Another v2 Bites The Dust

th3bloody9 · Mar 16, 2017

Had the a mini PTZ v2 running fine outside for about 9months (non-essential nature cam). Recently just suddenly stopped working. It's a POE version but I wasn't using POE to power it.

Doesn't do startup dance when powered on
Cannot be pinged
Not showing in SADP
Tried both POE and direct 12v input for power

Only sign of life is the two bottom infrared LEDs flash once when first plugged in.

On an off-chance I messaged the seller and they said they are going to send a replacement PCB board for me to change, which I'm quite happy to do. It looks like they are going to send a replacement mainboard.

fenderman · Mar 16, 2017

Say it aint so

th3bloody9 · Mar 16, 2017

fenderman said:
Say it aint so

It's the first camera I ever bought. Wish I'd known enough to get a more trusted brand, but like I say it's only for a fun nature cam (looking at bird table etc.).

I'm thinking of getting a Dahua SD22204T-GN mini PTZ dome to replace it (this one). Would it be a good replacement for this Huisun? I don't need night vision. I'd love to get the 25x Dahua Starlight but it's overkill for my needs.

fenderman · Mar 17, 2017

th3bloody9 said:
It's the first camera I ever bought. Wish I'd known enough to get a more trusted brand, but like I say it's only for a fun nature cam (looking at bird table etc.).

I'm thinking of getting a Dahua SD22204T-GN mini PTZ dome to replace it (this one). Would it be a good replacement for this Huisun? I don't need night vision. I'd love to get the 25x Dahua Starlight but it's overkill for my needs.

If you dont need nightvision and or use external IR its fine..not it wont have nearly the zoom level as the huisun..
If you want a good ptz camera with high zoom and fast operation, you will need to spend 350...
Since its a nature cam you may as well try the board repair first...

zero-degrees · Mar 17, 2017

@th3bloody9 sorry to hear about you losing the camera. However, posts like this just feed the point so many of us have tried to make - "Don't spend your hard earned money on crap". For a few dollars more you can get much more reliable hardware (Dahua Mini Black face PTZ for example). One of the best things ever was a certain member of this forum finally getting banned for unrelated matters, but it also meant that there wasn't someone steamrolling import garbage down everyones throat as the next best thing to sliced bread. To many novices had hard earned money flushed down the crapper listening to certain individuals.

Best of luck on the repair honestly, I'm just happy to see the seller is at least trying to make things right for you.

Couldn't resist the following though - sorry, not sorry

patrocle · Mar 17, 2017

Have the V1, and i said i will not buy a Huisun brand again.
It is working,then not working,then is cycling....pure garbage that i purchased from Monica. But will not happen again.
Thinking about buying V2?, maybe not...to scare that you pay so much money and then it happens the same crap as the V1.
So advice is to get a different brand that they last.

wxman · Mar 17, 2017

Dahua cams are great for security, but it's obvious that they're not as friendly as Hikvision and Huisun when it comes to nature cams. I'm learning that it takes a lot of frequent manual white balance adjustments to obtain a similar color response that the "auto white balance" gives on Hiks and Huisuns..There's also a few annoying bugs that I've ran into along the way. Don't get me wrong, Dahua cams are great and seem to be well worth the money...but they're not 100% without fault and I've yet to find an automatic "set it and forget it" setting that suits my tastes like I could with Hik and Huisun. Granted, being a professional photography nerd, I imagine I'm a lot pickier than your average person when it comes to color balance, exposure levels, etc...

nayr · Mar 17, 2017

These starlight sensors are not about photography; they are about security.. the problems you complain of would be present in a Huisun or Hikvision that was built around the same IMX291 Sony Starvis sensor.. its very sensitive to light and balance swings.

Using em for Web/Nature cameras in daytime is not the best camera for the job, but much like dashcams.. the ones that give the most photorealistic and naturally looking videos actually have less detail and more problems with variable lighting conditions than the high sensitivity sensors used in others that produce flat, washed out imagery.. For security its more about the detail, reading a plate or shirt in any lighting conditions damned if its color balance are not completely accurate.

Check out @CaliGirl's 4MP Black Face Dahua PTZ on a lake; produces absolutely fantastic daytime video that has great photorealistic quality.. but at night it's blind as a bat.

hmjgriffon · Mar 17, 2017

right tool for the job.

wxman · Mar 18, 2017

I could be wrong, but I don't think it's the 291 sensor that's causing me white balance issues. I think it's the processor chip and the algorithms that it uses to automate white balance.

