Dahua Starlight Varifocal Turret (IPC-HDW5231R-Z)

[DuncanMcDonuts]

Does Dahua region-lock or have different language options for their cameras/NVRs? I know someone going to Beijing on a business trip and I might ask him to purchase my setup if he's able to find a store that these are sold at. Seems like Aliexpress has issues with payment and stock.

 

[Jmtyra]

Dang, was hoping he would notify us once they were back in stock.

 

[nayr]

Does Dahua region-lock or have different language options for their cameras/NVRs? I know someone going to Beijing on a business trip and I might ask him to purchase my setup if he's able to find a store that these are sold at. Seems like Aliexpress has issues with payment and stock.

no they do not; but they also dont do multi-language devices.. so your likely to be bringing back Chinese language interfaces; but there are options to drop an english translation file down if your technically savvy (read: linux) enough.

many models are chinese only; so finding english firmware is unlikely and performance may vary dramatically.

they will work fine with english/us video systems regardless.

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

Does Dahua region-lock or have different language options for their cameras/NVRs? I know someone going to Beijing on a business trip and I might ask him to purchase my setup if he's able to find a store that these are sold at. Seems like Aliexpress has issues with payment and stock.

This camera is only for International using,not for china, US still not selling, how you can buy them in Chinese shops. This one stock need around 3 weeks booking. But i think we can handle all orders before 12th.Dec. right now what to do is waiting for a while.

 

[freddyq]

no they do not; but they also dont do multi-language devices.. so your likely to be bringing back Chinese language interfaces; but there are options to drop an english translation file down if your technically savvy (read: linux) enough.

many models are chinese only; so finding english firmware is unlikely and performance may vary dramatically.

they will work fine with english/us video systems regardless.

So does that mean an English translation file needs to be applied before the camera can be setup? I'm assuming the setup pages will all be in Chinese out of the box. I'm fairly tech savvy but haven't done much with Linux for a while...

 

[Jmtyra]

This camera is only for International using,not for china

N00b here -- Does that mean the firmware can or can't be upgraded?

 

[nayr]

So does that mean an English translation file needs to be applied before the camera can be setup? I'm assuming the setup pages will all be in Chinese out of the box. I'm fairly tech savvy but haven't done much with Linux for a while...

If you can read Chinese, or use an online translator, or a browser that does it for you you can set it up without hacking it.. its pretty involved, last time I did it I telneted into the device, mounted a nfs share with some linux binaries on it for the arm platform, found the partition w/the translation file, imaged that partition to the nfs share where I mounted the image, then changed the files about from another linux machine, finally I wrote the image back to the camera and restarted it.

N00b here -- Does that mean the firmware can or can't be upgraded?

the firmware can be updated just fine; however the camera works perfectly fine out of the box and I doubt you'll ever have a legitimate reason to do such nonsence..

 

[Jmtyra]

the firmware can be updated just fine

Great! Thank you nayr! There seem to be multiple security exploits lately for IoT devices so it's nice to have the option to update the firmware just in case.
Not a replacement for healthy security practices of course, but a nice option for the paranoid like myself.

 

[nayr]

You cannot rely on the manufacturer to keep your device secure; they do not release firmware to fix security issues.. nor do they have any obligation to.. Ive had more features removed from updating firmware than Ive had security issues resolved.

IoT devices should not be directly exposed to the internet; if you dont expose them to the internet then security exploits are much less of a threat, suggest you read my VPN Primer for Noobs

 

[FlipNJ]

If you can read Chinese, or use an online translator, or a browser that does it for you you can set it up without hacking it.. its pretty involved, last time I did it I telneted into the device, mounted a nfs share with some linux binaries on it for the arm platform, found the partition w/the translation file, imaged that partition to the nfs share where I mounted the image, then changed the files about from another linux machine, finally I wrote the image back to the camera and restarted it.



the firmware can be updated just fine; however the camera works perfectly fine out of the box and I doubt you'll ever have a legitimate reason to do such nonsence..

Not debating you at all but... my low light destroyer had a problem with constant "No Signal" events and my last ditch effort was to install a new firmware. That was a month ago and it has not lost signal yet. Otherwise, I agree with you, LEAVE IT ALONE! LOL

 

[nayr]

you talking about Longse? I highly doubt you'll find a dahua product broken out of the box like that.. every one of my cameras is still running the firmware I received it with.

but yeah; if something is broken that you know is fixed in an update then you should weigh the risk vs reward; if its a minor bug you can work arround or live with I say leave it be.. but if its something like inherent instability resulting in lost video then by all means; update away.. if you break it entirely it wont be in much worse of a condition than you started with.

