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

[stoney7713]

Thanks for the review, while I would love to use this camera as a front door cam, rain often blows sideways here in Indiana. But I think it would work wonderfully as an upgrade to my living room cam (4 teenagers, always nice to keep an eye IN the house when we're not home).

 

[mando209]

Does dahua sell outdoor ptz cams?


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[nayr]

oh yeah, IMHO Dahua is the company to beat when it comes to affordable PTZ's.. they set the bar. Like Hikvision is the dominate force for fixed cameras, Dahua is the dominate force for PTZ's

Ive got a big black face dahua on the back corner of my house responding to events around the property for 2 years now solid without a hiccup.

Mini PTZ's are very hard to do well, this one succeeds because its belt driven like its big brothers.. nice smooth and accurate motion.. most are just gear on gear and they are jumpy and imprecise.

 

[mando209]

oh yeah, IMHO Dahua is the company to beat when it comes to affordable PTZ's.. they set the bar. Like Hikvision is the dominate force for fixed cameras, Dahua is the dominate force for PTZ's

Ive got a big black face dahua on the back corner of my house responding to events around the property for 2 years now solid without a hiccup.

Mini PTZ's are very hard to do well, this one succeeds because its belt driven like its big brothers.. nice smooth and accurate motion.. most are just gear on gear and they are jumpy and imprecise.

Which model should I look into for the ptz?



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[nayr]

I have this one exposed to the harsh colorado environment: http://www.networkcameracritic.com/?p=2346

but there are updated models out now with higher resolution and more features at the same price.

 

[atom]

Does dahua sell outdoor ptz cams?

They do also have some great mini dome PTZs which are outdoors rated, but no built in IR sadly.

 

[mando209]

looks good.on a $200-250 budget which dahua ptz would u reccomend? the one u link is about $700

 

[nayr]

you can get it from china for ~$500, the 12x version a bit less..

your budget leaves you in a gulf, its about $300 to get any of the cheapest outdoor ptz's offered by dahua.. if you had a $300-500 budget you'd have alot of options.

consider this, a ptz's strength is also its weakness.. the fact that it moves makes it vastly more complicated and practically ensures that sooner or later it will fail, depending on how you treat it and how its built will determine its lifespan.. if you have plans for using it alot and for a long time, then its often justified to increase the budget now and start off with a good solution thats more likely to fulfill your needs over longterm.. than settling on something inadequate that would of just been better off with more fixed cameras @ same cost.

A PTZ can only look at one thing at a time, so for most people I'd say get more fixed cameras if your not able to integrate the PTZ with external sensors.. money better spent than on a PTZ IMHO.. Its really just a nice toy if all you do is park it at one thing 99.99% of the time.

 

[Kawboy12R]

A PTZ can only look at one thing at a time, so for most people I'd say get more fixed cameras if your not able to integrate the PTZ with external sensors.. money better spent than on a PTZ IMHO.. Its really just a nice toy if all you do is park it at one thing 99.99% of the time.

I agree unless the extra money spent on a PTZ doesn't mean much to you. The Huisun/Imporx 10x MinPTZ is a bit of an exception. It does just fine for a fixed camera at one job but isn't prohibitively expensive for something that moves around and can zoom in a few hundred feet away when you're curious. It's also an excellent solution if you have to park on the street at fair distance in different places and you want nice mug shots.

 

[Abbell]

Nayr, I just wanted to say hw much I appreciate your insights. There are many contributors here and all seem to give fair and honest opinions.

Because of your review of this mini PTZ I bought a few. While I do harbor windows fugitives in my computers, I have decided to go in and upgrade to a hybrid system.
I was testing Blue Iris on a quad core atom processor that used to run my phone system with PXInaFlash and I upgraded it to an I7 just to help me start this process. I am tweaking my analog system to integrate into BI (It is knock off garbage that I paid $150 for and dropped in a 2TB WD purple, but served me well for 3 years), once I get past the signal drops I want to use BI to trigger alarms for the other cameras.

When you set up tracking on the mini ptz did you set up zones via motion or outside alarms instead?

Picture of my analog system.. I have to use the mobile phone port to get BI to talk to it..lol

 

[nayr]

I use a combination of physical sensors, microphones and video motion sensing, and hopefully here shortly some smart features like facial detection/linecross..

its all tied into my home logic engine, Domoticz.. its aware of what each camera is looking at and the state of every sensor, so it responds accordingly if the mailbox, parcel drop, front door change states. and in the other way, at night with the exterior lights off if the camera detects activity it'll flip the lights on.

