Alternatives To Dahua Or Hikvision?

Dahua and Hikvision where NOT band for US sales. The can not sell to the US Government or any contractors that use US Government money to purchase them. Any person or business can purchase Dahua and Hikvision cameras.
 
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I never said they were currently banned. I was partly in error as I forgot it only applied to government contracts, but I was quite well aware that currently private contractors and users could buy them.
 
Reporting back in:
  • Uniview: turns out they're also actively supporting the Uyghur genocide, so I skipped them.
  • Hanwha: I concur with "priced higher"; so far I haven't found a recent model that I wanted to pay for.
  • Reolink: based on experiments with a borrowed camera, I can certainly see why you folks don't like them. In particular, their RTSP-over-TCP support is badly broken by bugs in the very old version of live555 they're using. (Also, I don't like that there's no stream really useful for on-NVR analytics. The main stream on many of these cameras is too high-resolution/expensive to deal with and the sub stream is so low-resolution that image quality is poor. No "Goldilocks" stream.) Someone else wrote to me: "I don't understand how a single camera manufacturer can have an array of very similar products (say, wifi cameras) and have such a diverse set of bugs, as though each product was implemented from the ground-up without any iteration on a previous product."
  • Geovision: I bought a GV-EBD4701 to try out. So far so good. It's not as good of a value as the Dahuas but it's in the right ballpark. RTSP seems to be working decently well now. (I've hit a few specification conformance bugs but no deal-breakers.) It supports triple-stream with a decent resolution selection. I haven't looked too much into image quality yet but this seems promising.
 
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slamb said:
I'm also looking for alternatives to Dahua and Hikvision. I'm happy with the technical quality of the cameras I already own from these brands, but IPVM says both these companies are writing custom software for genocide (Dahua, Hikvision). I can firewall away poor security practices and work around bugs, but I won't knowingly give money to a company that is actively supporting genocide. I know I'm not exactly going to bring them to their knees with my boycott, considering I'm a tiny consumer customer and most of their business is probably in China anyway, but I still don't want to support them even in a small way.

So...really, what's the next best thing in the same price range? Not any Dahua/Hikvision rebrands either, so no Lorex/Amcrest. I hear folks hating on Reolink, but I think they might be the one left standing. Any better options?
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Bump, I'm also looking for alternative to Dahua.

In February of 2024 folks recommended Dahua so I bought three different versions of Dahua camera from Andy. I want to order a half dozen more, but I am having an issue getting HTTP Requests or ONVIF to work with the cameras. I posted about the issue on this forum last February but didn't get a single response. I also posted on the Empire Tech support forum but got no response and my post was hidden for some reason. I messaged Andy here and he said he would contact Dahua and get back to me. But he ghosted me.

I don't know what the deal is. I like the cameras but I need the HTTP Requests and ONVIF to work and I know they can, since Blue Iris and SecuritySpy can control the cameras, but it seems like I'm asking for the Epstein Files to get an API that works for these cameras.
 
Noober said:
Bump, I'm also looking for alternative to Dahua.

In February of 2024 folks recommended Dahua so I bought three different versions of Dahua camera from Andy. I want to order a half dozen more, but I am having an issue getting HTTP Requests or ONVIF to work with the cameras. I posted about the issue on this forum last February but didn't get a single response. I also posted on the Empire Tech support forum but got no response and my post was hidden for some reason. I messaged Andy here and he said he would contact Dahua and get back to me. But he ghosted me.

I don't know what the deal is. I like the cameras but I need the HTTP Requests and ONVIF to work and I know they can, since Blue Iris and SecuritySpy can control the cameras, but it seems like I'm asking for the Epstein Files to get an API that works for these cameras.
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If this camera is the newer GUI, the latest API manual isn't completely accurate and many of us have played with the API commands until we found the format that worked.

And what works with one camera doesn't work for another.

Outside of figuring out the day and night profile commands here, most haven't had a need for the commands you are looking for and thus probably why no replies.

Good luck finding a camera that has all the API commands that work for what you want. Let us know what you find.
 
wittaj said:
If this camera is the newer GUI, the latest API manual isn't completely accurate and many of us have played with the API commands until we found the format that worked.

And what works with one camera doesn't work for another.

Outside of figuring out the day and night profile commands here, most haven't had a need for the commands you are looking for and thus probably why no replies.

Good luck finding a camera that has all the API commands that work for what you want. Let us know what you find.
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I just need to find a company that doesn't play "I have a secret with the API." They obviously provide those commands to SecuritySpy and Blue Iris so that their software can control their cameras. And they advertise these capabilities, so why don't they let paying customers know the API since they advertise the capabilities?

Are they getting a kick back from Blue Iris and other companies, so they keep it a secret from regular users?

If that's the case I'll sacrifice video quality and just go with Pi Cameras.
 
Noober said:
I just need to find a company that doesn't play "I have a secret with the API." They obviously provide those commands to SecuritySpy and Blue Iris so that their software can control their cameras. And they advertise these capabilities, so why don't they let paying customers know the API since they advertise the capabilities?

Are they getting a kick back from Blue Iris and other companies, so they keep it a secret from regular users?

If that's the case I'll sacrifice video quality and just go with Pi Cameras.
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He has the latest API on his website, which as I said many of us have noticed it doesn't completely work for the new GUI. Not sure if that is the one you tried.

I doubt companies are getting kickbacks, but who knows lol.

