Do you need an NVR or can you just use an IP camera

Jan 26, 2022

Do you need an NVR or can you just use an IP camera

Introduction

Over the many years we have been providing security, people often ask if they need all the equipment if they just want to watch the front door, or the pool, etc., and the answer is, no, if you just want to watch one area via a PC or mobile device, you can do that for under $200 with a HD or even higher resolution camera.

To achieve this you will need the following equipment.

  1. an IP camera that supports P2P and has 12v input, meaning it can take 12v DC directly (you can use PoE, but we will discuss using 12v DC)
  2. a 12v DC power supply
  3. a network cable to go from your modem to the camera

The process is very simple and most people who have a small degree of experience with modems and connecting to the internet can handle.

Firstly you will need to set it up before mounting it outside so you know everything is working prior to mounting it.

Then follow these steps:

  1. plug the network cable from your camera to your modem
  2. plug the 12v DC plug pack into your camera
  3. wait 30 seconds for camera to boot up, you can place your hand over the front and you should hear a click as it switches from day to night mode
  4. make sure your PC is plugged into the same modem
  5. launch IE Internet Explorer (not Edge, Chrome, FireFox)
  6. If you are on the same range as your camera, for example if your modem is 192.168.1.1 and the camera is 192.168.1.168 they just type in http://192.168.1.168 into your IE browser and you should see a screen requesting your to download a file from the camera. If you purchased your camera from a reputable source, this is safe to do.
  7. IE will now ask you to “allow” access, please do this.
  8. Now you can log in with the cameras default password and you have set it up.

If all of the above was successful, you can mount the camera and you are ready to watch the area in question.

Mobile device

To setup your mobile device, you need to setup the camera as above, then access the network/P2P option in the camera menu and follow the prompts, it will be self explanatory and reasonably easy to do.

Finding the Default gateway and range

If you are on a different range, like 10.0.0.1 or another, follow the steps below to setup your camera to the correct range.

First you need to find out what your network range is and your Default Gateway. Your Default gateway will be formatted like 192.168.1.1 or 10.0.0.1, or something that looks similar.

You can go to your Windows search box on the bottom left of your screen and type cmd then hit enter, select command prompt and you will see a black box appear. Type ipconfig there and hit enter you will then see your default gateway. Write it down.

Now you will need to change your camera to that range, which can be tricky and if you totally don’t understand this part, maybe get someone to help.

Now you need to find out what your camera default IP address is, again it will be something like 192.168.1.168. This will be written in the camera manual.

Your task is to align them to the same range [must match].[must match].[must match].[must be different]

For example if your Default Gateway is 10.0.0.1 you need to get your camera onto 10.0.0.100 (note 100 can be anything between 1-255, but not the same as your gateway)

The quickest way to do this is to change your network adapter on your laptop IPV4 address to manual and make up a gateway that matches the range of the camera. For example if your camera is 192.168.1.168, add 192.168.1.1 as your temporary gateway into your network adapter IPv4 settings. You will also need to manually set an IP which should be almost the same as the Gateway, except the last number should be different and set your Subnet to 255.255.255.0.

Once this is done, plug the camera into the laptop network socket, log into the camera as per above steps, go to network and change the following settings.

Gateway change to your Default gateway of your modem which you wrote down.
IP address to [must match].[must match].[must match].100
Subnet to 255.255.255.0

Then hit save and reboot.

Your camera is now ready to plug back into your modem and should be accessible via IE on [must match].[must match].[must match].100

To revert your laptop, go back to your network adapter, and change IPV4 back to auto.

Good luck, and please if this sounds out of your level, ask someone for help.