Urgently need advice on my Zxtech IP cameras and NVR system.

[Puzzledman1]

Hello,

I have recently upgraded(I hope) from an AHD system to a 25 channel(12 ip) Onyx NVR with an 8TB hard drive. I have purchased 11 new IP 4K 8mp cameras of around £100 and £135 each from the same company.
The cameras are now fitted externally and connected with cat6a external cables into the ports at the back of the NVR.The NVR is wired directly into my hub.

After my wife has spent hours on the phone with the company who we purchased it from, the system was meant to record 24hours a day and show through a monitor. Have defog mode set to on with Motion sensor alarm alerts, which are meant to be sent to email address and also we are meant to be able to view through Bitvision on our mobiles or ipad.

Please see issues I am having listed below.

1,Various (4) cameras are going completely blank and staying off. If I switch the system off and then back on 3 cameras remain off then after approximately half an hour another camera will switch completely off.

2,My alerts are very hit and miss some times the alerts are very good, other times no alerts for hours even though cars and people have passed the cameras. then there are times where my alerts are coming through 20 minutes after the event.

Please can anyone advise me on what could be the problems?
I purchased the system a month ago and am at a loss because the technical guys where I purchased the setup are going around in circles with me.
Am I asking too much of the system or should this be fairly straight forward ? either way my system is definitely far from a plug everything in and start straight away system.

Any help and advise will be greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks

Apuzzledman

 

[Dan]

Hi @Puzzledman1

Do you have the exact model details of the ONYX NVR? (The model number is usually written on the NVR label or you can send us a screenshot/link of the original product page you bought from)

Are the 11 new 4K cameras also ONYX? If not do you know the brand/model of these cameras?

 

[Puzzledman1]

Hello,

I hope the below details are what you need but if it is something else please let me know.

The NVR is Zxtech Onyx 25 Channel 16-PoE Ports 8MP 4K CCTV High Definition Network Recorder

The cameras are 4x Zxtech Premio 4K Motorized PoE IP CCTV Camera
5x Zxtech BabyBullet 4K PoE IP CCTV Camera
1x Zxtech Atlas 4K PoE IP CCTV Camera
1x Zxtech Atlas Pro 5MP Motorized PoE IP CCTV Camera

 

[Dan]

ok, I think the issue is PoE budget.

Looking at the NVR spec it says it supports a Max. 50W PoE output, and looking at the motorized bullet specs it doesn't say the specific Power usage but it is using IEEE 802.3af standard PoE (max. 15.4W) and when looking at similar motorized zoom models from other brands they all use around 13-15W so just the 4 of these cameras are going to push (if not overload) the NVRs PoE budget and then you add all the other cameras and you are definitely exceeding the PoE limits.

The only way around this would be to connect the majority of the cameras (especially the power-hungry motorized cameras) to a separate PoE switch or individual PoE injectors

 

[Puzzledman1]

Thank you so much for your message.

Would this mean if I purchased a POE switch box and connected the 4 xbig motorised cameras into the switch box I could then connect the Poe switch into the NVR but still have the 7 x smaller cameras connected to the NVR at the same time?.

 

[Dan]

possibly, this is not a brand we work with and their camera specifications are not clear as to the max. power usage of their fixed cameras and it could be anywhere between 6-10W for each fixed camera. You can try contacting the manufacture/supplier to confirm the max. power usage of each model or potentially you may be able to find a menu in the NVR which will show you the power consumption of each camera, if you can't do either then our recommendation would be not to have more than 5 x fixed IP cameras directly connected to the NVRs PoE ports. (e.g. 5 x 10W = 50W)

 

[Puzzledman1]

Hi Dan,

Thank you again.

I have just seen this. Is this relevant to what you have been describing?

 

[Puzzledman1]

channels 4 and 5 should be connected but say disconnected

 

[Dan]

That does look like the right sort of thing, strangely that is suggesting the NVR has a PoE budget of around 200W which is what we would usually expect for a 16-channel NVR, so I don't think it is a PoE budget issue.

How many cameras are currently showing as connected? Are all 4 of the motorized bullets connected?

Did you use factory-made Cat6a patch cables or did you cut and terminate your own cables?

 

[Puzzledman1]

Hello,

Only 6 out of 10 cameras that are wired in are showing on this system as connected. The cams showing connected are 2 of the big motorised cams, 2 of the baby bullet cams and the two dome cams.

1 x big motorised bullet cam, 3 x baby bullet cams are connected to nvr but showing as disconnected.

I purchased the external cat 6a cables from Datazonedirect which already had the connectors on.

 

[Dan]

Ok,

It doesn't sound like it is a power or bandwidth limit issue as you only have 6 cameras that are actually connected. I can only think it is actually a setup issue specific to the ONYX system and as already mentioned we have no experience with this brand so I don't think there is much else we can offer in terms of advice.

The only thing I would say is you should try connecting some of those cameras, that are showing as disconnected, to the NVR over the local network using a PoE switch or injector as although it is unlikely a bandwidth/power issue there could still be software/hardware limitation with the NVR managing this many 4K cameras on the direct ports.

 

[Puzzledman1]

Hello,

Thank you for all your help. I really appreciate your time. Ironically one of the big motorised cams has out of no where sprung to life again just now. So (currently) now 7 working and 3 small bullet cams not