Dahua Frustrations

[dcartier]

Probably my first pure rant thread I have ever posted. After working in IT for 30 years, I usually was reading other people's rants about something I had worked on. I am retired now, so my turn!

I am at the point where I am so frustrated and disappointed in the Dahua equipment that I have purchased. Specifically about the brokenness that seems to permeate each firmware update. This is something that I have watched play out time and again in the forum as people post about their Dahua problems and people try to help guide them to a version of the firmware that does not have that particular bug, but I can assure you, comes with new and unexpected bugs. Which begs the question, why? Dahua's core business is security, traditionally involving security cameras, so how do they roll out firmware updates that break basic features in their installed base of products? Do they not have a QA department? Have they not heard of regression testing?

Let me give you some examples. I recently updated my NVR that I had purchased from Andy in 2017 (NVR608-32-4KS2) in attempt to get better browser support. Most of the Dahua products originally required IE, and not having a single Windows box on hand, makes it problematic when hardware requires outdated IE versions. So after installing the latest firmware, the NVR now supports using a chrome plugin. Though the chrome support does not allow any IVS zones to be drawn using the plugin on OSX. The GUI on the NVR did get a fair bit nicer, so that was a plus. However the RTSP support in this version is busted in that after about 60 minutes, it freezes and sends the same unchanging frame from that point on. The previous version of the NVR firmware had stable RTSP, but not this version.

I have some SD6AL245U-HNI PTZ cameras. Again their browser requirements were ancient and doing any updates on them was NVR GUI only. I had updated my collection of IPC-HDW5231R-ZE units, and they now fully support Firefox and I am assuming other browsers, no plugin required. I decided that the PTZ's would be much better if their web GUI was accessible. I contacted Andy to get the latest firmware for the PTZ's. The loaded firmware was from 2017, and Andy only had 1 newer firmware available, and it came with a warning, auto tracking may be busted. I decided to try it anyway, because I use presets triggered through IVS and could live without auto tracking. So the new firmware went in, the camera's now support Chrome, again using a plugin, but the Chrome support has a bug where the IVS zones are drawn with an offset. You click to draw and the drawn lines are anchored at a different part of the image. So useless for configuring IVS in the web GUI. The auto tracking is indeed broken. It looks at the sky and it's feet more than anything of interest. The real issue I have with the new firmware, is that the Idle Timer function is busted. The camera would not return to the Idle preset. This brokenness is common, so I setup a Timed Task to move to the idle preset. That worked fine ... until it doesn't. The cameras just stick on a preset and fail to move back to the idle preset. This totally breaks my chosen method of using over watch camera's IVS rules to move the PTZ's to presets. Why did my work around stop working? No idea. The only change I have made is to cut the camera's off from phoning home with a FW rule. I have been planning to move them onto their own VLAN and decided to put a FW rule in place in the meantime, and the issue started after that. Is this new bug related to not being able to phone home? No idea, but I will disable the new rule for a few days to see if the issue goes away.

I should also mention, I don't blame Andy for any of these issues. He is helpful where he can be. The real issue is that Dahua does not seem to have a good handle on basic software development processes. The whole state of Dahua support leaves me demoralized. They have to be able to do better than this.

 

[IAmATeaf]

Breaking features that were previously working is simply poor development and testing. You’d think they would have a standard set of tests that they put the updated firmware through but this can’t be the case.

 

[biggen]

I don't have any specific recommendations other than to dump the Dahua NVR and move to physical server running Blue Iris. This will solve lots of your issues doing that.

I've had Axis cameras for years before moving to Dahua and I'm convinced one pays 5x-10x the price for an Axis camera vs a Dahua because of the extensive firmware testing/development that Axis provides. It is just how it is. I can buy a Dahua camera for under $200 or an Axis camera for $1000 and they both have identical optical characteristics. The difference is in the web interface, ease of management, and lack of bugs Axis has going for it that blows Dahua out of the water. I don't think Dahua spends anywhere near the amount of time in Q&A testing that Axis does for firmware.

Move to your own custom built NAS/BI server. Then you don't have to deal with the internal management of the cameras hardly at all.

 

[aristobrat]

It wouldn't surprise me if some of the firmware builds that we get access to here weren't meant for GA.

 

[dcartier]

I don't have any specific recommendations other than to dump the Dahua NVR and move to physical server running Blue Iris. This will solve lots of your issues doing that.

