Pairing an Inno Agent — and rescuing one you cannot reach

An eight-character code on the local network, a scan range the box works out for itself, and the two things to check after an update.

Pairing a box without typing a token

Plug it in. It boots into pairing mode and serves a page on the local network showing an eight-character code. Somebody with access opens Settings, chooses “Pair a device”, and claims that code. The token is handed back automatically; nobody copies a secret between two screens.

The network question, answered by the box

Leave the scan range empty and it derives its own /24 from its own address. Plug it into any network and discovery works with no configuration — which matters, because the person plugging it in is usually not the person who set it up.

Recovering one you cannot reach

• Show the PIN from the admin screen — the local page’s PIN is readable without going to the site.
• Reset to pairing puts it back to a fresh code.
• Restore puts back the previous settings after a bad change.

Two things to check after an update

First, that the runtimes it needs actually loaded — a frozen build can extract incompletely on a full disk and lose a binary module, and the symptom is a camera that never sends a frame while everything else looks healthy. Second, that a long-running command has not wedged the loop: a shell command that leaves a grandchild used to block the agent forever, taking the branch off the air.

A camera that shows no picture

Check the detection engine. A Hikvision camera on the ISAPI path is preview-only by design and will never push a frame to be counted; it has to be on the CV path. That is a setting, not a fault.