Converting EZVIZ C6TC from Chinese to English

rikochet · 2019-10-09T14:11:47+00:00

Hi, TLDR; I have installed US firmware on CN hardware but unable to connect to EZVIZ service. I purchased a couple of C6TC (CS-C6TC-32WFR) IP cams from TaoBao in an attempt to save a few dollars. What I didn't realise was that the cameras are region locked and it requires a Chinese phone number to register the account and the Chinese Android app has to be installed by a sketchy Chinese app-store. It goes without saying that I don't want to use these cameras on the Chinese network. The best solution would be to use these devices locally, which I can do using RTSP.. However they are extremely crippled, all PTZ commands and other related functions are transmitted over a proprietary protocol. So what I want to do is try and install the EN firmware on the CN camera so that I can get full use of the cameras. After some googling I managed to find this datasheet for the US version: https://s3.amazonaws.com/mfs.ezvizlife.com/C6TC+Datasheet.pdf AFAIK it's the US version of the C6TC and you can see in the header of the specifications on page 5 that the model number is CS-CV248-A0-32WFR. I also found the location of some US firmware for a different model: http://usdownload.ezvizlife.com/device/LV-PDB1630-U/2.0/LV-PDB1630-U.dav So I just substituted the model numbers and came up with this working URL: http://usdownload.ezvizlife.com/device/CS-CV248-A0-32WFR/2.0/CS-CV248-A0-32WFR.dav After downloading the US firmware I tried to use the Windows EZVIZ Studio to upload the firmware to the device but was met with 'upload failed!'. I tried tinkering with the DAV file but to no avail, so decided to try something a little different! I dismantled the camera and found that there is a Micro 4-pin JST connector with nothing attached! It was just my luck that it's a serial connector and the middle pins are TX and RX. I connected them up to my FTDI and gotroot! I poked around for a bit but couldn't really achieve anything useful, I reset the device and escaped the boot sequence. U-boot had a command (update) which installs 'digicap.dav' from the microSD card. I dropped the US firmware on an SD card and renamed it 'digicap.dav'. I inserted the card into the device, reset and then typed 'update'. The update failed with the error 'incorrect language'. I searched the ipcamtalk forums and found hiktools, this allowed me to change the language of the dav file to Chinese. I dropped the updated file on the SD card and ran the update again.. IT WORKED! The update installed, I reset the camera and English audio queues played! Great! I opened up EZVIZ studio and tried to configure the device but was confronted with the message "It's not supported" which is different from the previous "The device has not been connected to the EZVIZ".. This is where I'm currently at; a Chinese device (CS-C6TC-32WFR) running US firmware (CS-CV248-A0-32WFR).. but still unable to connect the device to the US EZVIZ network.. Any ideas?