable using a PoE splitter to power the lamp. The camera draws 7.5 watts with the IR on and the lamp draws 12 watts. The 40 meters of 24 gauge solid copper communication cable will not support both. I had to separately power the 12 volt lamp using the supplied 12 volt power supply. I later discovered from the 802.3af spec that it will only source 14.5 watts at the source (PoE switch).


Another mistake I made was to mount the IR lamp 1/2 meter above the camera. Rain reflected the light back into the camera. This caused continuous alarms. I then moved the lamp off to the side of the camera and am awaiting the next rainstorm to find out if it works. The constant alarms in rain may have been caused by my inexperience setting up the camera event options.


Setting up the Hikvision camera and Surveillance Station software was moderately easy. I followed the QNAP tutorial to assign the two cameras IP addresses and set up a 1.5 TB partition on the NAS for recording the images. I also set the NAS to reuse that space on a weekly schedule. The QNAP 563 that I am using has a quad channel AMD processor and five 4 TB drives. With two 3MB cameras there is no slowdown. I will be expanding the system with three more cameras.


Setting up the Hikvision cameras was/is not easy. False alarms due to cloud shadows, leaves and even the IR illuminator turning on is something I still wrestle with. At this point I am reading all threads on making these adjustments. Someday I'll figure it out.
 

alastairstevenson

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I also have a QNAP NAS running Surveillance station, but connecting only a subset of my half a dozen Hikvision cameras and others.
This was how I first started with IP cameras, though initially they were all low-cost Chinese small brand 720p models.
These were very impressive video quality, though, compared with the Foscam and Dericam models that I originally started with.
The pink grass on the Foscam daytime video was an unwelcome surprise - no auto IR cut filter back then.

Then I bought a Hikvision 2CD2032 to experiment with, and was so impressed with the image quality I progressively replaced the original set of cameras.
But I was not happy with having to pay $60 per additional camera channel, above the base 2, for Surveillance Station.
And Surveillance Station was starting to look rather dated and limited compared with what I read a dedicated Hikvision NVR was capable of.
Now I have 2 7816N-E2 NVRs but still run feeds to Surveillance Station.
Surveillance Station continuous playback timeline has motion detection markers and thumbnails. In all other respects it lags behind.
My main criticism, that I keep expecting will be improved in each successive release, is that there is no support for 'smart events' such as the Hikvision cameras can generate.
So it's not possible to use improved analytics such as line crossing detection and intrusion detection to tune out all those alerts you'd rather not have. Surveillance Station only reacts to motion events from Hikvision cameras. Unlike the Hikvision NVRs.

All my cameras are connected to PoE ports on a Hikvision 7816N-E2/8P NVR, and Surveillance Station and another Hikvision NVR pull their camera connections via the LAN from the
NVR.
The NVR copes perfectly well with this load, the dual-core CPU and memory having plenty of spare capacity.
 
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Thanks Alastair,


The QNAP 563 came with four camera licences which was one reason to try it out.
Surveillance Station has limited features but the Hikvision cameras provide many ways to send an alert and this is what I am using to detect an unwelcomed person.


I have turned off Motion Detection and Dynamic Analysis. I am now using Intrusion Detection with a region drawn. Setting the Threshold, Sensitivity and Percentage leave me guessing. It seems that Threshold and Sensitivity mean the same but they must cause a different effect on the alert sent to the NAS. Percentage, I assume, is a portion of the drawn area. How does that influence an alert?


I also have Line Crossing and Video Tampering available on these cameras without any information about the settings.


Will anyone point me in the right direction? It may take me a week of day and night trials to figure this out on my own. Does Hikvision have a tutorial somewhere?


Dave
 

alastairstevenson

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If you can find them - this forum is huge now, and for me at least, the search does not work effectively, there are some posts that explain how those analytics work, and somewhere, some Hikvision documentation.
What version of SS are you running?
I've completely avoided the debacle of QTS 4.2 updating so far (was it 5 betas and 4 release candidates, I forget?) so I'm not on the latest version of SS, which may have updated camera models supporting the smart events.
I don't get any alerts on SS from other than simple motion detection.
 
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