Dahua Mini Black Face PTZ (SD29204S-GN & SD29204T-GN)

nope, in the lil booklet I have only mention is "This series speed dome should be installed in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight, inflammable, explosive substances and etc."

the weakest link on this camera for water ingress is going to be the top, unlike my big black face dahua the little door to access the memory card did not have a weather gasket on it or a retaining screw.. so I suspect if water gets between the celling its mounted on and the camera then game is over.. If installed correctly under a soffit or covered porch I suspect it could take on a hurricane without as much as a problem.. if you have a flush roof surface unlike mine you MIGHT be able to put a ring of foam tape on top of the camera and then when you go to lock it in place it will compress and seal off any exposure the top has.

the connection joints look just as good as the big black face dahua, I dont think those will be a problem with weather unless it gets encased in ICE.. my Big Black Face is more exposed than this and susceptible and it has yet to happen.

I think the warning about sun exposure is simply because its a black camera, if you put this in the blistering sun all day long its likely to overheat.. as will any white camera you paint black.. my big black face dahua actually has a fan inside to help cool it, the Mini dont have room for that.
 
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daytime video added to first post.. today was trash day, made him a youtube star.
 
nayr said:
daytime video added to first post.. today was trash day, made him a youtube star.
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Is it required for them to put bins back in its place or he is just doing all this extra work for tips?
 
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Ha! I always suspected they just dump the green (recycling) and gray (trash) bins into the same place,
and your daytime clip seems to show exactly that (~2:15-2:20)... :-)

thanx for the nice demos.
 
thats just the rubbish pickup, this particular company brings them back up to the house.. thats why I use em. Bins can be anything really, I put that space sticker over the previous trash companies logo, the gray ones are just what local Lowes has... I have one just like it that I use for overflow so I dont have to put bags out that the coons/yotes will just bust open.

a different truck comes for recycling, I am not compelled to use it and it costs extra so I dont bother.. a few neighbors do and I think they come every other week and look for blue bins.

I really like they bring the bins back up to the house, espically when you clean out the fridge before going on a trip.. nice knowing that trash bin is not telling everyone in the neighborhood you have not been home in 3-4 days.. My side of the street that gutter can turn into a ragging torrent, seems everything uphill from me comes by at a good 15mph.. carrying away everyone else's empty trashbins to the bottom of the hill or under a parked pickup truck.
 
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Daytime I have WDR enabled (switch profiles at sunrise/set externally), without it there is alot of overexposure since this is a north facing camera; in perpetual shade.. I would likely benefit from a camera with a Wide 160db WDR up here for a perfect image but this manages quite well in this challenging location.. I use my automation/tracking to allow the PTZ to avoid the sharp shade line, when activity is up close I dont care if the road is overexposed, and if nothing is going on in the front yard I am fine with it being a little dark.. camera responds very well to the changes.

I forgot to originally mention this camera has Defogging, but for this location it seems to hurt more than it helps.

The Audio Detection is some kind of VoDo Magic, I am very happy with it.. its sensitive enough to hear people talking in my front yard and triggering it.. yet when a car passes by its completely ignored unless its unnecessarily loud truck/car/bike/plane.. Right now its the trigger for zooming back and looking at the door and its doing it very well, in the night video you can see when I start talking it realizes someone is there and changes preset, but it happily ignores the car starting and everything else.. If you dont say anything it'll detect your foot steps as you get close to the door... how does this work so damn well? and why arent more motion detectors using mics? Can you imagine an outdoor motion sensor using combined PIR/Microwave/Audio to give you unbeatable presence detection without all the freaking false alarms.

people walking/jogging by talking with clear audio.. no trigger, step off the mat onto the concrete under the camera.. trigger! its performs like it's an sonic distance sensor.. If you put this near a door on a wooden deck I doubt a ninja could sneak up on that entry without triggering it.
 
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The camera defogging is to help remove condensation from the lens I presume?

Good to hear the mic is up to snuff too.
 
I think its more for a sunward exposed camera or situations where light hits glass from just the perfect angle to cause it to fog up.. it makes the image darker, too dark for my shady front.. I turned it on inadvertently last night; come this morning when it switched to day I was like WTF is wrong with my camera heh.. turned it off and all was well.

dont think it did anything under the night profile.. at least not that I could tell.
 