I've had Axis cameras for years before moving to Dahua and I'm convinced one pays 5x-10x the price for an Axis camera vs a Dahua because of the extensive firmware testing/development that Axis provides. It is just how it is. I can buy a Dahua camera for under $200 or an Axis camera for $1000 and they both have identical optical characteristics. The difference is in the web interface, ease of management, and lack of bugs Axis has going for it that blows Dahua out of the water. I don't think Dahua spends anywhere near the amount of time in Q&A testing that Axis does for firmware.

Move to your own custom built NAS/BI server. Then you don't have to deal with the internal management of the cameras hardly at all.

I have started to explore moving in this direction, to a server based solution, though not Blue Iris. I have a Synology NAS and they do have a camera app available for it, but that brings individual license costs, and it only does old style motion detection. Synology has a nice new product, their Deep Learning NVR that uses a Nvidia GPU on a daughter card to do intelligent video analytics similar to the Blue Iris and IVS. The downside is the cost of the unit and the requirement for a per camera license again.

I looked at the Ubiquiti's offering as I have all my 18 camera's hanging off Unifi POE switches installed throughout my house. Their solution looks nice ... but it only works with their cameras, and their camera offerings are meager, expensive and tend to do a poor job compared to others (like Dahua, Hikvision). They (Ubiquiti) also have a reputation of orphaning products and their development processes, though not as bad as Dahua, leaves a lot to be desired.

I had looked at Zoneminder back when it came out (~2003), so I decided to take another look. It has come along way, and now offers some updated features using object detection running on Nvidia GPU's, but it still looks to be carrying some baggage. It is still is largely written in Perl and C and I would rather have something where I can look at the code and not have to try to decipher the coder's way of doing things.

Then I ran across Shinobi. At least this solution is using a mode modern platform, node.js, rather than what was state of the art at the turn of the century. I have installed it on an unused system I planned on using for gaming, but never got around to it. It should allow me to get an idea as to what Shinobi is capable of. So far I have my 18 cams recording 24x7 through it recording to my NAS, and it is running at 2% CPU utilization. I have not looked to see what CPU is in the box, some 8 core Intel chip by the looks of it, but it has an Nvidia 1080Ti as well, so I plan to see what Shinobi can do along the lines of object detection. They are moving towards using Tensor Flow and I have watched some real cool examples of Tensor Flow for realtime object classification. So that should be fun to experiment with.

For the moment I will leave my Dahua recording all the cams 24x7 while I work on a replacement. Some scripts I cobbled together on an RPI4 that monitors the Dahua camera's events and powers a monitor on and off to show 4 of my cams when something interesting is occuring. The RPI also takes snapshots and pushes them up to S3 and Slack's me the photos. The scripts I based my solution on were from postings on here.

Between the Dahua doing 24x7 recording and the RPI, it gives me a good enough solution while I explore what a more modern server based approach has to offer.

 

[biggen]

Here are my thoughts:

Let me save you some trouble with Zoneminder. It is utter garbage. Its an old antiquated piece of code that should be banished from the face of the earth. I wouldn't bother at all. I don't have any experience with Shinobi since they don't support Debian which is what I use for server VMs. I also wouldn't bother with Ubiquity cameras. I love all of their networking gear (I run their APs, Nano bridges, PoE switches, USG, etc...), but not their cameras. You'd be subject to vendor lock-in going with their cameras and have to use their platforms. Not ideal.

I use Xeoma Lite at my home for my two camera setup. Works really well. Its closed source and made in Russia so perhaps I'm streaming video directly to the Kremlin but it works pretty darn good. I have a physical Debian server that Xeoma is installed onto and the drives for storage are located inside of that.

I use Blue Iris at my business in a Windows VM. I really like BI as well but Xeoma is fine for my small home cam setup. Like you, I also have custom scripts. I have a script that copies all the camera snapshots based off trip wire activation to a Samba share for easier viewing in my home LAN.

I've found that you have to "tweak" these Dahua cameras to your own liking and you really need a custom NAS solution built in the backend. Your options open up a lot once you go that route.

 

[dcartier]

Here are my thoughts:

Let me save you some trouble with Zoneminder. It is utter garbage. Its an old antiquated piece of code that should be banished from the face of the earth. I wouldn't bother at all. I don't have any experience with Shinobi since they don't support Debian which is what I use for server VMs. I also wouldn't bother with Ubiquity cameras. I love all of their networking gear (I run their APs, Nano bridges, PoE switches, USG, etc...), but not their cameras. You'd be subject to vendor lock-in going with their cameras and have to use their platforms. Not ideal.

