Are My IP Cameras ONVIF Compliant?
Viewtron IP camera NVRs are a great choice as a replacement recorder for existing IP camera systems. As long as your existing IP cameras are ONVIF compliant, our Viewtron DVRs are compatible. Watch the above video to learn how to determine if your cameras are ONVIF compliant.
Network Scanning Tool for ONVIF IP Cameras
You can download the IP camera network scanner software here. This software works on Windows PCs only. After you install it on your PC, simply open it and it will automatically scan your network for ONVIF compatible devices.
Important Note: your IP cameras must be connected to the same network as the PC running this software. If your IP cameras are connected directly to your existing NVR, this tool will not find them.
Also, if your IP cameras were hard wired directly to your existing NVR, your NVR most likely assigned them a static IP address that is outside of the range of your local area network. You may need to factory reset your camera or go into the settings to switch from a static IP to DHCP.
Need Help / Have Questions?
I realize this may be a fairly technical process that some customers will not want to deal with. The team at CCTV Camera Pros can help you if needed. Please email me here if you need assistance. We can also arrange for you to ship a camera to us so that we can test for you.
Viewtron NVRs
If you determine that your cameras are ONVIF compatible, I highly recommend our Viewtron NVRs.
Viewtron IP Cameras
If you need any ONVIF compliant IP cameras for your system, please take a look at these.
Video Transcript
Here is a complete text transcript of the above video.
Do I have ONVIF compliant IP cameras? Good morning, everyone. Mike, from CCTV Camera Pros here. This is a common question we’re getting from customers because we have a lot of customers that want to use our Viewtron NVRs as a replacement NVR for an existing IP camera system. So for example, if you have an old QSEE IP camera system, or maybe NightOwl, or Samsung, it really doesn’t matter the brand, and your NVR has gone bad or maybe you’re just not happy with the remote access or the support that you’re getting, and you’re looking to upgrade, a lot of customers are looking at our Viewtron NVRs. Our Viewtron NVRs will work with any third-party IP camera as long as it’s ONVIF compliant.
So real quick. What is ONVIF? ONVIF is a set of open standards and protocols used by security manufacturers when developing software for IP cameras. When these manufacturers developed to the ONVIF standard, it ensures that their IP cameras are compatible with third-party NVRs. And our Viewtron NVRs are fully ONVIF compliant. So unfortunately, sometimes it’s not easy to figure out if your existing IP cameras are ONVIF compliant. And unfortunately, some manufacturers intentionally made this difficult because they only wanted you to buy their NVRs and their cameras. And they want you to think that you are forced into that and your system will only work with their equipment. That’s almost always not true, but you do have to verify that your IP cameras are ONVIF compliant.
So here’s an easy way to do it. We have an IP camera network scanning tool available for free for download. I’ll link to it in the description down below if you’re on YouTube. If you’re on our blog, I’ll also link to it down below. This software gets installed on a Windows PC. And what it does is it scans your network for all ONVIF compliant IP cameras. Okay? Here’s the thing though. Obviously, that Windows PC has to be on the same network as your IP cameras. And your IP cameras cannot be hardwired directly to your NVR. The reason is when you use the PoE ports on the back of an NVR, that creates a local network just between your NVR and the IP cameras. Your network that the Windows PC is on is not going to know about those IP cameras. It’s not going to be able to find their IP.
So if you’re in that situation and your NVR is connected directly to your cameras, you’ll have to disconnect them from your NVR and connect them directly to your network. Okay? That will most likely require that you have a PoE injector or a PoE switch. And another thing is a lot of times when you’re in that situation, your NVR has assigned that IP camera a static IP address that’s outside the range of your local area network. So you may have to factory reset the camera in order to get an IP address that’s going to be detected.
So that was quite a bit to unpack. And I realized that’ll be a technical process for a lot of customers out there. So CCTV Camera Pros can jump in and help you. We can install this software on a Windows PC remotely for you, log in remotely, and give you a hand with all of this. Another service we offer. Some customers just want to take down one of their cameras, ship it to us for testing so we can test it out and do an assessment, and then send it back when we’re done and let you know if it’s going to be compatible with our Viewtron NVRs or not. That’s another service that we offer. And these services are free by the way. We want to earn your business.
If you have any questions about any of this, or if you’re interested in us giving you a hand and figuring out if your IP cameras are ONVIF compliant so that you can use one of our Viewtron NVRs as an upgrade to your system, feel free to reach out to me anytime. I can be reached at mike@cctvcamerapros.net. If you want to download the free network scanner and learn more about this, you can go to www.cctvcamerapros.com/ONVIF. That’s O-N-V-I-F. Thank you for watching