But regardless of the reason, the point remains the same...The original poster is looking to replace a nature cam and thus white balance may be very important to them. If so, they need to know that if they switch brands/equipment, it may take some manual tweaking to replicate the look that they're used to seeing.

hmjgriffon · Mar 18, 2017

just get another hikvision camera, problem solved.

wxman · Mar 19, 2017

hmjgriffon said:
just get another hikvision camera, problem solved.

If Hik puts out a starlight PTZ at a reasonable price and samples show better color balance, I may consider trading out...Only thing I'm seeing from Hik in a similar price range has a 0.01 lux rating...Granted, it may be "enough" to suit my needs on slow shutter, I'm waiting it out and hoping for something better. Meantime, I'll have to just get by with doing manual white balance adjustments. One setting will last most of the day as long as there isn't any big change in sky condition.

th3bloody9 · Mar 26, 2017

Update

I received the replacement PCB, just changed it now and all is working again

The new PCB has a different layout to the old and has a micro SD card reader built in (old one had separate board connected via ribbon cable). However after a bit of cable management everything fit ok.

Serial number on the board is HS07130400V1.4 the old one was 1.1 so it seems liked the board has been updated?

See attached images (new board is on the left).

wxman · Mar 26, 2017

Congrats on the fix! Guess they've traced down the problems with these units to be in this particular board somewhere. Maybe the upgraded board model will hold up better than the previous model. Wouldn't hold my breath, but one could hope. I've always been fairly impressed with mine and these really have potential to be decent budget cameras if/when the long term reliability improves.

hmjgriffon · Mar 26, 2017

So, I need to buy a bunch of busted these off ebay for pennies and then get the boards for cheap and then turn them for a profit? lol.

vasycara · Mar 27, 2017

th3bloody9 said:
Update

I received the replacement PCB, just changed it now and all is working again

The new PCB has a different layout to the old and has a micro SD card reader built in (old one had separate board connected via ribbon cable). However after a bit of cable management everything fit ok.

Serial number on the board is HS07130400V1.4 the old one was 1.1 so it seems liked the board has been updated?

See attached images (new board is on the left).

Where you bought huisun v2 ? See it is good seller if sent pcb replacement.

th3bloody9 · Mar 27, 2017

vasycara said:
Where you bought huisun v2 ? See it is good seller if sent pcb replacement.

Store is called CCTV System Shop on AliExpress (link).

alastairstevenson · Mar 27, 2017

wxman said:
Congrats on the fix! Guess they've traced down the problems with these units to be in this particular board somewhere.

I've fixed maybe half a dozen of the Mini PTZ V2s so far, and in all cases the problem has been corruption of part of the flash storage.
When the serial console is accessed, the Amboot bootloader gives enough functionality to see what the problem is, and to repair it.
Most common has been erasure of the 'ptb' partition, which holds amongst other things the 'dtb' (Device Tree Blob), the data structure that tells Linux about the hardware environment it runs in. This can be readily fixed with a sneaky command-line trick, and I've done some of those over 'conversations' on this forum.
The cause of this corruption is unknown though. I'd speculate there might be a power-on / power-off vulnerability where the power-on reset doesn't freeze the processor properly before it gets into a fully operating state, and maybe writes the SPI NOR when it shouldn't. But I'm just guessing there.

hmjgriffon · Mar 27, 2017

alastairstevenson said:
I've fixed maybe half a dozen of the Mini PTZ V2s so far, and in all cases the problem has been corruption of part of the flash storage.
When the serial console is accessed, the Amboot bootloader gives enough functionality to see what the problem is, and to repair it.
Most common has been erasure of the 'ptb' partition, which holds amongst other things the 'dtb' (Device Tree Blob), the data structure that tells Linux about the hardware environment it runs in. This can be readily fixed with a sneaky command-line trick, and I've done some of those over 'conversations' on this forum.
The cause of this corruption is unknown though. I'd speculate there might be a power-on / power-off vulnerability where the power-on reset doesn't freeze the processor properly before it gets into a fully operating state, and maybe writes the SPI NOR when it shouldn't. But I'm just guessing there.

so you just have to randomly perform that fix on the same cameras all the time? no thanks.

alastairstevenson · Mar 27, 2017

hmjgriffon said:
so you just have to randomly perform that fix on the same cameras all the time?

They were all different cameras.

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Another v2 Bites The Dust

th3bloody9

Young grasshopper

fenderman

th3bloody9

Young grasshopper

fenderman

zero-degrees

Known around here

patrocle

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wxman

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nayr

hmjgriffon

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wxman

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hmjgriffon

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wxman

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th3bloody9

Young grasshopper

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wxman

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hmjgriffon

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vasycara

Getting the hang of it

th3bloody9

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alastairstevenson

hmjgriffon

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