Panoramic PTZ

My PTZ3E10X-T180 is out for delivery this morning. I went back and forth a few times before ordering it.
Andy saying that it would track vehicles tipped the scales, and I ordered it last weekend.
Even with its less than optimum specs, for my specific application, and at a price tag of $350, there really aren't many choices.

I plan to put the camera on an existing 12 ft pole at the location shown by the red dot. The red circle approximates the 50 m radius that the specs claim as the DORI identify distance for the 10x PTZ. I had thought about putting a IPC-Color4K-T180 along with a traditional PTZ at this location, but I really don't want to subject my neighbors to full-time white light cameras that close to their houses. I already have a IPC-Color4K-T180, IPC-Color4K-X, IPC-B54IR-Z4E-S3, and IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E on another camera pole marked with the green dot.

Ideally I would want the overview camera to pick up vehicles entering and then trigget the PTZ to move to pick up the vehicle and then auto track it until it either turns around in the cul-de-sac and exits, or goes up one of the 5 driveways. If it won't track vehicles, it may be good enough to set up IVS trip wires and presets to have the PTZ capture decent close ups as vehicles enter/exit driveways and the access road.

I suspect that the reason Dahua says human targets only may be due to the pan and tilt speed of the camera. Fast moving vehicles may be beyond the following capability of the PTZ.
I'm hoping that on our dirt road where most vehicles are moving in the 15-20 mph range and usually slow to a crawl as they enter the cul-de-sac, the camera might be able to keep up.

We don't get much foot traffic on the road, but when we do it is something that I want to capture, and I would hope that the auto tracking lite will at least be able to do that.

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Sounds like a good plan. If the white light is adequate .

I don’t think you’ll see 164 ft of ID range out of a 40mm max zoom lens but it may be good enough
 
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This is from an IPC-B54IR-Z4E-S3 mounted on the pole and zoomed to the full 32mm and aimed at the driveway directly across the cul-de-sac. The house is 350 ft from my camera, and the trash can is ~140 ft (43 m).
Looking at the driveway itself, where the tree shadows start is real close to the 50m mark.

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Thats pretty good. Yeah I was comparing to a Z4 as well.
Mine starts dropping off for facial detail at about 85-90 ft. Not saying you cant see them well, just a matter of one's definition of Identify is, and of course how well the scene/target is lit

Just looked, I'm only 75% zoomed
 
I hope the camera works out for you, but if you don't have any visible light out there, the white light on this PTZ does not provide anywhere near the same performance as the white light on your 4K/X and T180. Not even close. In fact I find it useless. It really shows the limitation of less than ideal MP/sensor ratios.

Let me see if I can find a picture when I tested the PTZ4M-25X-PV white light. I would assume it would be similar to this camera for the PTZ portion.

Here is a sample though of the infrared and the white light was even worse. That box is 52 feet away and you can see how dark the rest of the image is. It drops off fast. This is with a shutter speed of 0-16ms. Of course on auto/default it is a nice bright static image.

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This camera shows you how much light and IR I have in that area.

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DORI is a nice tool in the tool box, but these numbers are under ideal situations with a marketing spin and real world experiences of DORI is that those numbers are established by the manufacturer and are based on best case scenarios like an object not moving and ideal light conditions.

Real world you should cut them in half during daytime and cut that half in half or more at night time.

As an example, our long time resident camera expert Wildcat ran the Dahua 4K/X 8MP 1/1.2" sensor thru the paces. Keep in mind this 4K/X camera is incredible.

He had the 3.6mm version and here is the screenshot from 40 feet in the ideal daylight and standing still, which based on DORI numbers is the supposed IDENTIFY distance for this camera with the 3.6mm lens and I think most of would agree that this is not IDENTIFY quality, even if digitally zoomed in:

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I have the 4K/X and 4K/T and they are incredible cameras, but I wouldn't use it for IDENTIFY past 15-20 feet, or half of what the DORI number is.
 
Well, I will say I went into this purchase with a lot more pessimism than usual. I want to give it a fair evaluation, and I hope I'm pleasantly surprised, but I do have a fall-back location in mind for the camera if it just doesn't work out. I have a 9-year old Huisun 10X V1 PTZ that the IR recently failed on. It's installed at the rear of our vacation home and only has about a 20-30 m arc that it's covering. (Our property boundaries are only about 8-15 m away.) This camera would have to be a major upgrade to the Huisun.
 