Download Product Resources

Building security systems for home and business offices. Protecting customers' personal safety and property security. All the security cameras and NVRs we sell are of great quality and at affordable prices.
empiretech01.com empiretech01.com
 
wittaj said:
He has the latest API on his website, which as I said many of us have noticed it doesn't completely work for the new GUI. Not sure if that is the one you tried.

I doubt companies are getting kickbacks, but who knows lol.

Download Product Resources

Building security systems for home and business offices. Protecting customers' personal safety and property security. All the security cameras and NVRs we sell are of great quality and at affordable prices.
empiretech01.com empiretech01.com
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The fact they hid my question on their forum, Andy ghosted me, and they don't provide the API that they must provide to big companies makes it seem to me like they have a financial incentive not to supply the info that many people obviously want to control their cameras. Otherwise what would explain software companies having the info and yet them not taking the five seconds to provide it to normal paying customers? Why would they provide it privately to a company that doesn't purchase from them and deny it to paying customers?

I told Andy if I got this solved I was going to purchase six more of these expensive cameras, but that wasn't apparently enough of a motivator to get the answer. So it seems to me the company does not want normal users to have this information which would explain why all the rest of the paying customers you mention can't get an accurate API. Yet the software companies have it...
 
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Noober said:
The fact they hid my question on their forum, Andy ghosted me, and they don't provide the API that they must provide to big companies makes it seem to me like they have a financial incentive not to supply the info that many people obviously want to control their cameras. Otherwise what would explain software companies having the info and yet them not taking the five seconds to provide it to normal paying customers? Why would they provide it privately to a company that doesn't purchase from them and deny it to paying customers?

I told Andy if I got this solved I was going to purchase six more of these expensive cameras, but that wasn't apparently enough of a motivator to get the answer. So it seems to me the company does not want normal users to have this information which would explain why all the rest of the paying customers you mention can't get an accurate API. Yet the software companies have it...
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I suspect that BI is probably using some other ONVIF function or some other way to use the API at a higher level as Andy brought this new GUI to the forum members before Dahua sold it and the cameras worked in BI and even in older BI versions well before the new GUI came out, so clearly on older versions of BI and the new GUI cameras work in it kinda eliminates the thought that they provide it to BI. I don't think BI got their hands on some new API document and made changes to the program before anyone got the cameras.

I may be wrong, but the fact that the newer GUI PTZ functions work in my older BI version shows that there isn't some conspiracy API action going on.
 
wittaj said:
I suspect that BI is probably using some other ONVIF function or some other way to use the API at a higher level as Andy brought this new GUI to the forum members before Dahua sold it and the cameras worked in BI and even in older BI versions well before the new GUI came out, so clearly on older versions of BI and the new GUI cameras work in it kinda eliminates the thought that they provide it to BI. I don't think BI got their hands on some new API document and made changes to the program before anyone got the cameras.

I may be wrong, but the fact that the newer GUI PTZ functions work in my older BI version shows that there isn't some conspiracy API action going on.
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Does BI work with the current cameras with the current GUI? If it does, then they have the API to control the camera. And we do not. Why is that?
 
Noober said:
Does BI work with the current cameras with the current GUI? If it does, then they have the API to control the camera. And we do not. Why is that?
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Yes, including my older BI system running a version 2 years before the new camera GUI came out. Do you really think Dahua got with the one person firm BI and shared this with them that far in advance?

I highly doubt it since BI actually takes away Dahua customers because they are not buying Dahua NVRs. If anything, they would drag their feet.

Like I said, maybe at the developer level, there are advanced admin rights when you give a username and password to a device that works differently than the APIs we use. Maybe their is a developer level that doesn't need to provide the user/password in each command for example.

Have you ever had Ken log into your system and watch him reverse engineer the process for a new camera that isn't working right in BI? Many here have. That is how he usually gets the cameras working in BI by logging into someone's system with a camera that isn't working properly.

I suspect if anything, he probably is trying different combinations to find the one that works for that particular camera.
 
wittaj said:
Yes, including my older BI system running a version 2 years before the new camera GUI came out. Do you really think Dahua got with the one person firm BI and shared this with them that far in advance?

I highly doubt it since BI actually takes away Dahua customers because they are not buying Dahua NVRs. If anything, they would drag their feet.

Like I said, maybe at the developer level, there are advanced admin rights when you give a username and password to a device that works differently than the APIs we use. Maybe their is a developer level that doesn't need to provide the user/password in each command for example.

Have you ever had Ken log into your system and watch him reverse engineer the process for a new camera that isn't working right in BI? Many here have. That is how he usually gets the cameras working in BI by logging into someone's system with a camera that isn't working properly.

I suspect if anything, he probably is trying different combinations to find the one that works for that particular camera.
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Well, I'm happy to report that after using WireShark to sniff SecuritySpy and finding how it issues the pan left command, I figured it out.

As I said in my thread from February that got no responses, this command was working to pan up:

Click to expand...

and this command to pan left was not working:

Click to expand...

The reason why is evident in the two statements although I didn't catch nor did anybody in other forums where I spelled it out. The non-working command has ".cgi&action=" which should be ".cgi?action=" and now with that changed, my code can pan left and I'm sure all the other API commands will work as well.

So my poor coding explains it. Now to buy six more cameras. At least I learned how to use WireShark. And I always enjoy the taste of crow.
 
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