New Dahua IP Cam Profile Choice: Day/Night?

[Dramus]

Just experimenting with and learning these Dahua IP cams (2 x IPC-HDW5231R-ZE outdoors, 1 x IPC-HDBW4231F-AS indoors, so far). All three cams have V2.800.0000005.0.R, Build Date: 2019-03-25.

Had been experimenting with Camera -> Conditions -> Conditions -> Sensitivity on the 1st 5231. Added the 2nd outdoor cam yesterday. Went to adjust those later on in the afternoon, and found them grayed-out. Checked the first 5231. Same thing. "Huh?" I knew I'd set that before. Then I remembered I'd gone into Camera -> Conditions -> Profile Management and had set it to Day/Night. Sure enough: That latter setting disables the former options.

Thing is: There doesn't seem to be any documentation anywhere on that setting and what effect it has. Anybody here have any clue? (And, yes: I'm poking at buttons just to see what they do .)

 

[Walrus]

The sensitivity is how much/little light is needed to switch from day to night, and night to day. To set them differently, put the profile to something other than day/night (normal, day or night), then go to the conditions tab and change the day sensitivity and click save, change the night sensitivity and click save, then change the profile back to day/night.

How it works, I'm not sure. I was running both at low. As a test, I wanted mine to switch back quicker to day mode in the morning, so I changed the night sensitivity to high and left the day sensitivity at low. One of my cams never went into night mode. I've changed them both back to low or mid, can't remember.

 

[aristobrat]

The feature that lets these cameras automatically switch from day/night profiles based on the light level is relatively new... IIRC, it was introduced in a firmware version last year, was removed from the next several firmware updates after that, and now appears to be back.

IMO, it makes sense that it auto-disables itself (i.e. goes gray) if you manually put the camera in a specific profile yourself.

 

[Walrus]

It's the opposite. It's grayed out when you put it in auto day/night mode. When you put it in day only or night only mode, the sensitivity becomes available. Seems like a bug.

At least this is how it works on my 2231s with the newest firmware.

 

[Dramus]

It's the opposite. It's grayed out when you put it in auto day/night mode. When you put it in day only or night only mode, the sensitivity becomes available. Seems like a bug.

Exactly. It makes little sense in this respect.

But, interestingly, I'd turned the sensitivity to "high" on the first two installations so as to retain colour in lower-light. The cameras seemed to handle it just fine. Checking day/night in profile management appears to have had about the same effect. So I wonder if that setting automatically has the camera doing the highest sensitivity it can for the lighting conditions or something?

 

[Walrus]

I'm guessing you had it in normal profile before? The point of day/night vs normal lets you have different settings day vs night. Eg if you want WDR on during the day, and off at night. Also lets you have different 3D NR settings day vs night, etc.

With the normal profile, you can only have one setting that applies day/night.

 

[Dramus]

If Normal is the default: That's what I had it in before.

 

[akineo]

Hi people. Sorry my English, but I need your help.
I have Dahua camera IPC-HFW4433 and I cant understand how make it to work as I need
I need, camera automatically switching to day or nigth profile with my manual options when she decides that is day or night. Not only b\w and IR, fully night prodile I need.
It has normal, day, night with the same options. why? If I configure day and nigth, why I must confige NORMAL too?
and profile manager. Only day or nigth or manual time day-nigth - OK, NO QUESTION. But what is Normal? again...
And some troble whit time - after sync with PC or telephone it broke back 1 hour. Sync with website also broke after some seconds.
Thanks you!
Where I can get new firmware for this camera?

 

[aristobrat]

Where I can get new firmware for this camera?

The official firmware for this model camera only supports the Chinese language so you'd have to find it on Dahua's Chinese website. If you use a web browser that can help translate (like Chrome), that might help. If your firmware is currently in a different language, then the camera is most likely running a hacked version of the firmware and you'll need to research if it's possible to just apply the latest official Chinese firmware or if you have to do some things before that.