OK, that makes sense to me, thanks.
 
nayr said:
the mic is right under the lens, you can see the tiny bit of foam I stuffed in there bulging out.
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You made me double check given your bit of foam seemed to work :) the mic is the little pin hole in the white surround on the right hand side of your pic, it's the ambient light sensor under the lens.
 
you sure? I'll have to actually test that.. I swore that was it cause I could turn the camera into the wind and hear the noise then turn it away and it'd go away.. I know it was still blowing the leaves and trees. when I looked into that hole I did not see a light sensor, i saw 3 tiny holes in the case sorta like my other dahua w/a mic.

but you might be right, I never actually tested the location.. and I dont use the photosensor to trigger day/night so I'd of never noticed heh.. Ive been smacked by bigger coincidences before.

I also should say going from 3.6mm to 2.7mm for the front door was a boon overall, I really like the extra width when viewing the front yard.. along with zoom means this PTZ is going to better suited.
 
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I wasn't sure, so I covered the sensor and it switched into night mode, then tapped/scratched around the sensor a bit and hardly any noise got through, scratched around the mic hole and it was loud.

When you said you'd put some foam in the mic hole I thought geez, that must be some tiny bit of foam, but I'll give it a try because the wind noise is an issue with mine. I might try taping a bit of foam over the hole...
 
lol awesome, yeah I was just thinking the same thing.. just tape a bit of foam over it, thats all thats required... weird all mine stopped when I shove foam in the photosensor haha.. I havent bothered reconfiguring my phone yet to view the camera so I dont have a way to test the audio from outside without waiting for the file to complete uploading and opening it off the fileserver.. or recording through SmartPSS like I did for these demos.

colorado is not known to be windy, its usually pretty still here.. probably a fluke it even got hit dead on the way I have it installed, hence why it disappeared so quickly and has not been seen since.

I saw there was a panel to get to the circuit board but I did not take it off, I wonder if you go in from the inside if you can put some foam on that hole.
 
It would look better if it wasn't visible wouldn't it, so worth a try. I have put silastic all around the openings on the base (top) to seal it a bit (already saved one cam from an unintentinaol drowning), and I coud remove it pretty easily, but I think for now I'll try the foam on the outside.
 
Does Dahua have a IP66 camera like this one at the same price point? I've got a light pole that I'd love to install these on however they would be in direct sunlight. I'd install them horizontally and could seal the top of it but overall heavy rain would likely be a problem.

Sooo disappointed not IP66 rated!

digger11 said:
Did anything that came with the camera indicate whether it is IP66 rated? One of the things that had made me leery of this model is that nothing that I've seen in the Dahua literature indicates that the camera is outdoor rated.
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same price point? nope.. but even with this camera avilable I'd still buy my big black face dahua at its price point in a heartbeat.. Especially if I were putting it on a light pole, the extra zoom and IR power would be put to good use.. and the speed, I have a 270 degree view on my blackface and it can turn around and see behind it quicker than this one can do a 90 pan.. it uses very high quality stepper motors and german made belts.

http://www.networkcameracritic.com/?p=2346 they are about $600 for the 12x and $700 for the 20x.. they are far better suited for a light pole install in Texas, sounds like your location is bound to put the hardware to its test so I would avoid cheeping out on that one.. replacing even a cheap full size PTZ once will cost you more than getting a reputable one with a warranty in the first place.

how sturdy is your pole? If the top sways back and forth with a nice wind then it might not even be suitable location for a PTZ depending on your goals.. especially as you add more zoom the platform has to be more stable.. I put a camera on a farm pole in Kansas and most of the time the image looked like it was taken from a boat at sea, just saying back and forth.
 
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Have you tried it in a complete darkness?
 
as complete as I can get, I cant turn the street light off but the first night video shows me turning off all my visible lighting at some point and relying only on built in IR (~1:45) which was not at maximum power.. its set to get brighter as you zoom to avoid a big overexposed hotspot

in the 2nd night video you can see the IR from my PTZ looking at my car.
 
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