NVR-101 installation

The installation of the NVR 101 is even easier than the installation of the IP camera, and boy is that saying something! The very first thing one has to do is install a hard drive into the NVR101. This is accomplished by sliding the top half of the case forwards until the arrow lines up with the unlocked icon. When it does simply lift the top of the case off and slide a SATA hard drive into position. When it is firmly seated, the power and SATA connectors will be snugly inserted into the back of the hard drive and the screw holes one the side of said hard drive will line up with the case. Screw in the hard drive, replace the top cover and slide the cover until the arrow aligns with the locked icon and then install the two screws in the back of the case that lock the plastic top case in position.

When all this is done, simply plug in your Ethernet cable; then plug in the power adaptor and turn the NVR 101 on. It will beep and do its self test and then beep again when it is ready to be used. At this point the hardware installation of the NVR101 is complete.


To continue, one must install the QNAP finder utility that comes on the NVR 101 software CD. This is the same program as is used to find QNAP’s NAS devices. When it finds the NVR101 for the first time it will guide you through the configuration process and remember; when asked, the default password is administrator and password is admin.


We strongly recommend you assign a fixed IP to the NVR 101 just as you did for the IP cameras. It will ask you a few simple questions like what the IP address is of the default gateway it should use (i.e. the IP address of your router or DHCP server). When this step is done it will ask you for the camera settings, user name, password and even the model of said camera. This is where the power of this device really shines as you are not limited to a particular manufacturer or model; rather you can use multiple cameras from various manufacturers, with different capabilities and they will all play and act nice together when used via the NVR101. This is very impressive, as most IP cameras come with proprietary software that only works with their cameras and managing different ones can be a real hassle.


When this wizard is finished one simply uses QNAP Finder to log onto the NVR 101, at which time it will load MS Internet Explorer (if it is not already running) and load the monitoring page. Just as happened with the IP cameras, the first time you log into this page you will have to say yes to the ActiveX installation. When this is complete the NVR101 will automatically install the playback software onto your system (that is assuming you didn’t already install via the software CD).

When all this is completed, so is the installation of the NVR 1012 surveillance system. You are now ready to enjoy your new kit, or at the very least set up how you would like to use your cameras. The total time you will spend setting up the camera and the NVR101 (sans nit picking over the perfect angle for the cameras) will be about an hour. This really does highlight how user friendly this system is!

The next section will deal with the actual administration of the NVR 101. So without further ado let’s take a look at how you administer this bad boy!