Getting Started with ClareVision - NVR and Camera Setup

The following guide gives you the basics on getting started with ClareVision NVRs and Camera setup.

Overview

The following article provide the following information:

• The basic functions of an NVR
• The basic functions of an IP camera
• Best practices for setting up an NVR

NVR's

The NVR provides two basic functions: it network attaches the cameras and provides storage. In fact, the NVR does very little else. 

• Network services: the NVR provides a central place to access IP cameras. You can attach IP cameras directly to the ports of the NVR or leave the cameras on the LAN. The NVR can be configured attach to those cameras for purposes of centralized access and recording .Centralized access can be viewing on the web console or providing access to integrated solutions such as the ClareOne Panel or a home automation system such as Control4
• Recording services: the NVR also provides recording services. You may record full time video or motion events, smart events, alarm events or any combination.

IP Cameras

The IP camera is where almost everything interesting happens. The IP camera collects, analyzes and forwards video streams and snapshots to one or more clients. The camera can provide service to a mobile app, the NVR and an integrated control system simultaneously. It also provides multiple streams of video in different resolutions and frame rates so the client device can select the stream it can process. The following provides a high level reference highlighting the differences between the Value Series and Performance Series ClareVision IP cameras: 

In summary, the camera is where everything interesting happens. The NVR simply provides convenient access and storage. 

Next, let's set up an NVR with ClareVision and ONVIF cameras...

Setup a ClareVision NVR and IP Cameras

What You Need

Learning by doing is far better than reading articles and watching videos. Before you proceed, you will need the following:

• ClareVision IP camera: we will use a Performance series camera in our exercises.
• ClareVision NVR
• A computer with internet access
• A mobile phone with ClareVision installed. (Do not install ClareVision Plus - that is our legacy app)
• A wired connection to your LAN
• An 8 port PoE switch (you will not leave this at the job site)

Step One: Install the NVR on Your LAN

The following image shows the connection scheme for an ethernet switch connected to an NVR and camera.

If your link light is flashing on the ethernet switch you are passing data to the NVR. Success!

Step Two: Find the NVR on Your LAN

All ClareVision NVR's ship with DHCP turned on. DHCP simply means the router will assign an IP address to the camera when it boots up using the LAN IP address scheme. Example:

• Router IP Address: 192.168.1.1 (typical)
• IP address range that may be available: 192.168.1.2 through 192.168.1.255
• Router will assign an address like this: 192.168.1.x, where x can be any number between 2 and 255.

How do you find your NVR so you can login and configure? Download the IP search tool here.

Install and Launch IP Search and select "Search"

All IP cameras and NVR's regardless of their IP address will appear in the results window. The model numbers will appear as well so you know which one is an NVR.

Next launch a web browser (Chrome or Edge) and enter the IP address of the camera you just installed.

The default USERID is: admin (not case sensitive)

The default password is the first six characters of the UUID. The UUID can be found on the NVR label or the quick start guide. 

Step Three: Download the Plugin

The NVR's and cameras support Chromium browsers. We test on Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome. The plugin dramatically improves video performance vs. browsers without a plugin.

See the upper right corners of the NVR web user interface

Step Four: Update the NVR to the Latest Firmware Release

Clare Controls releases NVR firmware with new features about once every four months. Chances are, your NVR will need to be updated when you take out of the box. There are two ways to update the NVR firmware.

You can go to the NVR firmware database is located here and download the firmware file. You then select manual upgrade by selecting the Configuration tab, Maintenance/Manual Upgrade

OR

Log into the NVR and go to the Configuration tab and click on Maintenance/Online Upgrade to review the firmware version.

Click on "Check". The NVR will go to our OTA servers and check for an upgrade. If one is available you will be prompted to accept the upgrade. You should always accept.

 

Go HERE for a guide to quickly updating the firmware on your cameras

 

Next, we will add cameras to the NVR. We will break this down into three steps:

1. Adding ClareVision cameras to the NVR by attaching to the NVR physical channels
2. Adding ClareVision cameras to the NVR by attaching them to the NVR virtual channels on the LAN
3. Adding ONVIF cameras to the NVR (Luma, ClareVision Plus/Legacy, Hikvision etc)

Step Five: Add ClareVision Cameras to the PoE Ports

Attach the camera to the NVR physical PoE port. This connection must be direct and cannot be routed through an ethernet switch on the way to the PoE port. Once connected, wait until the two LED's on the NVR are illuminated. 

The green LED is the PoE power indicator. If it is lit, the NVR is supplying power to the camera. The amber LED is the link light. When this is flashing, the NVR is communicating with the camera. 

Now simply wait a couple of minutes.....

Go to the Live View tab and click on the left side of the icon next to the channel number to which you connected the camera. A small green indicator will light up just to the left of the "C" in the word channel. The camera video should show up in the appropriate tile. In the example below, the camera is connected to physical channel one and shows up in tile number one on the Live View Screen.

You can continue adding cameras to the physical channels of the NVR and all will behave as noted above.

Step Six: Add ClareVision Cameras to the Virtual Channels (on the LAN)

Let's assume you had no way to physically route a wire back to the NVR, but wanted the camera on the NVR. No problem - you are now going to add the camera to a 'virtual channel' on the NVR.

To do so, go to the Configuration tab, Channel/Camera.

This NVR is the CLR-V200-8PNVR2, 8 channel NVR. Notice it has 10 cameras on it. To discover new cameras, click on the "Add" button.

If a camera shows up as private and you click in the white box on the left side of the row, and click "Add". The camera will be added exactly the same way it would have been added had it been on a PoE port - Plug-n-Play.

