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NovaVMS Manual

Camera does not appear in ONVIF discovery

Camera does not appear in ONVIF discovery

Symptom

You clicked Discover cameras on the Gateways page. Other cameras appeared but this one did not, even though its web UI loads from your laptop on the same LAN.

Likely causes

  1. ONVIF is disabled in the camera’s own web UI (common on Hikvision, Dahua, Uniview defaults).
  2. The camera is on a different VLAN than the gateway, so WS-Discovery multicast does not cross.
  3. ONVIF credentials on the camera do not match what the gateway tries.
  4. A firewall, managed switch, or access point is filtering UDP 3702 multicast.

Fix

If ONVIF is disabled on the camera

  1. Open the camera’s own web UI. Sign in as administrator.
  2. Find the ONVIF or Integration Protocol settings (location varies by vendor).
  3. Enable ONVIF. Create a dedicated ONVIF user with a strong password.
  4. Save and reboot the camera if the vendor UI requires it.
  5. Run Discover cameras again from the Gateways page.

If the camera is on a different VLAN

  1. See Cameras not found across VLANs — WS-Discovery does not cross VLAN boundaries by default.

If credentials do not match

  1. On the Cameras page, click Add camera → By IP.
  2. Enter the camera IP, ONVIF port (often 8000 or 2020), and the ONVIF user you created.
  3. NovaVMS will bind directly without relying on multicast discovery.

If the network filters multicast

  1. Confirm the gateway and camera are in the same broadcast domain (same subnet, same VLAN).
  2. Ask the network admin whether UDP 3702 (WS-Discovery) is allowed on the switch and any APs in the path.
  3. If multicast cannot be enabled, add the camera by IP instead (see the credentials branch above).

Verify

  1. The camera appears in the next Discover cameras run.
  2. Its status is Online with a green dot after you claim it.
  3. Live view renders a frame within 10 seconds of opening the camera.

If none of this worked

  • From the gateway host, run your vendor’s ONVIF probe tool (for example, onvif-cli probe) to confirm multicast is reaching it.
  • Capture a 30-second packet trace on the gateway interface filtered for port 3702. Attach to the ticket.
  • See also: Cameras not found across VLANs.