How-to: How To Access Milesight Cameras that are Connected Directly to a Milesight NVR

[Dan]

Having all your Milesight cameras grouped together on an NVR is really useful, but until recently there was one big problem with connecting cameras directly to a Milesight NVR using the PoE ports, you couldn't access each cameras settings individually using a browser. Now, this might not seem like a massive problem, but as certain camera specific settings cannot be changed in the NVR settings and camera firmware cannot be updated from the NVR, it quickly becomes a very annoying problem.

All this changed though with the most recent NVR Firmware from Milesight, the firmware allows you to enable a PoE channel access feature very similar to Hikvision's virtual host feature, and in this how to... guide we are going to take you through how to enable and then use this new channel access/virtual host feature.

(IMPORTANT - Before proceeding follow the below steps, make sure your NVR is on the latest firmware)

Step 1: Open Internet Explorer/Safari and log in to your NVR, once logged in click on Settings from the left menu bar

Step 2: Click System and then click the Network menu from the drop-down

Step 3: Click the More tab

Step 4: Click the drop-down labeled Channel Access and change it from Disable to Enable, then click Save

Step 5: Click the Camera menu and then click Camera Management from the drop-down

Step 6: Click the IE icon next to the camera you want to access

Step 7: Login to the chosen camera

And there you are, you can now access any Milesight camera connected directly to the PoE ports of a Milesight NVR, once you have access you can click Configuration and edit any camera setting you want as well as update the cameras firmware.

After first enabling the channel access/virtual host feature you may not get a live view when you access the first camera, to fix this we recommend trying these 3 things:

1. Check that you have the latest web plugin downloaded (link to download the plugin file can be found on the login page - see above)
2. Check that the camera is streaming with HTTP and not UDP (see above)
3. Clear the cache of Internet Explorer/Safari

If you are still don't see a live image after doing all 3 of these things then contact us and we will offer further support

 

[Dan]

Now that you have access to cameras connected directly to a Milesight NVR you can now update the firmware of these cameras, the steps for doing this are exactly the same as updating the firmware of a camera not connected to an NVR so simply follow the instructions laid out in our previous forum post on Updating Milesight Camera Firmware

 

[M-J-B]

Hi,

Although traffic to the NVR can be configured as HTTPS, and direct camera access can be configured as HTTPS, this Channel Access port is still plain HTTP possibly revealing the logon credentials to anyone who cares to listen. Is there any update expected to this allowing HTTPS and private certificate? This becomes an issue when maintaining a remote installation without a trusted jump point inside the remote LAN.