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Here's code I wrote in Perl that works in MisterHouse in case it's useful to anyone. Many of the methods used are only available in MisterHouse (like $Time_Sunrise and my_str2time()) but the general ideas can be adapted. Note that the farther you move from the equator, the faster the...

Cool solution but I think the IrcutFilter setting only controls whether the camera is in B&W or color mode (IR cut filter on for color, off for B&W). You aren't changing the camera to its Day or Night profile which each have other parameters associated with them like shutter speed, brightness...

I think you found some code that controls Dahua cams. HIKvision's API is quite different. I found their HTTP API described in this document. I also used Wireshark to see that the web UI for my HIKvision camera uses the same API as in the document. The odd thing with HIKvision is you can't...

Be careful - searching Amazon for "jc infrared illuminator" (JCheng Security brand) turns up a high percentage of negative reviews that units stopped working within months or never put out much light. "Univivi" sells similar lights, some of which claim IP67 protection (protected against...

Chinese cameras have so many possible backdoors and exploits in them I would never trust them with access to any network. I have all my cameras locked behind a firewall so they can't connect outbound to my local network OR to the internet. They also can't be reached directly from outside. I...

You'll clearly see a red glow with your naked eye with any 850nm illuminator turned on. If you don't see that, it's not working and you should return it. The 940nm illuminators are much dimmer to the naked eye but supposedly you can still see them as faintly blue or purple. I don't own a 940...

I set the main stream max bitrate from default 15k to its max which is 50k. I had target bitrate set to 50k for awhile but saw no quality improvement so moved it back to 12k (default). Having max at 50k is probably pointless but shouldn't hurt. It can do substream and MJPEG encoding at the...

My plan is to have just one and other cams will be cheaper models. But we mostly just have to guard things on one side of the house. I found this comparison of low-light cameras similar to Dinion 8000. Maybe some are more affordable? Bosch's 1080p starlight cams are another lower-cost...

It definitely performs much better in all lighting conditions than Dahua. Over and over I've compared output and people/cars/licenses are always more identifiable, higher res, better contrast, less blurred, and less artifacted/noisy with Bosch. I was hoping it would perform 4 times better...

I realized that Bosch's low light specs are listed as using an f1.2 lens. I spent awhile and can't find such a lens. The largest aperture I can find on an auto-iris lens for 1/1.8" sensors is f1.4 on Tamron M118VG1250IR which is 12-50mm for ~$223 and Theia Technologies SL410 which is 4-10mm...

I write software for a living and usually choose open source solutions because I can modify them to do exactly what I want them to do. Unfortunately, when it came to ZoneMinder, it had too many critical problems that had no obvious solution. Running on a dedicated NUC with 1.9Ghz i5 processor...

Since Bosch is less accurate with object boundaries at night and fails with line crossing detection more often at night, I tried having Dahua alarm on any object entering the street, pretty much how I have Bosch set up. Bosch missed nothing that passed while Dahua caught just two white vehicles...

I finally got Bosch Video Client (BVC) to display recorded video and VCA outlines. I still can't get it to play live video, but I have many ways to play live video so I'm giving up on that. Installing BVC 1.7.5 instead of the latest 1.7.6 did not help. Logging on as the 'user' user instead of...

Argh, I finally figured out how to do VCA alarm recording properly based on another section in the manual: So, I set up recording profiles like this: I removed my Alarm Task Editor script. Then I went to the Recording Scheduler tab and clicked Start so it looks like this: Now I get local...

I've decided Contrast Enhancement on (similar to Dahua SSA) is preferable, at least during the day (not yet tried at night). The artifacts I originally thought it was causing were actually caused by the sharpness setting. Faces and license plates do not get noticeably blurred due to CE as they...

I'm not trying to get automated LPR working, I just want to be able to read the plate manually if necessary. That's certainly possible, at least during the day. I've now got the Bosch Dinion 8000 5MP set up and it's mostly a big improvement. At night, with Dahua and Bosch set to 1/120...

Thanks for the theory, TechBill. However, I still get the blur even at 10fps with all camera features turned off including 3DNR, sharp, and all forms of motion detection. I could try changing 1080p to 720p but the camera is useless running like that so I don't see the point. If you zoom in on...

I decided to optically zoom it in 100%. GUI implied I was zoomed 66% before but this doesn't look 33% larger to me. Looks like late afternoon sun angle wipes out legibility of license plates: I can at least see most of the plate if I turn off BLC: Software won't let you do more than one...

Finally found the full frame on the noisy plate: It's earlier in the day than the others and more overcast, so more noisy. So maybe parts of the license are blurred due to noise, but it really looks a lot like compression artifacts. Having noise be so much more intense in spots right next...

By digital zoom I just mean in Milestone I'm zooming in on the recorded video to see how clear things look, see how artifacts look, etc. Here's a full frame image without the digital zoom, 0NR, 0 sharp, parts whited out for privacy:

Optical zoom is about 66% of max zoom. Digital zoom is way up (not sure how to quantify it). Distance from camera to license is 41.0833' measured with laser distance meter.

The largest aperture lens Bosch has for the 2MP starlight is f1.4, though it's sized for a 1/2" sensor on a camera with a 1/3" sensor, so I assume that would be like putting a larger aperture than f1.4 would imply. With 0 NR/sharp I feel like I'm seeing the image the camera is actually taking...

Hey CamCrazy, you actually had a good point about sharpness. At night, I tried reducing it to 0 and kept wondering why the picture gets so blurry. Then I realized if I turn off 3DNR, the picture gets much sharper again with some noise, but not excessive amounts. If I leave sharpness at...

I think you're right the problem is related to Milestone, but it would happen with any recording software. I had Milestone stop subscribing to the camera's motion detection event and after that, disabling motion detection in the camera worked and remained disabled after reboot. This implies...

I tried setting up a line crossing detection on the street with sizes set for cars. It seems maybe 80% accurate based on the log in the camera but it's hard to tell because I can't get it to work with Milestone to review the video clips. The camera publishes its own set of events that...

Okay, I shouldn't slag Dahua because I haven't yet tried their intrusion detection. I've only tried HIK's a couple years ago. The cameras are looking at an area with moving plants and shadows so it's a tough environment - maybe those with more static scenes have no trouble.

Try this: http://admin:passwort@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=setConfig&Encode[0].MainFormat[0].Video.FPS=15 It worked on my camera to set FPS to 15, but when I tried to set back to 10 it said OK but did nothing. So it may be bugged. Maybe you can work around the bug by...

I found that with shutter limited to 1/60 ~ 1/120 at night, you walk up to the camera with external IR and your face becomes unrecognizable white. With the shutter set to 1/60 ~ 1/100000, the camera darkens everything to keep your face recognizable. Shining a flashlight doesn't trick it - it...

Looks like the camera won't save an FPS to the day/night profile, but you can change FPS via SetVideoEncodeConfig API command. API details are here.