 

[zaqik]

Any hope to find nowadays a better explanation of Profile Management?
Thing is, I have 4 options there:
General
Full Time
Schedule
Day/Night


If I go to the Conditions tab, there are 3 profiles: General (as it seems, corresponds General profile), Day, Night

If chose General on both tabs, you'll have corresponding setting all the time. Same as if you chose Full Time and pick Day or Night! So far, Day and Night is just different templates to quick change settings. You can change the profile to Schedule though! Obviously, it automatically swap the profile between Day and Night according to the clock. Neat option, if all year long you'd have the same daylight duration! So I find it useless because you either have to change settings many times a year, or will have inappropriate picture e.g. at 7 PM in the summer or in the winter.

Besides all of this you have a Condition named Day and Night (on the left at upper screenshot). It's useful when your scene goes completely dark in the night: set Mode to Auto and camera will change to black-and-white picture with IR backlight automatically. Also very neat, except you have light spots. Because of them the camera can always stay in auto-color-mode, so any dark areas are pitch black. Not a viable option too.

So here I came to the last option which I don't understand how to use - Day/Night. I put it simple here - I choose Day/Night and seems like nothing has changed. I did it in the day, and in the night, having different settings in both Day and Night profiles, yet nothing.

My question - does anybody know how exactly work Profiles, especially Day/Night?

 

[wittaj]

Any hope to find nowadays a better explanation of Profile Management?
Thing is, I have 4 options there:
General
Full Time
Schedule
Day/Night
View attachment 163920

If I go to the Conditions tab, there are 3 profiles: General (as it seems, corresponds General profile), Day, Night
View attachment 163921
If chose General on both tabs, you'll have corresponding setting all the time. Same as if you chose Full Time and pick Day or Night! So far, Day and Night is just different templates to quick change settings. You can change the profile to Schedule though! Obviously, it automatically swap the profile between Day and Night according to the clock. Neat option, if all year long you'd have the same daylight duration! So I find it useless because you either have to change settings many times a year, or will have inappropriate picture e.g. at 7 PM in the summer or in the winter.

Besides all of this you have a Condition named Day and Night (on the left at upper screenshot). It's useful when your scene goes completely dark in the night: set Mode to Auto and camera will change to black-and-white picture with IR backlight automatically. Also very neat, except you have light spots. Because of them the camera can always stay in auto-color-mode, so any dark areas are pitch black. Not a viable option too.

So here I came to the last option which I don't understand how to use - Day/Night. I put it simple here - I choose Day/Night and seems like nothing has changed. I did it in the day, and in the night, having different settings in both Day and Night profiles, yet nothing.

My question - does anybody know how exactly work Profiles, especially Day/Night?

From my experience all that selecting day/night does is it randomly picks a profile and then simply changes to color or B/W based on light. Keep in mind we are not their targeted market, it is businesses that have enough light to be able to get away with one profile.

Your options are:

• Set up the Schedule in Profile Management and set the time for the day profile and time for the night profile but it means going in a couple times a year to adjust based on sunrise/sunset.
• Setup up the schedule in Profile Management where say it uses DAY profile from 9am to 5pm and NIGHT for all other times. This means at times when it could capture color it will be in B/W, but it will allow you to not have to change the schedule a couple times a year.
• If you are not using an NVR and have a computer running 24/7, you can use a utility like this that was developed specifically to address this issue to change profile based on sunrise/sunset: GitHub - bp2008/DahuaSunriseSunset: A Windows Service which changes the profile of dahua cameras between Night and Day at each sunset and sunrise.

 

[CanCuba]

I would stay away from the automatic day/night setting. In my experience, I get the camera going back and forth between the two causing the picture to washout and being useless for up to 10 seconds at a time as the camera goes back and forth between the two and the software has to try to compensate.

I'd take the advice of @wittaj and use whatever of the 3 options suits your setup.

 

[zaqik]

Thanks for the replies. I thought there's a trick like mostly anywhere in dahua settings, but comes out that Day/Night is just another dumb thing that never works properly.