Dahua 4MP Bullet w/Mic, Strobe, IR Cannon

[nayr]

pretty much finished up this install, as you can see I still have yet to crawl into the attic and yank the ethernet through there.. but I need more cable, taped this spool out.

all the rest is done, have a Bullet Microphone wired up, a Red Strobe Light, and an IR Cannon all being powered by a USG PoE 12v Splitter

Since the IR is a few feet away it does not flare up the reflectors on the car.. attached are images w/external IR off and on w/internal IR disabled.

I'll probably paint the cannon mount and strobe base white sooner or later, need a nice warm day for that.

Camera: DH-IPC-HFW4431M-AS-I2 w/12mm lens.

 

[SyconsciousAu]

Hey Nayr do you know if that one has a rear mount option which conceals the cable?

 

[hiky]

nayr there is a shifty lookin dude by the car !!!

 

[nayr]

Hey Nayr do you know if that one has a rear mount option which conceals the cable?

I do not, perhaps it will when its avilable in other markets.

 

[PSPCommOp]

Still can't get over the improved picture from that IR cannon. @nayr, that first picture, is that IR on the camera turned on or is that just the lights from the front of your house?

 

[nayr]

thats just the lights on the front of the house.. its even more dramatic if I shut em off.

more light == less noise

 

[Fastb]

All,

I want to add a turret cam w/ 12mm lens to be able to read license plates of vehicles coming up my long driveway. Maybe using the IR Canon mentioned here, mounted offset to avoid reflections. I’ve followed this thread and similar ones to get smart. (Ha! As if that’s possible!)

I like the Dahua IPC HFW4431M-AS-I2. Why? I want:

• A single vendor, Dahua. No mix-n-match system integration headaches.
• IVS (line cross mainly),
• mic input. Maybe the bullet mic…
• External alarm input, (I have a Bosch D850F1. Dual technology is great. No false alarms)
• Alarm out, for a strobe light (maybe later).

For this newbie, I’ve only used USA distributors. But I only find this camera model on aliexpress. Forum members use ali, and the price break is great. Maybe it’s time for my big boy pants, and buy from Ali….

Forum members, and their experience level, means they avoid the Aliexpress pitfalls, eg: Chinese-language-only models, flaky vendors, etc. And experienced ali buyers know what to stipulate, eg: f/w version, video stream format type, H.264 vs H.265, and whatever else.

Which leads to my questions;

1. If you bought a IPC HFW4431M-AS-I2 on Aliexpress, and are satisfied, which vendor did you use?

1. I found this vendor: https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Dahua-star-light-H2-65-4Mp-IPC-HFW4431M-AS-I2-IP-camera-Support-POE-Micro-SD/1282343_32660088679.html They offer an English language version, and 12mm lens. Is there another spec or requirement I should consider?

1. Is there a specific f/w version I should request? Or another vendor that has solid support for f/w upgrade requests?

Thanks guys! Your forum banter is entertaining and passionate. Love it! (thanks, @fenderman, for tireless administrator work!)
But it's the deep knowledge why I spend time here, usually in the background, learning quietly!

Rgds,
Fastb

 

[nayr]

@cor35vet has released customized firmware thats legit, he just took the Chinese firmware and applied hacks to make it english,french,spanish so if you need it its there.. these are Chinese models but hacking the firmware to english is doable and they do post firmware for Chinese models online.. if you dont want to hack the firmware you can use chrome w/out a plugin I suspect and auto-translate it.

When buying from Ali just buy it from whomever is cheapest usually; your not getting support/warranty so get the best price you can.. its pretty safe if they fuck you over.. so far Ive been pretty lucky.

If they are coming up the driveway slowly it may be possible to get plates and keep visible lighting, check out these captures of a car parked out front.. the plate is readable, not automatically w/ALPR but it is manually and that could come in handy.

You can also see I light up its reflectors, thats because at that distance the angle is within retroreflection range.. the further away the reflections your trying to nuke the further away the light will have to be.. yay for geometry.

But this is the first setup Ive been able to read plates AND still see other shit, luckily this is a stop sign from a dead end so ppl should come to a stop or close to it and I wont have to run a high shutter.. wont be 100% reliable like my BirdHouse cam but it is a nice backup, and could have nailed the bastards who shot there gun off right here earlier this year whom managed to avoid the birdhouse cam.

Its not the best camera I have, but there is alot to like about it (esp given cost).. the WDR is excellent, it has SmartIR that can be shutoff, IVS Features, H265, Alarm/Audio/128G SD.. but it is mostly plastic :-\

Might play with the IR Placement a little more and see if I can improve the situation in my favor.. according to google that plate is ~100ft away; pretty f'n impressive.

 

[nayr]

been playing with the quality settings, with fixed exposure of 1/60 w/gain @ 33% and the ir cannon zoomed in a lil bit more this i what I got at night.

the road reflects very little IR so it just blacks it out; but I am very much liking this level of detail.

 

[PSPCommOp]

Damn this has me rethinking a lot of my settings. When u drop that gain, do you notice an increase in noise in the video itself? Or is it still pretty minimal given the shutter speed


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[nayr]

gain is just another word for noise, the lower you run it the less you'll have.. artificially brightening a scene (aka gain) just adds noise by nature.

attached is how poorly it was doing w/auto.. oh nice i can read a license plate across the street.. too bad I didnt get any ID, 1/60 is minimum i need for blur free pedestrian movement here.. then gotta nail down the gain or it'll just fill it with noise trying to see the road.. increasing shutter speed increases noise but decreases blur, increasing gain increases noise but brightens up the scene.. so when you run high shutter you end up wanting low gain or you could be better off tolerating more blur; because adding gain wont help.. the cheapest path to high shutter speed is more light.

these seem to be a good balance here; given I have enough IR to illuminate skin and clothing w/out trouble.. id rather have most of the image under exposed and actually get an ID than have everything overexposed.

 

[nayr]

sample video at night of some poor unsuspecting pokemon player.

might still tweak the IR some.. but leaving it like this for a lil while.

 

[cam235]

Good example video. It would be nice if the camera had a setting with different exposure on even/odd frames. So do first high shutter speed, then next frame slower shutter, so you still get some image on dim distant things, but you also have sharp no-motion-blur frames in case they are closer to the light. Probably bad for the compression though, when every frame is very different from the last.

 

[nayr]

This camera is coming down today and going to be replaced with the: Dahua Ultra Starlight Varifocal Bullet (IPC-HFW8232E-Z)

Ive never been happy with the results I got with this camera; even with the IR cannon its ID capabilities were very poor.

Imna rip this camera apart and see if its capable of taking a larger, 25mm or 35mm lens.. if it will then it'll be used as a secondary LPR camera.

 

[nayr]

so I got it apart, and this is all that it was... mostly an empty void hah, should have no problem shoe horning a 25mm in here, already ordered.



im not expecting great results, if this works at all it'll just be a backup LPR camera til I can get my hands on something more appropriate.