I’m desperate and need help, please!
I purchased 2 different IPC-B54IR-Z4E S3 cameras from Andy a couple of months ago to use as LPR’s. One has performed perfectly as expected. The other has not, no matter what I do (even much back and forth with Andy for tech support.)
Here are the issues I’ve had:
Most important to fix
The camera won’t switch into Night mode (or Custom 1 setting) at night and stay there. The camera won’t even just stay in one setting permanently (I was trying to troubleshoot by taking the schedule or ambient light out of the equation and even this didn’t work.) I know this because the recorded image is obviously on my “day” settings with a lighter/brighter image due to slower shutter speed. Whereas my “night” settings show the correct nearly black image and correctly capture the license plates of cars as they come by because of the 1/1000 shutter speed. This seems to have no rhyme or reason as to when it will shift into “night.” Sometimes it happens 4 hours after it turns to dark, sometimes it turns back into “day” an hour later despite it still being the same light level out and no changes to external lighting (like lamps, etc…) outside. Again, I have another of the exact same model camera from Andy pointed in the opposite direction on the exact same horizontal plane about 40 ft or 10m apart from each other.
Steps taken to resolve this issue:
I’m at a complete loss. This has to be a software issue, right? If it was a hardware issue than that means it’s simply the ambient sensor not working and I could get around it when I tried to tell the camera to permanently stay in the “night” mode (1/1000 shutter) and ignore any automated shifting. But if it’s software, I’ve reset and reloaded firmware and settings. I’ve set it identical to my nearby same camera (both firmware & settings) and nothing fixes it. It’s SO frustrating because the image it gets with my desired settings is perfect. It just misses most autos because it keeps shifting back into the auto shutter blurry mess. What could this possibly be or how can I possibly fix this? The camera is basically no use if it will only capture what I want only when it feels like it— which isn’t very often! I would be grateful for any ingenious suggestions!
Would be nice to fix- This is the other issue that was vexing me but I finally got it “fixed” after a LOT of back and forth with Andy’s tech people:
The Encoding setting options available were different between the two cameras despite purchasing at the same time (I know that doesn’t necessarily guarantee same batch/firmware, but ruling the reverse out as a potential issue.
Steps taken to resolve this issue:
I purchased 2 different IPC-B54IR-Z4E S3 cameras from Andy a couple of months ago to use as LPR’s. One has performed perfectly as expected. The other has not, no matter what I do (even much back and forth with Andy for tech support.)
Here are the issues I’ve had:
Most important to fix
The camera won’t switch into Night mode (or Custom 1 setting) at night and stay there. The camera won’t even just stay in one setting permanently (I was trying to troubleshoot by taking the schedule or ambient light out of the equation and even this didn’t work.) I know this because the recorded image is obviously on my “day” settings with a lighter/brighter image due to slower shutter speed. Whereas my “night” settings show the correct nearly black image and correctly capture the license plates of cars as they come by because of the 1/1000 shutter speed. This seems to have no rhyme or reason as to when it will shift into “night.” Sometimes it happens 4 hours after it turns to dark, sometimes it turns back into “day” an hour later despite it still being the same light level out and no changes to external lighting (like lamps, etc…) outside. Again, I have another of the exact same model camera from Andy pointed in the opposite direction on the exact same horizontal plane about 40 ft or 10m apart from each other.
Steps taken to resolve this issue:
- Cleaned lens to make sure ambient light sensor is free from dirt, etc… This resulted in no change.
- Changed Working Mode (under Camera > Image) to Day/Night Switch but tried to change the Day/Night option below WB and wasn’t able to change these because they are “grayed out.” Then I figured out that if you change the working profile back into Customize Scene, you can go back and change the day/night option below WB and set the sensitivity changes. You can then go back to the working profile and change it back from customized to Day/Night Switch. None of this resulted in any changes.
- Set Working Mode to Customized Scene and left it there. Then set Time/Plan settings for each month to switch between Day and Night. This didn’t help.
- So then I made sure the time on my camera was correct by going to System > General > Date & Time to try doing a Manual sync with my computer, and then choosing the NTP sync for server syncing. I made sure Daylight Savings was set correctly and my time zone was correct. Neither leaving it in Manual sync with my computer nor server NTP sync made it switch into Night mode correctly at the right time and stay there.
- I tried putting Working Mode into Custom and setting choosing to set the Custom 1 profile for all my “night” settings with 1/1000 shutter, etc… and then on the Time/Plan settings were set to 24 hours a day of Custom 1 profile (I figured I’ll sacrifice good daytime capture for good night capture since I have other cameras for day.) That didn’t work either. The camera still puts it into the darker 1/1000 shutter mode if I go into the WebGUI to force it, but it will shift back into “day” and give me the dreaded blurry mess indicative of slower shutter speed and brighter image a couple hours later despite the same ambient light outside.
- Because I was trying to fix the 2nd (less important) issue below, you can see that I also tried reloading the firmware, restoring to factory settings, and even downgrading the firmware. I even tried changing from NTSC to PAL (suggestion from Andy to address issue below) despite being in North America. None of that helped this issue above.
I’m at a complete loss. This has to be a software issue, right? If it was a hardware issue than that means it’s simply the ambient sensor not working and I could get around it when I tried to tell the camera to permanently stay in the “night” mode (1/1000 shutter) and ignore any automated shifting. But if it’s software, I’ve reset and reloaded firmware and settings. I’ve set it identical to my nearby same camera (both firmware & settings) and nothing fixes it. It’s SO frustrating because the image it gets with my desired settings is perfect. It just misses most autos because it keeps shifting back into the auto shutter blurry mess. What could this possibly be or how can I possibly fix this? The camera is basically no use if it will only capture what I want only when it feels like it— which isn’t very often! I would be grateful for any ingenious suggestions!
Would be nice to fix- This is the other issue that was vexing me but I finally got it “fixed” after a LOT of back and forth with Andy’s tech people:
The Encoding setting options available were different between the two cameras despite purchasing at the same time (I know that doesn’t necessarily guarantee same batch/firmware, but ruling the reverse out as a potential issue.
Steps taken to resolve this issue:
- My two cameras were both Up to Date on firmware updates… I did a manual check from the WebGUI. But the newer hardware (by manufacture date) had older firmware build date of 2023-08-02 while the (slightly) older built camera had a more recent firmware build date. Since the older firmware data was on the camera that was working as desired AND had more options in the Encode section (higher bitrate, higher fps, etc…) then that’s what I wanted to copy. So Andy gave me the older firmware and I change the “faulty” camera to that. Didn’t change the options on Encode. I still was only able to get 24fps instead of 30 and a much lower bitrate.
- Then after more back and forth, Andy suggested I try change from NTSC to PAL. That gave me the 30fps and higher bitrate options on Encode… so this issue is resolved. It just didn’t make any difference to the most important issue #1 above.
