For what it's worth, I have one of these thermal cameras, and I'm about to buy some more, BUT . . .
The camera still Internet Explorer with a plug-in! AAARRRGGGHHH. I was (& still am) furious that such a new and relatively expensive camera for Dahua would still require the IE plug-in. It should be embarrassing to them, but they don't care about users like us and just want people to buy their NVRs.
Andy tells me they are going to eventually release an update which does not require the plug-in, which is why I'm going to take a chance and buy more, and because the thermal image is compelling. I just hope that Dahua doesn't decide that new firmware requires a new rev of hardware.
Below is a screenshot from BI with the visual & thermal side-by-side, with me walking up my driveway. If you look closely, you can (but barely) see me in the left visual image, but my big hot head is very visible in the thermal image on the right. One thing to note in the thermal image is that my legs are pretty close in temperature to the driveway that was still radiating heat from earlier in the day, so the thermal doesn't add as much value unless there is a temperature difference. To get the angle that I want to view with the camera, it is angled slightly downward and so in the visual image (on the left) you can see that the built-in IR is lighting up the driveway, but as a result doesn't shine far enough out to be worth much.
I should add that built-in IVS with the thermal camera, communicated to
BlueIris with ONVIF events, helps a lot to the point of being almost mandatory. No matter what thermal color palette you pick (like the one Andy included above), the DeepStack & CodeProject.AI object recognition isn't as good since the models haven't been trained on thermal images. But when my big hot head crosses a tripwire in the camera, it triggers every time. So be prepared to curse Dahua & Internet Explorer plug-ins if you want the best detection with this thermal camera.
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