Cobra 8 Channel Surveillance System 63890 Firmware Update

This blog is about the Cobra 63890 8 Aqueduct Security DVR. Specifically to assist those who desire to brand use of its features but were non able to figure out how to set it upwards – or get a detail feature to piece of work. This is where owners can share their tips and tricks (and fifty-fifty hacks) to become the well-nigh out of this device! Delight post your tips and I’ll update the blog appropriately. I don’t intend for this to be a review – you lot can do that more than effectively at the Harbor Freight web site.

I purchased this device in early 2018 from a Harbor Freight store on sale for nearly $200. I chose it for the post-obit features:

• Hard disk cameras with dark vision (4 included and inputs for a total of 8)
• Large chapters recording (one TB hard drive included)
• Motion detection with masking feature to reduce false detections
• Remote access and notifications

 The Manual

I downloaded the transmission and read it earlier purchasing the unit. At first read, it looks consummate, but when y’all start setting it up you realize that there are a number of features that are unclear – and I doubtable may not actually exist in the product.

I discovered another security photographic camera / DVR visitor proper noun that has a about identical product. The hardware and user interface is and so about identical that I suspect that they are built by the same company. The company name is ANNKE. This may explain why the transmission mentions features you “may have”. The transmission was written to encompass many like products and wasn’t completely cleaned upwardly for Harbor Freight to remove irrelevant statements. Here’s alink to a good instructional video on the ANNKE system.

I noticed that the manual has a humorous contradiction: “To prevent electric shock, exercise not attempt to detach DVR”. However it also states “Clean the internal dust regularly”. Since the ability supply is external, the DVR only has 12V inside, so getting shocked is non a business.

Terminology:
When yous see the term “Alarm“. They are referring to either motion detected on one of the cameras that has motion detection enabled or an external warning sensor has been tripped. However this model does not accept connectors to attach external sensors.
PTZ
refers to cameras that tin can be remotely controlled – Pan Tilt and Zoom. The term
Capture or Snapshot
refers to photos taken by the camera (.JPG format) – not videos.

Phoning dwelling:  There’s a lot of talk most “Internet of Things” (IOT) devices that ‘telephone home’ and leave users wondering what’s going on. Is my IOT device spying on me? I’m not an alarmist, but I keep my eye on devices and lookout where they connect to, so that was one of the first things I checked. It does send information out. It sends UDP packets to

47.90.204.196 owned past Zhuhai Raysharp Technology Co of Guangdong People’s republic of china. These packets are probably to help with remote access apps. It also sends packets to devices Inside my network – that’due south a bit strange to my thinking, just I tin can’t actually say what it’s doing. I just blocked this IP address in my router’s firewall.
If you are nervous about this, you tin unplug from the network and yet make use of the DVR without a network connexion. You can view and control information technology from the user interface (monitor and mouse). You won’t accept remote access or Email notifications.

The Hardware

Exploring the Features

The user transmission  gets you started, but there are a few things that are not specifically stated or are confusing.

Motion Detection, masking areas and sensitivity:

The move detection masking and sensitivity is configured in the Alarm department of the menus. You tin tape move from the camera where movement was detected and you lot can likewise select other cameras to commencement recording likewise. This might be useful if you desire to record move at your front end door, but the camera picks upwards besides much surrounding motility and triggers to oft. And then install a second camera overhead pointing downwardly on the area, and enable motility detection on that camera. Only have it configured to cause recording from the first camera that is at a lower bending.

The poorly named option “Enabled” should be set to “Enabled” (a bit disruptive). They should have called the option “Movement Detection”.

ALARM MENU

But you’re not done yet, you lot have to become into the Record Schedule menu, select motion and highlight the area of the tabular array that corresponds to the time and twenty-four hours of week that you desire the move detection feature active. The aforementioned carte du jour besides allows you to select the time that yous desire continuous recordings fabricated (chosen “Normal”) .

Recording Schedule Carte

Case showing motility recording ever enabled

Email notifications:

This feature lets you receive email notification when a


problem is detected: hard drive error or total, video signal loss (peradventure due to tampering) or if
motion is detected (alarm event). Information technology will send you an email with an fastened JPG file of the captured motion. Seems similar a great idea, but I am hesitant to apply this characteristic since I may get a lot of email that contains photos of a tree that is waving in the current of air or information technology’s shadow. Fifty-fifty a lamp turning on or off tin can trigger motion detection. Set your masking area and sensitivity carefully before using this feature. Even with these set properly, you may nevertheless get spurious emails when the sun sets and the camera changes from day to night vision. So you lot may as well want to also set up the email schedule characteristic appropriately to prevent your inbox from being overloaded or constantly causing your smartphone to beep incessantly.

