Where can the full manual of the NVR / the cameras be downloaded? The quickstart guides do not answer questions regarding technical details or details of the options of the system. For this the complete manual would be helpful, but I can not find them here.

I only ask for the manual to answer my questions before I buy. So a detailled manual would save you some work answering the questions ...

This seems to be a pure networking-question, so I might be able to answer although I am no Reolink member.


What you want is doable. I haven't done it myself yet but basically the steps would be as follows:

The NVR needs to be in a dedicated network (with an IP outside of the range of the "normal" network).
This could be a VLAN that is assigned to the port on the router the NVR is connected to.
Then the router has to create firewall-rules and/or routing information that disallowes all traffic from the network the NVR is connected to to the outside.
On the other hand there has to be a rule added that allows traffic from the "normal" LAN to the network of the NVR.

If your router is something like a pfSense-Box then this is configurable.

But as I said - I haven't done this myself yet. Only have read a ton of blog-articles to networking topics.

Ping?

... one more question related to the topic here:
The firmware of the cameras are updatable. So my question is: Is there a special version of the firmware for the kit-version of RLC820A or are both variants of the camera served by the same firmware-update?

@cynthia
To be clear, those cameras of the kit should not be called RLC-820A when they do not support the full feature set of the "standalone" RLC-820A cameras. This is misleading.


I asked "To be on the safe side I expected to be able to reuse the cameras with other NVRs ..."

So your answer does not address that issue. When I swap out the NVR in the future there is no NVR the cameras can connect to. At least the chances are that there will be no Reolink NVR that the cameras can connect to. In the future I want to experiment with smarthome stuff and/or more intelligent person detection algorithms which the Reolink NVR does not support. So for me in order to save the majority of the investment the cameras also have to be usable without the Reolink NVR.

From the internet (still missing full manuals) I see that at least the "fully featured" RLC820A has a website on the camera where one can adjust the settings of the camera via a browser. Is this option also present on the kit-version of the RLC820As? And if yes - are all the settings of the camera supported there or if not - which settings are missing?
The internet states that the RLC-820A support ONVIF (but that information is missing in the specs). Does the kit-version of the RLC-820A also support ONVIF?

Or asked indirectly: Are those kit-cameras compatible to other NVRs - e.g. Synology? (Which the fully featured cameras are.)

Interesting information, that should be more emphasized in the specs!

The usual reader would expect that the cameras in the kit are normal 820a cameras.
To be on the safe side I expected to be able to reuse the cameras with other NVRs (either commercial ones or handmade with own hardware) when I later might decide to swap out the NVR with one with more functions.

So what are the exact consequences of the missing UID?
What exactly does "you can't add the cameras as standalone cameras" mean? Obivously the cameras must be visible on the LAN, so they have at least DHCP (which would be OK in my later use cases). What about configuring the parameters of the cameras? Is that web-interface on the cameras for the configuration also missing?

Or is the only missing feature that the cameras would not show up in the reolink-app?

As this seems to be only a software limitation - is there an option to reflash the firmware with the full version?

I only ask for the manual to answer my questions before I buy. So a detailled manual would save you some work answering the questions ...

tnx

Thank you for the information. At least it is possible.

But FTP should not be used any more - it is insecure. I would prefer to see at least SFTP or better scp or rsync as transfer methods.

@cynthia
1) OK - so there is hope that it will be supported in the future without needing new hardware

2) Not clear what you wanted to say. From the informations in the internet it seems to work as I want it to. But my question was if that is an official feature of the NVR.

3) Found the information I was looking for. It was hidden behind the "more" button.

4) What exactly do you mean by "the site"?
In order to add content as a user I have to use the interface provided with the forums here. And this interface does not let me save my post if it thinks it detects a (some special?) link.
In my case I wanted to link to the specifications page I found on the reolink site with the de-TLD. (Can not post the link for that reason). Even if I wrote the words reolink and de connected with a dot and without any http or https prefix this was considered a forbidden link ... Something that should be looked into by the admistrators of this forum?

On the product page of the RLK16-820D8-A there is a note

"The cameras of the kit cannot work without the NVR."

What exactly does this mean?
It is clear that those cameras then need power provided by a PoE switch. Are there any further limitiations of the cameras from the kit, compared to the standalone 820a cameras?