Skip to content

Samsung Smartcam HD Pro SNH-P6410BN (UK) with SecuritySpy

edited June 2017 in SecuritySpy
Hi all,

Just thought I'd take the time to give everyone a quick heads up around the Samsung Smartcam SNH-P6410BN. It's a 1080p/30fps IP camera with IR for night vision. There are quite a few reports problems with this camera since Samsung kindly disabled the web-interface with a firmware update last year.

Tested using SecuritySpy 4.1.4.

I took the plunge as the specs looked quite good, and thought I could try and hack the firmware on the camera to re-enable the disabled features.. But, turns out I didn't need to.

So I have 2 of the camera working absolutely spot on with SecuritySpy, I thought I'd take the time to note down what I did/settings just in case anyone else had one and were having problems:

1. Plug in and turn on the camera with Ethernet connected.

2. Set up the camera using the www.samsungsmartcam.com website, it will tell you to install a plugin which you'll need to do to get it set up. You may be able to use the iPhone app to do it but I haven't tried initial set up using that. You can switch to Wifi but I constantly had "relay mode" "connection problems" show up when I tried that even though I have a very strong 802.11n wifi network, so I have reverted to Ethernet for streaming. I'm using Firmware 1.18.

3. I didn't enable any of the other functionality (date stamping etc) of the cameras but I did use the iPhone Samsung app to check that the date/time/Night vision mode etc were set correctly. - Note, the samsungsmartcam.com web site is so rubbish it doesn't seem to have half of the options that are listed in the manual, you can access these using the iPhone app. Make sure Image Encryption is disabled otherwise SecuritySpy cant connect.

4. Set your router/access-point/switch/whatever is providing DHCP IP addresses to reserve specific IP's based on the MAC addresses printed on the back for the cameras so they don't change.

5. Don't bother to use the Samsungsmartcam.com web interface anymore - its complete and utter rubbish, I constantly have connection/streaming problems which turns out is nothing to do with the cameras its Samsung's rubbish cloud service.

6. Add the cameras in SecuritySpy, mine were auto-discovered ok, but I changed the address to the IP address of the camera to be sure.

7. Settings I use are
Address: (IP address of the camera)
HTTP Port: (leave blank)
RTSP Port: (leave blank)
Username: admin
Password: (first 8 digits of your camera password) - Note the new Samsung software limits you to 8 characters now anyhow
Profile: Samsung
Format: H.264 RTSP (video and audio)
Video Size: Mine are blank, and I couldn't fill them in
Framerate: Default
Input of stream number: 5 (this give me 1080p @ 30fps), you can pick the stream that suits your needs the best - note this is where you can alter the framerate/resolution/colour palette - you can't do that in the other areas of the SecuritySpy interface)
Options:
Use SSL - Unticked (if you enable this regardless of image encryption setting on the camera, it doesnt work)
Disable Pan/Tilt/Zoom - Unticked (the camera doesnt support PTZ anyhow)
Recompress video data - Ticked (otherwise you get MOV files which don't play well with modern browsers) - ticking it gives me MP4 H.264
Recompress audio data - Ticked (otherwise you get ulaw PCM audio) - ticking it gives me AAC
Request: (leave blank)


8. I have my Mac connected via Ethernet as well now as I had network sftp upload issues over 802.11n. I'm sure if I moved to 802.11ac/MU-MIMO it would help but the Cameras only support 802.11n anyhow.


Note: I have a Mac Mini (2011) with 2.3 Dual Core i5 CPU and 16gb ram running Mac OS Sierra. Each camera sits around 18-21% CPU usage in the Camera Info window of Security Spy, so you may struggle if you tried to connect up anymore than 3 or 4 of these cameras to this spec of Mac.

Hope that helps anyone that is thinking of these cameras or stuck.


Cheers!

Comments

  • Hi Andy, many thanks for detailing all of this, it's really interesting and great news that the camera can still be used even with the new firmware.

    Is the "image encryption" option turned on by default? From what you say, it's this option, plus the DHCP reservation, that are the main setup steps, right?

    The high CPU usage is due to the high frame rate - you might want to try different stream numbers as these have different resolutions and frame rates (though annoyingly there are only a few combinations of resolution and frame rate available, and most of them are going to be wrong for most customers - another lamentable feature of the firmware).

    It's such a shame that this camera's firmware is so limiting, because the hardware is great. If not for the dreadful firmware design, this would certainly be a camera that we would recommend to users.
  • Anytime :-)

    Completely agree, its a great bit of hardware, shame they have ruined the firmware crippling functionality instead of patching the bugs when reported to them.

    The "Image Encryption" setting was disabled by default on mine. Absolutely; the DHCP (or setting a static IP in the samsunsmartcam.com web interface) reservation, encryption and profiles are the main steps for me.

    Agree, if I leave the profile as "1" (1920x1080x1fps) then the CPU usage is dramatically less (<1% per camera). For my use case, I want full motion video as I use the cameras for when the kids have a baby sitter over but there are quite a few profiles that would meet most requirements.

    The other odd things is, enabling WDR on my cameras seems to make no difference in either SecuritySpy or the Samsung web interface; so I suspect its broken in the firmware or my cameras (odd that both would exhibit the same symptoms).

    When I get a few mins over the next couple of weeks, I'll try and force patch an old firmware onto the cameras and then fix the security bugs myself - so ultimately have a fully functioning camera that isn't more leaky than a colander! If I succeed, I'll post up a how-to.
  • edited July 2017
    Another update to this, after using the Samsungs for a while, I've sent them back to Amazon and replaced with Hikvision DS-2CD2442FWD-IW 's as I had a number of problems:

    - The audio had what sounded like a ticking clock all of the time.

    - Wifi module was terrible, the cameras on wifi kept falling off the network.

    - Really worryingly, after using wireshark to monitor, I found the cameras were copying the videos to a Samsung site in Japan. I manually set the IP address and removed the default gateway, this caused the cameras to fail initiationsation.

    - Low light picture quality was extremely noisy.

    - The IR illuminators were so bright they looked like an evil eye on the wall which gave my two year old nightmares.

    - The cameras opened all no less than 9 upnp ports through the firewall, which meant I had to disable upnp/natpnp on the router.

    So in general although I did manage to downgrade the firmware and also patch the security holes myself, the hardware was also not up to scratch.

    In summary, avoid! Ive only been using the Hikvision for a few days but I'm very impressed so far.
Sign In or Register to comment.