Starlight or higher mp camera for well lit areas?

I've got nothing but starlights right now. I want to add a few more cameras. Right now my driveway and front porch are well light with LED lights that turn on automatically. I have my ir off on all cameras and Profiles seems like a broken feature and appears to do nothing so my cameras are in day mode 24/7 so I still see color even at night when looking at my front porch and driveway and the quality 'seems' great still.

So I can either add some 4 or 8mp cameras and move those starlights to other areas that are not well lit or just get more starlights.

Cameras I was thinking of are:
4mp - HDW4431EM-AS
8mp - HDW4830EM-AS
8mp - HDW5830R-Z

Same situation/question here, too.

I'm especially interested in the 8MP models because it looks like they have a larger Sony STARVIS sensor (1/2.5") in them. I know they're not Starlights, but I'm curious to see how that camera performs in low-light.

You could use the 6MP models with the larger Sony Starvis IMX178 (1/1.8") sensor. I'm very impressed.

happf said:

I've got nothing but starlights right now. I want to add a few more cameras. Right now my driveway and front porch are well light with LED lights that turn on automatically. I have my ir off on all cameras and Profiles seems like a broken feature and appears to do nothing so my cameras are in day mode 24/7 so I still see color even at night when looking at my front porch and driveway and the quality 'seems' great still.

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If it is just the cameras facing the well lit areas that aren't switching, the likelihood is you have too much light for them to switch from day to night mode. That in itself is not a bad thing, but you can take advantage of that with your setting. Try turning your gain down all the way and turning up your shutter speed. You might switch into night mode but you should get some very clean night images with reduced motion blur.

I have the 4mp cameras and their night performance is pretty good. If you have lots of light they would be a cheap way to get more megapixels. The 6mp and 8mp cameras I have no experience with but with heaps of light they could be the go if you need more megapixels, but do you need more megapixels? Varifocal 4mp cams run about $US80 delivered. Fixed lens 8mp cams double that and varifocal 8mp even more. 8mp could be the expensive solution to a problem you don't have.

SyconsciousAu said:

If it is just the cameras facing the well lit areas that aren't switching, the likelihood is you have too much light for them to switch from day to night mode. That in itself is not a bad thing, but you can take advantage of that with your setting. Try turning your gain down all the way and turning up your shutter speed. You might switch into night mode but you should get some very clean night images with reduced motion blur.

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None of my starlights are auto switching. I have an LPR camera, that part of the street gets much darker at night but I don't see my night settings taking effect no matter what I do with profiles.

SyconsciousAu said:

8mp could be the expensive solution to a problem you don't have.

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Very possible. The 8mp price isn't that much more than the starlights and I figured it would be nice to have a wider field of view but still be able to zoom in digitally if needed.

happf said:

None of my starlights are auto switching. I have an LPR camera, that part of the street gets much darker at night but I don't see my night settings taking effect no matter what I do with profiles.

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Check to make sure your day night mode is set to Auto in each of your profiles. If it is check if you can force black and white with that setting.


Also check what you have you profile management set on.

WOW, it was that easy and I completely missed it. I had day/night set to auto and I'd tried and asked about how to change the schedule, but couldn't figure it out. After seeing your screen shot, I realized I needed to drag the end markers and now I properly have a schedule setup and verified it's working. Thanks!!!! Still just a temporary solution though since the time periods change throughout the whole year and I don't want to manually maintained this for a bunch of cameras and looks like soon I will need to look into scripting it.

Suggestion to Dahua, since schedule is not the default, maybe make the default for schedule something like 8 to 8 pm or add a label informing user to drag the markers.

EDIT: BTW, I do have my Day set to Auto and my Night is set to B&W.