That is really all there is to adding ClareVision cameras to a ClareVision NVR.

Step Seven: Adding ONVIF cameras to a ClareVision NVR.

Let's assume the ONVIF camera is on the general LAN like in step six above. Follow the exact same procedure as in step six, plus the following:

In the channel screen below, click on the edit link in for the ONVIF camera you just added

The following screen will pop up:

Enter the ONVIF UserID and Password for the discovered camera, click "OK".

 

This ARTICLE details adding an ONVIF camera to a PoE port on the NVR. The process is slightly different than detailed above.

Step Eight: Aligning Connections to Channels on Your NVR

The NVR will assign channels based on either the physical connection (PoE port 1, 2 etc) or based on the order in which they were attached for virtual channels. The first camera added to the NVR on the general LAN will be assigned to channel 9, the second to channel 10 etc.

Let's say you had 10 cameras, but only ONE on a physical channel / PoE port. The Live View screen would show a camera in tile 4 since that is where it was attached. The next 8 cameras would automatically be assigned to ports 9 through 16.

Two problems - what about the 10th camera and the NVR Live View Screen would be very awkward showing one camera on tile 4 and 8 cameras on tile 9-16. 

This where PoE bonding configuration becomes very handy.

PoE bonding allows you to decouple the logical connection between a physical channel and a channel number. In the example above, all channels besides channel 4 are unbonded from the physical ports. This makes 7 of the first nine channels available for virtual channel assignments.

Two problems just got solved:

1. We now have enough channels for the 9th camera located on the LAN
2. The channel assignments are now 1-10 making the NVR preview interface very organized.

It was the un-bonding process that allowed the channel list to appear as orderly as it did in the above example.

If you get the channel list twisted up and want to start over, you can default the camera list alone by going to the Configuration tab Maintenance/Default

Click on the "Camera" button and the channel list will be wiped. You can start over.

Step Nine: Setting up Events on Your Cameras

Now that your cameras are solidly on the NVR, it is time to set up motion and smart events for all of your cameras. The good news is you can do all of that from the NVR interface.

Go to the Configure tab and select System/Motion Event or System/Smart Event. In the following example, System/Motion Event was selected

This configuration screen is extremely similar to the native camera configuration screen. If you make changes here to the motion grid layout for example and log into the camera, you will see the changes you made from the NVR web UI.

The drop down menus for channel selection are smart and will only show you the channels that have cameras that support that event type.

As an example, although this NVR has 10 cameras on it, only 5 support smart events.

See this article for motion detection setup.

See this article for smart event setup.

Although those articles are written referencing the camera web user interface, they are extremely similar on the NVR.

The recommendations related to Event Arming vs. Record Schedule apply to the NVR setup as well.

Let's move on to recording!

Step Ten: Setting up Recording on Your NVR

The primary difference, other than capacity, between camera based recording and NVR based recording is the NVR can record all event types and full time record simultaneously while the camera can only record one event type to the SD card.

Recording schedules are setup under the Configuration Tab Storage/Recording Schedule.

You can record any one or all of: normal (full time), motion, alarm, motion and alarm and smart events (intelligent). 

 

At the risk of being completely redundant, if you are arming an event such as motion or smart events you should set the recording to 7x24 and use the event arming schedule to control when the camera will propagate that event type. Doing so will ensure the user will always have an event to look at in the event log of the mobile app when a push notification is sent.

To change a recording parameter, just click on a line and the following will pop up:

Lastly, "More Settings" is where you will find pre-record and post-record settings.

Step Eleven: Directly Accessing Your Cameras that are on the Physical Channels

The cameras that are on the physical channels will not show up on an IP scan and are not accessible on the general LAN. 

Enter the Virtual Host. You can access any camera, whether on the Virtual Channel or a Physical Channel (PoE Port) using the Virtual Host.

Go to the Configuration tab, Channel/Camera:

Click on the IP address in the right column and you will be taken to a login screen for that camera:

Notice the IP address is really the NVR with a port number. From this screen you can log into the camera, check settings, configure local record and manage firmware updates. You are accessing the camera directly.

Use the NVR UserID and password, and we are in!

Step 12: Adding the NVR to the ClareVision Mobile App

Now that you have set up your NVR, it is time to add it to the ClareVision app. It is quite simple.

Launch the ClareVision App

Tap the 'Plus' sign and you will be presented the following options:

Selecting NVR will cause the app to bring up a different user interface than it does for an individual camera

 

Tap the NVR Icon and you will be presented with the three options shown below.

If you tap device is on the network, the app will scan the LAN for any ClareVision cameras or NVR's and present them in the following screen. Device is on a remote network provides you with the option of scanning a QR code for a camera on a remote network. The system will locate it anywhere in the world and provide you with a login screen to add the remote camera or NVR.

 

In our example, we tapped on "Device is on the local network" and two devices were found.

Tapping on a device brings you to a login screen where you may enter the credentials

And DONE!

 

You just successfully installed, configured and enabled a ClareVision NVR with ClareVision cameras on and off the physical ports as well as adding an ONVIF camera. We then connected the NVR to the ClareVision mobile app. Push notifications and events as configured will automatically propagate to your customer's mobile device!

Closing:

This was not an attempt to explain in great detail every option/setting/configuration in the NVR. Rather this article was intended to give you a simple step by step guide to setting up and NVR with cameras in multiple configurations from multiple manufacturers. If you follow the steps in the order detailed you will win more than you lose.

 

Last Updated: 07/18/2022