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NovaVMS Manual

Camera stuck in "Pending"

Camera stuck in “Pending”

You added a camera from the installer console a few minutes ago. It still shows the gray Pending badge and has not turned Online. A healthy add transitions from Pending to Online within ~15 seconds of the gateway or server confirming RTSP. This page is for installers walking the site.

Symptom

On the Cameras page, the new camera’s row shows:

  • Gray dot, status text Pending.
  • Empty Last seen column.
  • Clicking the row opens the detail page, but live view fails with Stream not ready.

Likely causes

  1. The gateway has not acknowledged the connect_camera command. For gateway-mode cameras the cloud sends a WebSocket command to the gateway after create. If the gateway is offline or on a different org, the command never runs.

  2. ONVIF auth rejected. The cloud accepts the create call but the gateway then fails WS-Security auth against the camera. Transition to Online never happens.

  3. RTSP URL format rejected by go2rtc. For direct-RTSP and RTSP-via-gateway modes, the URL must include the scheme, credentials, host, and stream path that the camera expects. A malformed path leaves the connection stuck.

  4. The camera’s codec is advertised but not usable downstream. The gateway accepts many codec identifiers at ingest (H.264, H.265, MPEG-4, MJPEG). Pages fail later:

    • WebRTC browsers require H.264 or H.265 for playback.
    • The cloud AI frame extractor requires H.264/H.265 bitstreams.

    If your camera can be configured to output H.264, set it there and re-add to NovaVMS.

Fixes

If the gateway has not acknowledged

  1. Open Gateways in the left nav.
  2. If the gateway’s row is red, fix it first — see Gateway shows “Offline”. Pending cameras clear automatically once the gateway reconnects and re-runs the cached connect_camera commands.
  3. If the gateway is green, open the camera detail page and click Reconnect. This moves the camera back to pending and the cloud re-sends connect_camera.

If ONVIF authentication is rejected

  1. On the camera detail page click Edit credentials.
  2. Re-enter the ONVIF username and password exactly as set in the camera’s own web UI. Leading or trailing spaces cause silent auth failures.
  3. If still rejected, WS-Security clock drift is the next suspect — see ONVIF authentication fails with a clock-drift error.

If the RTSP URL is rejected

  1. On the camera detail page click Edit connection.
  2. Try an alternative RTSP path documented by the camera vendor. For many cameras the main stream is at /Streaming/Channels/101 (Hikvision), /cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0 (Dahua), or /stream1 (Tapo / generic).
  3. Include credentials inline as rtsp://user:pass@host:554/path when the camera requires basic auth.
  4. Save. The state machine returns to pending and retries the connect.

If the codec is unsupported

  1. Open the camera’s own web UI and confirm the main stream encoding is H.264 or H.265. MJPEG and MPEG-4 may be accepted at ingest but fail later in the WebRTC or AI pipeline.
  2. Switch the stream to H.264 if possible (widest compatibility). Save on the camera side.
  3. On the camera detail page click Reconnect.

Verify the fix

  1. The camera’s dot turns green within 30 seconds of the fix.
  2. Status text changes from Pending to Online.
  3. The live view tile renders a frame on the camera detail page.
  4. The Last seen timestamp is within the last minute.

Still stuck?