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NovaVMS Manual

Bulk-deploy 20+ cameras in one visit

Bulk-deploy 20+ cameras in one visit

Use this when a site needs 20 or more cameras brought up in one visit. Doing them one-at-a-time is 4×–5× slower than batching. The winning move is pre-provisioning from a CSV before you arrive on site.

Procedure

  1. Before the visit, prepare a staging CSV with columns: camera_name, site, gateway, intended_ip, onvif_user, onvif_password, mount_location. One row per camera.

  2. Import the CSV into NovaVMS (Admin → Bulk CSV Import). Cameras are created in pending state, not yet bound to RTSP.

  3. On site, unbox cameras and stage them on a table. Label each with its camera_name masking tape.

  4. Label both ends of every Cat6 run before you pull cable. Use a Brother P-touch or similar, not pen on tape.

  5. Pull all cable first. Terminate both ends. Test every run end-to-end with a cable meter. Quarantine any run with a split pair or length > 100 m.

  6. Mount cameras. Fasteners: 4 × M4 × 30 mm per camera. Torque 0.6 N·m. Work in zones of 5–10 cameras before energising.

  7. Energise PoE zone-by-zone. Verify link LED on each camera within 10 s.

  8. On each camera’s web UI, set the static IP from the CSV and the site NTP server. A bulk config tool (Hikvision SADP, Axis IP Utility) shortens this pass to ~15 s per camera.

  9. In Gateways → (gateway) → Discover cameras. Expect all cameras to appear within 30 s. Anything missing is probably on the wrong VLAN or has an NTP drift > ±5 s.

  10. Batch-select cameras and bind with ONVIF credentials. The UI binds 10 cameras in parallel; expect 20 cameras to reach online within 60 s.

  11. Spot-check Live view on every 5th camera for first frame, correct scene, correct name.

  12. Draw motion zones and assign prompt packs in a second pass, after all cameras are online.

Common variations

  • Mixed vendors — discover in two separate passes (Hikvision first, Axis second). Different default credentials means two credential entries anyway.
  • Cameras on different VLANs per floor — one gateway per VLAN. Do each VLAN’s discovery pass in parallel (one installer per gateway).
  • No CSV ready — fall back to Add a camera to an existing site per camera. Budget 5 minutes each.

If this didn’t work

  • CSV import returns validation errors → check camera_name uniqueness per site (US-CAM-14) and regex ^[a-zA-Z0-9 \-_.]{1,100}$.
  • Discovery finds < 90 % of staged cameras → Cameras not found across VLANs.
  • PoE switch trips on power-up → reduce zone size; spread load across two switches.