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 Night Owl, 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.