Well, I will say I went into this purchase with a lot more pessimism than usual. I want to give it a fair evaluation, and I hope I'm pleasantly surprised, but I do have a fall-back location in mind for the camera if it just doesn't work out. I have a 9-year old Huisun 10X V1 PTZ that the IR recently failed on. It's installed at the rear of our vacation home and only has about a 20-30 m arc that it's covering. (Our property boundaries are only about 8-15 m away.) This camera would have to be a major upgrade to the Huisun.

Yeah it would be an improvement LOL.

And great to have a backup plan!
 
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Make the number bigger to the right - that number generally represents how much % of the field of view you want the object to take up.

But it is a balance - the bigger the object is in the field of view, the easier it is to lose tracking. The smaller the number the harder it is to get IDENTIFY quality out of it.
 
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Yes but typically anything more than 40 or so you’ll overshoot and miss faster targets
It’s a trial and error thing
 
Yes but typically anything more than 40 or so you’ll overshoot and miss faster targets
It’s a trial and error thing
Thanks that did it, so yeah so far the camera is working great now, how to disable preset at IVS Linkage because it would begin to track someone, then after 5 seconds it would go back to its preset, even though i set the preset idle time to 6 minutes.

There appears to be IDLE motition preset , and then preset under AI> PTZ linkage, hopefully that helps.

I also want to comment and can pretty much confirm this camera will not do automobile tracking, its specs list it as PTZ tracking Lite, verses the bigger brother of this camera lists Ai Tracking 3.0 which includes, Cars,Boats,Airplanes etc.

I am seeing that you can import licenses into this camera, I wonder if Dahua is getting into the game of being able to buy a AI auto tracking upgrade that will unlock further options?

For 300 bucks I cant really complain , it really is doing alot for this price range, the panoramic cam is phenomenal,
 
Frustrating because I haven't played with one so not certain. It sounds like it begins to track but then it sees the IVS from the Pano and resets back to looking in its first position,

On a regular PTZ using a spotter cam (essentially what the Pano is in this case) ANY call from the spotter will override the tracking in progress. It becomes a challenge to make sure IVS lines on the spotter that call the PTZ can't be crossed by the target after initiating tracking.

Sorry to hear about the dumbed down tracking not doing vehicles. And Yes I think Dahua is in general moving to subscriptions and unlock-feature model.
 
Auto Tracking Lite won't track vehicles, and I thought it might be because the camera might not be able to keep up with something moving that fast, but today I was playing around with the camera GUI and found the "Manual Track" button...




I really like the form factor and daytime capabilities of the camera.
The 180° overview camera along with a 10x PTZ, all on a single POE+ port, really is a game changer.
If it had full auto tracking it might even be "good enough" for this location.

There is some glitchiness with Blue Iris and the camera's PTZ controls. The PTZ controls in the ONVIF Device Manager seem to work fine, so I'm optimistic that Ken will be able to straighten out the issue. I have given Ken access to the camera so he can investigate.

Overview camera

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PTZ at full 10x zoom
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I really haven't had enough time to try to improve the nighttime image, but so far I'm not all that impressed.
The white light illuminators do more harm than good. If they kick in you lose pretty much anything beyond 75 feet.

Replace the 1/2.8" sensors with 1/1.8", replace the white light illuminators with some additional, or stronger IR, and give it full auto tracking and this would be one hell of a camera.

I think the PTZ3E10X-T180 will be much better suited for my fallback location. At that location, vehicle tracking really isn't a factor, and the distances I need to cover are a fraction of what I had hoped to cover with the PTZ3E10X-T180.

You have to step all the way up to the SDT8C842-8P-FA-APV-0280 to get 1/18" sensors, but the 42x zoom would be overkill, and the $1900 price tag is something I just can't justify.

It will cost almost 3x as much, and use 3x as many ports as the PTZ3E10X-T180, but I'm leaning towards getting a PTZ5A4M-25X and a pair of Refurbished IPC-T54IR-AS-S3 as spotter cams.
Two 6mm cams would cover 120° of my area of interest, including all 5 driveways, and a "home" preset on the PTZ would pick up another ~60° and ought to catch any vehicles or pedestrians entering our development.
 
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Agree.
I won’t buy another 4MP camera on a 1/2.8” sensor unless I have stadium lighting
 
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How far away is that house? That seems more than a 10x zoom.

I told you the white LED sucks LOL. The 75 foot distance you mention is even less with a faster shutter.

Other than catering to the naïve consumer chasing MP, which isn't their market, make this bad boy 2MP and it would be a solid choice.