I use Xeoma Lite at my home for my two camera setup. Works really well. Its closed source and made in Russia so perhaps I'm streaming video directly to the Kremlin but it works pretty darn good. I have a physical Debian server that Xeoma is installed onto and the drives for storage are located inside of that.

I use Blue Iris at my business in a Windows VM. I really like BI as well but Xeoma is fine for my small home cam setup. Like you, I also have custom scripts. I have a script that copies all the camera snapshots based off trip wire activation to a Samba share for easier viewing in my home LAN.

I've found that you have to "tweak" these Dahua cameras to your own liking and you really need a custom NAS solution built in the backend. Your options open up a lot once you go that route.

Hmm, surprising that Shinobi does not support Debian. Their recommended platform is Ubuntu which is Debian based. I am OK with using Ubuntu Server as that is my preferred distro for bare metal installs anyway.

My one area of concern for Shinobi, revolves around its ability to leverage my Dahua PTZ cameras positioning features. I am not sure yet if my concerns are warranted yet, but I have a feeling I am going to need to do some digging to determine if it is implemented already. I am not even sure if Dahua's ONVIF implementation is complete and supports PTZ. I guess time will tell.

I have disabled my FW rule for the Dahua's to reach the internet. I am curious to see if the PTZ failing to return to idle subsides.

Oh, I was curious what CPU this box actually had. It turns out it's a Ryzen 7 1700X. That makes more sense as I was stumped what (older) Intel chip had 8 cores.

 

[biggen]

Shinobi would probably work with Debian but not out of the box. Probably would have to hard link various libraries to get it to run and I didn't want to spend all the time troubleshooting it.

 

[c hris527]

Probably my first pure rant thread I have ever posted. After working in IT for 30 years, I usually was reading other people's rants about something I had worked on. I am retired now, so my turn!

I am at the point where I am so frustrated and disappointed in the Dahua equipment that I have purchased. Specifically about the brokenness that seems to permeate each firmware update. This is something that I have watched play out time and again in the forum as people post about their Dahua problems and people try to help guide them to a version of the firmware that does not have that particular bug, but I can assure you, comes with new and unexpected bugs. Which begs the question, why? Dahua's core business is security, traditionally involving security cameras, so how do they roll out firmware updates that break basic features in their installed base of products? Do they not have a QA department? Have they not heard of regression testing?

Let me give you some examples. I recently updated my NVR that I had purchased from Andy in 2017 (NVR608-32-4KS2) in attempt to get better browser support. Most of the Dahua products originally required IE, and not having a single Windows box on hand, makes it problematic when hardware requires outdated IE versions. So after installing the latest firmware, the NVR now supports using a chrome plugin. Though the chrome support does not allow any IVS zones to be drawn using the plugin on OSX. The GUI on the NVR did get a fair bit nicer, so that was a plus. However the RTSP support in this version is busted in that after about 60 minutes, it freezes and sends the same unchanging frame from that point on. The previous version of the NVR firmware had stable RTSP, but not this version.

I have some SD6AL245U-HNI PTZ cameras. Again their browser requirements were ancient and doing any updates on them was NVR GUI only. I had updated my collection of IPC-HDW5231R-ZE units, and they now fully support Firefox and I am assuming other browsers, no plugin required. I decided that the PTZ's would be much better if their web GUI was accessible. I contacted Andy to get the latest firmware for the PTZ's. The loaded firmware was from 2017, and Andy only had 1 newer firmware available, and it came with a warning, auto tracking may be busted. I decided to try it anyway, because I use presets triggered through IVS and could live without auto tracking. So the new firmware went in, the camera's now support Chrome, again using a plugin, but the Chrome support has a bug where the IVS zones are drawn with an offset. You click to draw and the drawn lines are anchored at a different part of the image. So useless for configuring IVS in the web GUI. The auto tracking is indeed broken. It looks at the sky and it's feet more than anything of interest. The real issue I have with the new firmware, is that the Idle Timer function is busted. The camera would not return to the Idle preset. This brokenness is common, so I setup a Timed Task to move to the idle preset. That worked fine ... until it doesn't. The cameras just stick on a preset and fail to move back to the idle preset. This totally breaks my chosen method of using over watch camera's IVS rules to move the PTZ's to presets. Why did my work around stop working? No idea. The only change I have made is to cut the camera's off from phoning home with a FW rule. I have been planning to move them onto their own VLAN and decided to put a FW rule in place in the meantime, and the issue started after that. Is this new bug related to not being able to phone home? No idea, but I will disable the new rule for a few days to see if the issue goes away.

