My ONVIF IP camera's time is not correct - how do I fix it ?

[groovyclam]

Hi

I'm a total newbie to IP cameras ( but fairly ok with Linux / command line / networking ) so be gentle with me.

I have a pre-built birdbox with a IP ONVIF camera from this site: gardennature.co.uk.

The camera is in the roof of the box and is powered along the ethernet lead that goes from the camera into your ethernet switch/router since the ethernet port as the switch end has a power supply plug built into it ( but that is beside the point of my problem - I'm just giving a full picture of the setup ).

The company is not very knowledgeable about the specs of the camera ( they don't even know the make and model, just that it is ONVIF compatible ) and only know about using one particular app on Windows called VMS ( which I found ugly and difficult to use ). I suspect they are just importing the bird boxes them and selling them on without any real technical department to give the user help.

Anyway I mananged to get the camera working with "Agent DVR" on Windows which is far more user friendly ( but I had a fair bit of trial and error on picking from a list of cameras that "Agent DVR" found when I did "search for device on network" until I picked one that configured the camera correcly.

My actual problem, however, is I have noticed the time inside the camera is not in sync with the real time on my network ( UK based ).

I've attached a pic - the top left clock is the camera's clock and the bottom left clock is the correct system time. The camera's clock is behind by about 2 hours 17 minutes.

I have an admin login and password for the camera and know it's IP on my network. Is there any way forward from here to get into the camera and correct the time ?

 

[cymruchris]

You say that it's an IP camera - do you know the camera's IP address on your network?

I've used a couple of network bird box cameras - but not this model - and accessing them isn't easy. If yours is the same, you need an old version of internet explorer - or if you only have microsoft edge, you need to run it in internet explorer mode - and you might need to try different versions from 7 to 11, or potentially an internet explorer plugin on google or firefox. It's a bit hit and miss.

If you enter the IP address of the camera into Edge in Internet explorer mode - you should get a login screen. You can then login using your 'admin' and the password you have to amend parameters.

It's likely if you try to login on any other browser it'll either just fail to load - or tell you that it needs an older version. (That's if it works the same as my existing bird box POE cameras)

 

[groovyclam]

Blimey! Well done cymruchris - I did know the the camera's IP on my network and using Internet Explorer mode worked ( it also wanted me to download and install an old ActiveX module to work ).

So I'm into the camera's guts but weirdly the time in the camera is correct. So now I am foxed that I have this time discrepancy when recording in Agent DVR.

Anyway you've started me off so I can have a rummage around in both the camera's logs and Agent DVR's logs to see if I can can find out where the disconnect is happening.

Diolch

 

[cymruchris]

if you’ve got the right time on screen from your NVR workaround thing - then there should be an option on the camera interface in internet explorer to disable the on screen display. There are some tick boxes you can untick so that the camera itself won’t display any on screen timings/titles/camera names.

 

[groovyclam]

When I quit looking at the camera via its IP login in Internet Explorer and when back to using "Agent DVR" the times were sync'd and I had noticed an option in the camera IP's settings about getting the time from the system. So I think by logging in directly to the camera IP it has fixed the problem ( although the camera time is already 2 seconds behind the true time now - groan ).

So I think I'll so what you say and look for an option just to turn off the camera time.

You are a most helpful - thanks.

 

[groovyclam]

Yes, the camera has no function to regularly sync with an internet timeserver and it loses time quite quickly ( something like a second a minute ) so I have taken your advice and just turned off the camera's own date and clock overlay in its internal settings. I'll just have the "Agent DVR" software overlay the date and time instead.

Thanks for the help Chris.