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

[nayr]

Under $170 Shipped, compared to my IPC-HDB4300F-PT Mini Pan-Tilt I got a year ago for $167 Shipped this camera is PHENOMENALLY BETTER!

Note since this review this camera has been discontinued and replaced with the SD29204T-GN, it appears to be much the same, however with a different image sensor.. I have since moved this camera inside to the kids bedroom and upgraded my front door PTZ with a Dahua Starlight Recessed Dome PTZ (SD52C225U-HNI)

Features

• 1/2.7” 2MP progressive scan CMOS
  
• H.264 / MJPEG triple-stream encoding
• 25/30fps @ 1080p(1920×1080)
• Minimum Illumination: 0.05 Lux/F1.6 (Color); 0 Lux/F1.6 (IR on)
• Digital WDR, Day/Night(ICR), 3DNR, AWB, AGC, BLC
• Multiple network monitoring: Web viewer, CMS(DSS/PSS) & DMSS
• 2.7mm ~11mm motorized lens (4.4x Zoom), 112°~30° HFOV
• EXIR LEDs Distance: 30m
• IP67, PoE+ (802.3at) <13W
• Micro SD card memory (64GB Max)
• Onboard Microphone

Please note this camera has no ingress rating; therefore its not considered all weather.

Product Page: SD29204T-GN | Dahua Technology

This is an international model camera; comes unmodified w/English translations and is firmware updatable.





Snapshot URL: http://IPADDRESS/cgi-bin/snapshot.cgi

Day Demo:


Night Demo:


Night Demo #2 with Cameo


Gang Activity Captured


Threads with actual activity captures:
Shots Fired
AMP Security Sales
Prowlers in the freezing cold..

 

[ruppmeister]

You didn't mention where you picked this cam up from for the $200... is it a secret (hehe)? Looking forward to the video of it.

 

[nayr]

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2Mp-...Z-Dome-IP-Camera-SD29204S-GN/32422514233.html its actually cheaper now thatn when I bought it..

 

[ben_r_]

Awesome! Good to see such a glowing review. Might pick one of these up in the future.

 

[klasipca]

Looking forward to videos! preferably night vision!

 

[nayr]

Night Video Uploaded (first post), and for reference attached is what my previous camera looked like with all external security lights turned off (substream, but still)

had some problems with wind noise so I cut a tiny bit of foam and shoved it into the microphone hole, completely took care of that problem and did not seem to impact its sensitivity.

also attached is my new video wall, the old Pan Tilt camera is half-ass installed where the VoIP Phone should be.. but hey it was already setup w/PoE.. once I get that lil bastard to clean his room its going on the celling above his bed.. he was diagnosed with Epilepsy a few months back and were going to use this to track any while he is sleeping.. its set to record just at night only. Got an empty spot on the wall thats begging me to fill it with the next IPCam project: ALPR

 

[atom]

You have the same issue with yours that I do with one of mine, the IR reflection from the surface it's mounted on. It really washes out the distant views. I improved mine a lot with the help of some matt black paint, but in my case it's on a part of the eaves that no one sees. Not a practical solution for most installs.

 

[pozzello]

You have the same issue with yours that I do with one of mine

but my wife would kill me if I showed you the kids' rooms...

 

[ruppmeister]

The video looks nice and clean but... How does it handle motion in the scene? I have seen a number of awesome night stills that once motion is introduced there are all sorts of problems.

Also, what lights were on while you captured the night footage? It appears the IR and one or two additional lights on the sides?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[nayr]

motion at night is perfect, I was really hoping for some damn traffic but nobody came by.. that was my second attempt, the first video was longer and had a bunch of cars.. but then nothign would open the file I captured so i tried again.. sigh, I am going to redo the night demo to try to capture actual people and cars.. but I am wanting to script up all my tracking stuff and fine tune it for that video.. you should get a pretty good idea from the camera its self moving, dont see any issues when panning do you?

yeah just got to keep the eaves out of the image and its not too bad.. I am not really to concerned with whats going on at distance at night.. I can see every inch of my property right now and alot of my neighbors, mission accomplished.