I should also mention, I don't blame Andy for any of these issues. He is helpful where he can be. The real issue is that Dahua does not seem to have a good handle on basic software development processes. The whole state of Dahua support leaves me demoralized. They have to be able to do better than this.

Dahua is NOT in the business of supporting end users, they depend on the dealers for that. I have set up many Dahua NVR's with little or NO issues, I worked for a facility that required to buy from USA dealers and they did the support if I had Issues. Most systems were closed so very little firmware updates were done and I did run into a few issues but were resolved fairly easily. I do own personally NVR's and Cams from Andy, I have never updated firmware's to often. The problems seemed to come out with the roll out of AI stuff, I started to notice a gradual uptick of firmware issues(NVR) when playing catch up with newer camera features. Another issue is mixing and matching different region hardware, the result of that has gone south and fast. Do not expect resolution any time soon. Dahua' PTZ's are build well, just don't expect the firmware to do everything well. Blue iris might be a good option for you. Nobody who has read these forms for any amount of time should be in shock that their hardware is not doing everything its suppose to do and or do it well. Just my 2 cents.

 

[fenderman]

I use Xeoma Lite at my home for my two camera setup. Works really well. Its closed source and made in Russia so perhaps I'm streaming video directly to the Kremlin but it works pretty darn good. I have a physical Debian server that Xeoma is installed onto and the drives for storage are located inside of that.

No only is Xeoma made by Russians, they pay their end users to write reviews in exchange for free licenses. This is why none of their reviews can or should be trusted. There are free options from reputable VMS makers like Milestone for small setups.

 

[biggen]

No only is Xeoma made by Russians, they pay their end users to write reviews in exchange for free licenses. This is why none of their reviews can or should be trusted. There are free options from reputable VMS makers like Milestone for small setups.

Yeah I saw their offerings if you post a review you get X amount of licenses free.

I'm not married to it. It was only $18 for two cameras for a lifetime license. I may continue to look around.

 

[dcartier]

Shinobi would probably work with Debian but not out of the box. Probably would have to hard link various libraries to get it to run and I didn't want to spend all the time troubleshooting it.

@biggen , you should take another look at Shinobi. I am pretty sure it will run fine on Debian. It's only major dependency is on nodejs modules and most of those get installed through npm. I have been testing it for a couple of weeks. It is still very young and lacks some of the features that Blue Iris and others have, but it is developing fast and is so configurable and flexible. I am using TensorFlow for object detection and it is impressive. To sum it up, it is free, cross platform (Linux, Mac OSX, Windows) and is developing really quickly.

 

[biggen]

@biggen , you should take another look at Shinobi. I am pretty sure it will run fine on Debian. It's only major dependency is on nodejs modules and most of those get installed through npm. I have been testing it for a couple of weeks. It is still very young and lacks some of the features that Blue Iris and others have, but it is developing fast and is so configurable and flexible. I am using TensorFlow for object detection and it is impressive. To sum it up, it is free, cross platform (Linux, Mac OSX, Windows) and is developing really quickly.

I'll take another look into it. I ended up with another VM of Blueiris since it is so easy to use but I also like to tinker!

 

[Roy White]

Newbie with Xeoma, but I find that Xeoma is very good indeed. Seems to work with (and auto-detect) thousands of IP cameras, including Hikvision-compatible and ONVIF cameras. Some of the (older funky Uniden) cameras I've set up were not detected, but I simply found and entered their rtsp stream link and they worked right away. You can combine licenses for multiple cameras - in other words you can combine a 2-camera and 4-camera license for 6 cameras, but much larger licenses are available. And the licenses can be purchased or paid-for monthly as well as cloud service licenses if you want them.

Many more paid features available as add-ons - I haven't used any of these yet.

So - YES they offer free software in exchange for good reviews, but I HAVE NOT TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF THIS OFFER YET. So I have nothing at the moment to gain from this, and will NOT use this review in order to get anything for free from them.

My only concern is that the software is from Russia, but they have been around for years now, and sell all over the planet. Server software available for Windows, Linux and MacOS, and clients available for all platforms including Android and IOS, with a very consistent interface for all.