Cloud storage:

This characteristic allows you to take snapshots (nevertheless photos) that were taken due to movement detection or manual capture and uploaded to a cloud storage provider. They only support Dropbox. It does not mention if videos tin be uploaded in the same way. I don’t accept a Dropbox account, then I tin’t test this.

Alarms:

In that location is a congenital in speaker that can exist configured to beep when motion is detected, and it appears that some variant of the DVR comes with relay outputs to control external devices. I’m thinking that the beeper could be wired to an external jack and I could brand information technology control some external device.

FTP:

FTP is an onetime protocol for transferring files betwixt computers. It is not a secure protocol unless you apply the SFTP variant. I didn’t find and support for SFTP.

According to the manual (page 18), this feature allows “…load captured snapshots from DVR to your storage device over FTP.” It shows the usual parameters needed for uploading, but that’s it. At that place’s no mention of how to make use of the characteristic! How exercise you lot specify which channels yous desire to configure for uploading snapshots. I clicked on the TestFTP push button, and it did create a directory on my FTP server, but I nonetheless can’t get it to upload snapshots. Annotation that if you press the TestFTP button again you may get a poorly worded error bulletin error

“Creat File Folder Failed!”. That’southward because the first time you clicked TestFTP it created a directory, and the 2nd fourth dimension it tries to create it over again which the FTP server reports that the directory already exists. The DVR should not written report this as an error. I’ll call this a minor problems. Just if FTP doesn’t work, it’south a major bug.

Saving files to USB:

I was able to select an “event” in the Record Search / Events tab. It gives y’all several formatting options for saving files. Y’all tin select H.264, AVI or MP4 format.  I like the flexibility of supporting several file formats. Your USB thumb drive plugs into a port conveniently located on the front of the device. One note well-nigh these formats is that these are really format containers. The video is encoded every bit H.264 in all three file types. Y’all’ll note that the file size is about identical regardless of the format you cull.

Sound In

Streaming

You can monitor a camera remotely if you use a programme like the highly recommended
VLC software
on your remote PC. If your remote PC is outside your dwelling network yous’ll need to set upwards your router to do “port forwarding” to pass traffic through port 554 to your DVR. But there’s an error in the user transmission that volition prevent you lot from remote streaming. The transmission shows a screenshot of the VLC window. The URL for monitoring photographic camera ane’s mainstream (total resolution video)  should look something like this:

rtsp://192.168.i.120:554/ch01/0  (note the ch01 not ch1)
This works!

The lower resolution stream (referred to as the sub-stream) should be







rtsp://192.168.1.120:554/ch01/one
(merely it doesn’t work for me – VLC reports “input can’t be opened”)
















Of course y’all will need to use your DVR’s IP address instead of the above example.
















The RTSP bill of fare allows remote streaming to exist enabled or disabled, and can be configured for open up access or password protected.

A note nigh VLC. I was able to view (and hear) the stream while on a recent trip using VLC version 3.0.two . But I found an annoying bug in that version of VLC which causes the stream to cease after near ii minutes. I found that installing an older version of VLC did not have this issues. The version that I found that worked was
2.2.6.  Yous can get that older version and others from
VLC’s site

There is a way to use a web browser to connect to the DVR, only it requires a plugin that needs to be installed first. I was a bit concerned about the app, so I didn’t bother exploring this feature.

Tips and tricks

• Your username and password cannot be longer than 8 characters. (This tip comes from several people who posted on the Harbor Freight product review page.)
•  The DVR has a VGA and an HDMI output. You can employ both simultaneously if you need to “mirror” the output to another monitor. (Likewise bad yous can’t brandish four cameras on 1 monitor and four cameras on the other monitor. That would be great)
• Use ch01 not ch1 in the RTSP  URL when connecting with VLC or other streaming application on your PC or smartphone.

Questions I accept
– please postal service your answers:

• Bug reports – things that definitely don’t work right.
• Is there a firmware update? What is the latest? Mine is V7.1.0.20170523. That looks like a date lawmaking of May 23, 2017,
• Has anyone got the FTP feature to work? How?
• External Alert Device. What is this well-nigh?  Does this DVR support it?  Hack?
• PTZ port – does it actually work if you accept appropriate camera? Can this port exist used for other purposes (warning out?)
• Sensor inputs – is there another model with this feature.
• Has anyone had improve experience with the audio input? What did you use?