 

[nayr]

2nd video this time the camera is being controlled entirely by my home automation system.. I am not drunk I was just trying to see what my active headlamps look like from the other direction, there kinda like havin two PTZ's on your car

 

[klasipca]

On second thought this cannot compare to Huisun mini PTZ

 

[atom]

2nd video this time the camera is being controlled entirely by my home automation system.. I am not drunk I was just trying to see what my active headlamps look like from the other direction, there kinda like havin two PTZ's on your car

Nice, thanks nayr. Have you tweaked any of the cam's settings or is it pretty standard?

 

[nayr]

its pretty default right now except I have BLC enabled for night, being at this intersection I kinda need it for the oncoming headlamps.. WDR actually shows more detail in the dark but I dont like the image, just puts a haze on everything.

 

[atom]

I agree re WDR, tried it and didn't like it, day or night.

Gamma is a bit of an mystery for me with thes cams. I don't understand what it's supposed to do. Each setting on the slider seems to have no relationship with the prvious/next. But I found that by setting it to 2, I got a much better WDR effect than I could with WDR... I'm really happy with the image night and day now.

 

[tomas21]

nayr - Nice write-up!

How is the optical zoom for picking up license plates for cars passing by or in the distance? Was looking at this model or the 12x optical zoom of the SD42212T-HN

 

[ruppmeister]

Thanks for taking the time to put this review together. I am pretty impressed at the night time quality and clarity that you are getting. One of the better night pictures I have seen, that's for certain. And your home automation seems to be taking full advantage of the pan and zoom of this camera just like the previous one.

As far as aesthetics on the outside of the house, what are your thoughts on it? Does it stand out much more than your previous mini dome you had in that location?

 

[nayr]

I am not having too much luck getting plates coming down that road.. its just a bit to far for 12mm 2MP, I think the 25mm would do well for LPR at that range.. I have a 12x Zoom Black face dahua and it too does pretty poorly getting plates..

its not the cameras, its how I install them.. the only camera that gets a good frontal view of cars is this Mini PTZ and it needs more zoom.. the rest if they can see a plate its for only a frame or two at an extreme angle.. its the bitch of discrete installs.

I am going to setup a dedicated ALPR cam, 720p Dahua Box Camera and going to put a varifocal 5mm-100mm lens.. its going to be hidden on the side of the house and zoom up the road to the right to get people as they come/go. (colorado has front/rear plates mandatory, they ticket u pretty quick if you dont put that front plate on)

Comparing Dahua to Hunisun isint going to end well for you Hunisun fans.. Get back to me when you have a documented API and multiple platform support (ie, OSX).. because right out of the gate those 2 things make them unusable for my environment.. even that old dahua I didnt like very much managed to work just fine for a year without a single unexpected behavior like rebooting or loosing focus.. I do day/night switching from my automation server.

All that exterior light was put in place to help the old cam out, but the new cam hardly needs them.. aesthetics look good IMHO, its a bit more obvious than that lil UFO shaped dome clearly but its got such a unique look to it I cant say it really jumps out at you either.

here is a pic, pardon the loose wires.. it was really fucking cold yesterday and when you can no longer feel your fingers its a bad idea to start shoving them between vinyl siding.. I'll clean it up when it warms up, I was not completely convinced yesterday I wanted to put the camera in the same location as the old one.

the mic is right under the lens, you can see the tiny bit of foam I stuffed in there bulging out.

 

[ruppmeister]

Yea, that really doesn't look bad at all. Only looks to be a brick or two in height which is really fairly short for the features that are on the camera. Thanks again for sharing all your findings with us. I have another month or so before I can start investing in new cameras again but this one looks like a good candidate for my driveway replacement as of right now.

 

[digger11]

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.