I was finally able to upgrade my LV-N9508Q8E thanks to the info supplied by Censo in this thread, and the
guide on updating firmware via console.
Details:
I followed that guide and was able to get console access to the NVR after some trial and error. Pin 1 of the TTL header (white arrow on the PCB points to pin 1) is actually VCC (3.3v) and not the ground. Pin 4 is the ground. Pin 3 is TX. Pin 2 is RX. So, it's backwards from the guide. After that, I could interrupt the boot process with control+U, but then I just got a
# prompt that would accept any text and and just return another
# prompt. I found on page 2 of the guide the command
setenv bootcmd ';update' which kicked off the upgrade process. Yay! From there, I was able to
TFTP the firmware to the NVR.
The next issue was that all the firmware versions posted in this thread would not load. Here is what the console looked like at that point:
HKVS $ setenv bootcmd ';update'
timeout for link [5000]!
MAC: 14-2F-FD-0F-A5-ED
TFTP from server 192.0.0.128; our IP address is 192.0.0.64
Download Filename 'digicap.dav'.
Download to address: 0x83000000
Downloading: #################################################
done
Bytes transferred = 42719696 (28bd9d0 hex)
file header error, filenums:748494393
The board info: language - 0x1 device_class - 0x5DC oemCode - 0x13952
upgrade packet mismatch, please select correct packet
Can not find correct packet for upgrade, give up!!!
After trying every single version of code attached in this thread, I tried a version from the
link Censo posted. These would actually load! Yay again! However, once booted, the NVR would beep 5 times every 30 seconds or so. I thought something was broken, so I tried multiple versions of the code on that hikvision page, but all with the same result. I even rolled back to the LaView version and confirmed the beeps went away. Then, I discovered the beeps were just an alarm for the HDD, which now was in an error state and needed to be formatted. Evidently, the LaView firmware defaults to this alarm being turned off. You can disable it in the Hikvision version under Configuration > Event > Exception > HDD Error (in the drop down) > uncheck audible warning. You can also just format the drive so it shows a "normal" status under Configuration > Storage > Storage Management.
At this point, the NVR seems to be working with the original LaView cameras. One problem though - the web GUI will not show the camera video at all. The video does work when viewing with the HDMI output. Google results make me think the live view is displaying the stream directly from the camera which won't work without viewing in IE with the plugin installed (which is no longer available on v 4.30.085 that I installed). The main reason I wanted to upgrade was to be able to view the live stream and playback in a modern browser on a modern OS.
sigh Looks like I now get to investigate upgrading the firmware on the laview cameras themselves. Hopefully that is possible. I also need to try remote access to see if Hik-Connect works okay.
Hope this helps somebody else!
