Orchid Not Auto-Discovering Cameras

Orchid uses ONVIF auto-discovery to automatically find IP cameras. If Orchid is not automatically detecting cameras within a few minutes then you will first want to ensure the following basic requirements are met:

• ONVIF Compatibility: The camera must support ONVIF. If the camera does not support ONVIF then it cannot be discovered automatically and will need to be added to Orchid manually.
• Same Subnet: The Orchid server and the IP cameras must be running on the same network subnet. If they are on different subnets then the cameras will need to be added manually.

If the above requirements are being met successfully then it is possible there are multiple IP addresses assigned to the computer Orchid is running on, which causes ONVIF auto-discovery to not function properly. This commonly occurs when there are one or more Virtual Machines running on the same computer as the Orchid server.

1. Find the correct IP address to use through the Command Prompt on Windows, or the Terminal on Linux:

• Windows: Use the “ipconfig” command to list all of the IP addresses assigned to the computer. You will generally want to use the IP address associated with the “Local Area Connection” adapter.

• Linux: The “ip addr” command can be used to list all of the IP addresses assigned to the computer. You will generally use the IP address associated with the “eth0” adapter, however, that may very depending on your system setup.

2. Open Orchid’s ONVIF Auto-Discovery properties file using a text editor such as WordPad or GEdit. You will need to open the file as an administrator in order to edit it. The location of the file will be:

• Windows: C:\Program Files\Orchid\onvif_autodiscovery\onvif_autodiscovery
• Linux: /etc/opt/onvif_autodiscovery.properties

Note: If you are unsure of how to edit the file, feel free to read our guides on how to edit Orchid’s configuration files in Windows and Linux.

3. Add “local_ip = x.x.x.x” to the end of the file, without the quotes, replacing “x.x.x.x” with the IP address for the Orchid server. For example, if the IP address should be set to 192.168.1.101, you would enter:

• local_ip = 192.168.1.101

4. Save the file and close the text editor.

5. Restart the ONVIF Auto-Discovery Service to make the new setting take effect immediately. If you are unsure how to restart the ONVIF service, please feel free to read our guides on how to restart services in Windows and Linux.

Once the ONVIF Auto-Discovery service has restarted, cameras should start appearing in Orchid within a few minutes.