Dahua Starlight Mini-Dome 3.6mm (IPC-HDB4231C-AS)

[DuncanMcDonuts]

@nayr, what's your opinion on having this a front door camera? The wife thinks the IPC-HDW5231R-Z is too big of an eye-sore to be at face level for the front door. I know the general consensus is to put your front door camera at 4' so people can't shield their faces, but I might have to mount my camera at 6' to please the wife. You don't recommend domes outdoors, but this is more discrete than the IPC-HDW5231R-Z while still having a similar albeit inferior image quality. She wanted a Ring doorbell instead but I won that battle at least.

 

[nayr]

You'll want something that has IR and a Mechanical IR Cut filter, I would wait until these become available: IPC-HDBW4231F-AS | Dahua Technology

its actually a bit smaller than this and should be the same price.

 

[DuncanMcDonuts]

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll look out for it. At least I'll have two IPC-HDW5231R-Zs flanking the front corners with this mini-dome on a lit front porch in between.

 

[bp2008]

Thanks for this thread, nayr. I was all impressed with the performance ... until you brought out the varifocal turret.

 

[tangent]

dry fitted the camera today, I do like how discrete and non threatening this appears.. this corner is dark and basically vanishes when not using a camera flash.

now to cut a hole up into the attic and string more wires.
View attachment 13214

and I am kinda re-evaulating my harsh opinion of this camera now that its installed and tuned in a little bit; in autoExposure it seems to be doing very well in low light.. head on head not as good as the turret but still damn good.

here is a screen cap of it on auto exposure, with all lights off but the TV is on and a few minor light sources:
View attachment 13215

motion can be a bit blurry but rarely will anyone be moving a whole lot when lights are out.. the higher shutter speed is not really needed when someone is laying on the coutch in the dark watching TV heh.. the noise is much lower than I had expected.

inside low light performance is not everything in the world, I know who's inside so a lil blur is acceptable.. if my alarm is triggered for any reason all the lights come on so this was a great case where form beat function as I would not have enjoyed a turret in my living room.

The IVS features of this camera will be very nice once integrated with home automation; I can have it flip lights on or detect presence fairly well.. ie, someone on couch: dont shut off TV

Just to confirm from this point on the shots from the camera are with the dome installed right?

 

[nayr]

yes, however with or without dome it made no difference in image quality that I could notice..

 

[hmjgriffon]

How many of you guys are running front door cams mounted around head level? I'm still trying to figure out how I want to handle the front door.

 

[nayr]

I'm running top of door height

 

[bug99]

How many of you guys are running front door cams mounted around head level? I'm still trying to figure out how I want to handle the front door.

The distance to the face when the person is standing at the door is what i found to be the biggest issue. I messed around with all sorts of angles and heights, including a side wall. In the end, i found that the upper corner of the door frame gave me the best compromise with a 2.8mm lens. 3.6mm will be more of an issue. It places the camera almost 3x the distance from the person compared to at chest height when standing on the mat for live views. Works great for locating boxes in and around the front door area. Ideally, the camera would be 5 feet behind the door looking out, but that is not going to work . For security, i think using a 3.6mm aimed out and catching a good shot of the approach at about 5 feet might be the way to go from a couple of feet lower, still tilted down.

 

[hmjgriffon]

The distance to the face when the person is standing at the door is what i found to be the biggest issue. I messed around with all sorts of angles and heights, including a side wall. In the end, i found that the upper corner of the door frame gave me the best compromise with a 2.8mm lens. 3.6mm will be more of an issue. It places the camera almost 3x the distance from the person compared to at chest height when standing on the mat for live views. Works great for locating boxes in and around the front door area. Ideally, the camera would be 5 feet behind the door looking out, but that is not going to work . For security, i think using a 3.6mm aimed out and catching a good shot of the approach at about 5 feet might be the way to go from a couple of feet lower, still tilted down.

That's pretty much what I was thinking, try to catch the person farther out, I've sorta got two approaches to the front door but I'' play with the angles when I get a chance.

 

[shmookles]

@nayr can the IPC-HDBW4231F-AS be mounted on the ceiling or is that for the wall only? This is for my kids bedrooms, I like the mini-dome, but I need IR to see at night, so the wedge would have to do work.

 

[nayr]

it'll work on wall or ceiling mount or anything between, should have 3D adjustability.

 

[M!key]

Anyone know where to find updated firmware for this model?

 

[nayr]

Why do you think you need new firmware?

 

[M!key]

Why do you think you need new firmware?

I knew you were going to reply with this..

I've been having connection issues with my IPC-HDB4231C-AS. It has older firmware on it (from July) compared to all my other starlights which have December firmware. After messing around with it and having no success, I figured I would try to find a more recent firmware..

 

[nayr]

I can get it for you but I would advise against it; espically with connection problems.. those issues introduce a higher probability that the transfer will get corrupted and you'll end up with a resulted brick.

Do you have it on a bench and verified its not a cabling issue?

 

[M!key]

I can get it for you but I would advise against it; espically with connection problems.. those issues introduce a higher probability that the transfer will get corrupted and you'll end up with a resulted brick.

Do you have it on a bench and verified its not a cabling issue?

Good point about potential bricking it.. I'm going to mess around with it a bit more. I'm fairly certain the cabling isnt the issue. I tested the cable with a network cable tester and everything lit up fine. The issue is the camera occasionally doesn't display the feed (all my other cameras come up immediately) in Smart PSS or the gDMSS.

 

[nayr]

you put too much faith in a simple continuity tester; that simply tells you all pins connected and in correct order; nothing else.. you can still have external interference, faulty cabling or poor terminations that prevent a solid data connection tha'll never be revealed with such a simple tool.

take it down, put it on a bench w/a known good pre-fab cable and reproduce the issue.

 

[HMS]

I always suggest buying a 16ch NVR, if installing 4 cameras or 64 cameras use 16ch NVR's (and stack em if you have more than 16, dahua's will cluster)

I also dont like built in PoE; it puts the cameras on there own network and if you want to change settings directly on a camera (perhaps because its a 3rd party camera) then you will have to jump through hoops every time.. I also like the ability to run PoE WiFi and PoE IR Illuminators off my PoE Switch/Midspan.

I have a 4216-4k, the 5216-4ks2 came out like a month after I bought mine or I would have that instead.. mine's since been discontinued and is now available as the 4216-4ks2 with slightly better specs.

Sorry for the necro post @nayr, but why do you suggest a 16 channel NVR/multpiple 16 chan. NVR's vs going with a 32 channel? Im looking at putting in more then 16 cameras total in the distant future and the diffrence in price between a 16channel and a 32 is only $50 vs another whole NVR @ $350.

I believe i also saw where you were planning on getting a 5216-4ks2 but instead Andy shipped you a 5216-16P-4KS2. since your still using a POE switch does this affect your ability to go directly into your cameras of your normal network or does the nvr still try and put them on its own?

Thanks for all your info and reviews, it has informed me greatly..

 

[Camtalkerz104]

this minidome is not ok outdoors on a porch, get the varifocal turret.. read the verdict in post #1, that was added fairly recently after I had enough time with it to render judgment.

I am not able to agree with this. 3 years ran the 2mp and just switched to the 4mp. At night the image could be sharper on the new 4mp but I think my older nv42p is holding me back some. This is getting upgraded soon. Its been a good unit but i am ready to check out new features and better compression.