I am about to add a few more sensors up front, Im going to put a pressure pad under the door mat and a beam tripwire sensor infront of my big bay window.

 

[Abbell]

I was thinking of finding some wireless motion detectors and tie them into an alarm system. I can use motion detection in my analog cameras to trigger my PTZ cameras to change zones. But, I have a Frankenstein system like NO other.
I am frugal (read usually broke) so I get what I can when I can. The mini PTZs were a present of sorts to myself.
I picked up some additional older PTZs that I had added to my system and they are intersting..lol
I got a Eyemax PTZ-7H450 for $100 and it is a fantastic camera except it is to noisy to run full speed and the resolution is analog (540TVL), but 12X zoom and really fantastic IR make up for it.
I just got a Bosch VG4 (36x) with mast mount and pendant for $150 and I will be adding it to the network once I figure out how I want to mount it.. I still need to test if I can run analog out at the same time as digital.


Is there a recommended motion sensor you prefer?

 

[Abbell]

https://domoticz.com/

That looks interesting... I am about to embark on another adventure and use my Atom to run a ClearOs firewall and load balancer for my internet. How much power does Domoticz require? I may be able to add it in as a quad core is more than enough for my plans.

 

[nayr]

i run it on a quad core 700mhz armv7 like a champ, it dont need much of anything.. ive got running on single core 600mhz beagle bone blacks too just fine.

its written in C++, really fast.

 

[Abbell]

I think I will add it to my ever-growing list. I have the free version of Google Fiber (5Mbs) coming and the load balance/firewall device is going to be the primary project. My son is getting to the age where his severe lack of porn may cause some renewed motivation to get past me. He has been whitelisted for some time and I know kids... where there is a will there is a proxy.

 

[nayr]

Survived a Blizzard without skipping a beat, while all my other cameras packed with snow, I had this in a safe enough spot it was my only view out into the storm.

just incase anyone was worried about an indoor camera outside, its just fine as long as its protected from the worst of it.. backdoor cam only visible because I just smacked it with a broom, went back to snow packed within about 5mins.

 

[Abbell]

Nice!... well that gives me a boost of confidence for the two I bought after reading your review.

 

[nayr]

my big black face actually had to be reset after the storm, it got gunked up enough with snow it lost position and all the presets were off.. once it did its little dance everything went back to normal.. thats the first time I've ever had to do that tho, it happened after I cleaned it off so it wasent me. (tip, if you install a camera 2 floors up in the air, do it near a window you can reach it from, or get wipers)

Ive had cams up at these spots for nearly 2 years, yesterday was the first time I woke up and only had a feed from a single camera.. kinda freaked me out, was like 50 degrees and raining when I fell asleep.. I had 18" of snow in my front yard within ~12h

Ive had the camera down to about 5 degrees so far without a problem, cold wont kill em.. ice could break a PTZ I suspect in the right conditions, probably need a dome for those environments.

 

[Abbell]

I think it is the only design flaw with that style of camera. I have a 7H450 PTZ that loses picture when it rains due to the lens position, that and it being a very noisy camera are its main drawbacks.


My Bosch VG4 has no such issue and is the polar opposite. I can't hear it when standing next to it and nothing short of a tornado would kill the picture.


But the design of the 7H450 gives it insane IR and great night vision that is so bright it casts a spotlight across my yard if I use all of the LEDs.

 

[gwminor48]

Thanks for you review on this. I just couldn't see a way to make the Huisun work for me under an eave and I opted for the SD29204S-GN after seeing your review. This was my first experience with AliExpress, it took 27 days, I guess that's about normal coming from China. I do have the camera mounted and working. This is my first Dahua (my others are Hiks) and I've got a lot to learn about the Dahua cams. Is there no place to download a users manual for this or something similar? I see you mention WDR and I found the WDR open/close option, but on this and a few other options I get "Failed to save!" while other options change with no problem (using Internet Explorer in Windows). Please excuse my ignorance with Dahua options, I'm looking forward to seeing how this looks at night. Daytime is good except for the shadow situation I have and I'm sure I can improve the daytime even more when I get familiar with the Dahua options.