Easy enough to get things started, but there is a learning curve when you go to tweak things. Was pretty simple to open outside ports on a Sonicwall Gen 7 router. Tech support is very good and generally free, with phone (hours listed on their website) and email support available. Very knowledgeable staff.

To be clear: I have no financial interest in Xeoma, and do not gain anything from posting this review, except that maybe you'll like the stuff and I've done you a favor.

 

[samplenhold]

Newbie with Xeoma,

You do realize that you are posting to an almost 3-year-old stale thread, right?

 

[Roy White]

The fact that I found the thread means someone might read it besides me. Feel free to suggest where I might post more info.

Xeoma is quite a good and powerful product. It's sad to see it disparaged because they might give a reviewer a perk for recommending it, but of course I do see the potential for abuse. As with everything out there, Caveat Emptor remains a good catchphrase.

 

[biggen]

I ran Xeoma for about a week before I deleted it. I just didn’t trust them in the end.

 

[fenderman]

The fact that I found the thread means someone might read it besides me. Feel free to suggest where I might post more info.

Xeoma is quite a good and powerful product. It's sad to see it disparaged because they might give a reviewer a perk for recommending it, but of course I do see the potential for abuse. As with everything out there, Caveat Emptor remains a good catchphrase.

They are disparaged because they are a dishonest company that gives users free licenses in exchange for a review. This is disgusting and unethical. There has been at lease one instance of a reviewer who kept spamming this forum after being called out on this. Quite frankly we dont know you - you have two posts and simply stating you are not getting any freebies doesnt really prove it. Once you add 3 years of updates you are at 40 per camera. You can buy nxwitness/dwipvms for 80-90 bux a cam with lifetime software upgrades even to new versions. Or blue iris for a grand total of 60 bux, up to 64 cams.

 

[Roy White]

To all: thanks for keeping this thread alive, at least for this response. Feel free to respond, but I hope I am addressing your concerns here.

I will not spam this forum. IMO the only unethical thing about posting a review in exchange for product is if it's not disclosed, preferably when the review is posted, instead of waiting to be asked. But sometimes even I break those rules (but I DO indeed disclose when asked, every time).

This is simply tantamount to getting a discount on product, nothing more. When I buy additional licenses, I pay the dealer price. I do not get an unlimited free ride, nor is my free product unlimited. BTW why would I even want to use product that is wonky or apparently insecure? I use it because I LIKE IT and trust it.

BTW Microsoft 365, my email security cloud vendor AND my antivirus vendor (just to name three) ALL GIVE ME FREE PRODUCT, and I then pay reseller pricing for my clients. At the very least, when asked, I will cheerfully admit that I've gotten free product from them. It's a win-win all around.

Now, about them being a Russian company, this is true, and they themselves do not attempt to hide this fact. And it is a concern. I have fully disclosed this to my clients who have Xeoma, and they do not seem to care. Xeoma has been around for quite awhile. And my clients are businesses where, if their surveillance was hacked, it would not be a cause for concern. Clearly, there are businesses/agencies where this would be a major issue, so I am not discounting that.

So Xeoma seems mature, is very stable and well-supported, supports hundreds or thousands of camera models, and has dozens of features and add-ons that can be very useful to an organization. And has powerful clients for Android and IOS that are free. 'Nuff said for now. Cheers.

 

[alastairstevenson]

To all: thanks for keeping this thread alive, at least for this response.

It's actually just you, necroposting to a 3-year old thread.

Feel free to respond, but I hope I am addressing your concerns here.

If you are, it's not obvious where.

I will not spam this forum. IMO the only unethical thing about posting a review in exchange for product is if it's not disclosed, preferably when the review is posted, instead of waiting to be asked. But sometimes even I break those rules (but I DO indeed disclose when asked, every time).

OK, so did you get a freebie? Just asking ...

And my clients are businesses where, if their surveillance was hacked, it would not be a cause for concern.

I'm really struggling to think what type of businesses would not be concerned if their LAN was accessible via a hacked surveillance system.

Clearly, there are businesses/agencies where this would be a major issue, so I am not discounting that.

I would hope not.

So Xeoma seems mature, is very stable and well-supported, supports hundreds or thousands of camera models, and has dozens of features and add-ons that can be very useful to an organization. And has powerful clients for Android and IOS that are free. 'Nuff said for now.

Quite the detailed and in-depth endorsement.
Thanks for that!