Dahua does sanity checks before attempting an update; unlike Hikvision there is no risk from applying the wrong firmware to the wrong device.. as the update file contains a list of compatible models, and if yours dont match it will fail-safe and abort.. they do not re-use model numbers between regions so if you have a china only model, it wont take an US model or international model firmware or vice versa

Recovery after a failed update is not going to be easy; if at all possible.. all it'll take is something like a power glitch in the middle of your update to turn it into a brick.

 

[FlipNJ]

you talking about Longse? I highly doubt you'll find a dahua product broken out of the box like that.. every one of my cameras is still running the firmware I received it with.

but yeah; if something is broken that you know is fixed in an update then you should weigh the risk vs reward; if its a minor bug you can work arround or live with I say leave it be.. but if its something like inherent instability resulting in lost video then by all means; update away.. if you break it entirely it wont be in much worse of a condition than you started with.

Dahua does sanity checks before attempting an update; unlike Hikvision there is no risk from applying the wrong firmware to the wrong device.. as the update file contains a list of compatible models, and if yours dont match it will fail-safe and abort.

Yep! Longse EEEEK! Never again. Communicating with Chinese was not fun and of course pointless as no resolution was offered. Admittedly, it has been great since the FW update. The fix came from some other poor guy dealing with the same problem and he somehow had a link to the file that fixed it. Maybe he speaks Chinese.

 

[bp2008]

I've had broken Dahua firmware before, plenty of times. Two of my older PTZs were unable to take an IP address in the 192.168.0.X range until their firmware was updated, and the same cameras couldn't reliably operate their PTZ absolute position API (an advanced feature most people would never touch) until I updated them again about a year or two later. More recently, my 4K resolution bullet had some serious video encoding quality issues for 3 out of the 4 firmware versions I tried, and on the latest firmware that provides best video quality, I can't take advantage of the full field of view (4096x2160 doesn't work, 3840x2160 does). Lastly, all 3 of my Dahua 4MP cams (older "Themis" models) got a very slight resolution and field of view upgrade via newer firmware.

The old advice still stands though; don't upgrade firmware unless it is likely to fix something that is broken, or unless it adds a new feature you want.

 

[nayr]

There's also a risk of loosing features; I updated my Dahua NVR and lost IVS features and had to downgrade.. which I could do because I made a backup of the firmware it came with manually.

Though such results are pretty rare from what Ive seen; Compared to Hikvision which has a history of removing or nerfing features frequently in 'newer' firmware releases.

 

[bp2008]

Impressive, making a backup of firmware already on the camera device. I wouldn't know where to begin.

 

[nayr]

telnet in, mount nfs share then dump the mounts to the nfs share.. to restore just do it in reverse but put a statically compiled arm flashcp binary on your NFS share and use that to write the images back to the /dev/mtd (flash memory)

its pretty easy if your a linux guru, and opens the ability to modify things like translation files using the same method.

 

[Jmtyra]

EDIT: Adding quote for relevance.

You cannot rely on the manufacturer to keep your device secure

Couldn't agree with you more; relying on a manufacturer alone to keep a device secure isn't wise. That's why I'm isolating my camera network traffic from my other networks.
That said, some IoT manufactures do release firmware with security fixes included, so it's nice to have the option should an update become available.

Now if only I could get my hands on some of these cameras I'd be a happy camper!!

IoT devices should not be directly exposed to the internet; if you dont expose them to the internet then security exploits are much less of a threat, suggest you read my VPN Primer for Noobs

Also agreed. All of my IoT devices are currently on an isolated network for this very reason, with very restricted access as to what they can "talk" to, and they aren't allowed to talk to each other. Can't be too safe!

 

[nayr]

its not unreasonable at all, mine is configured the same way..

It would not surprise me at all if some of the next gen consumer routers start coming with an extra IoT interface, built in VPN/NTP Server, and more secure defaults out of the box.. would make segregating networks much easier, the problem has always been performance of GigE subnet routing.. but with GigE residential internet and Wifi now possible they will need to accommodate such performance regardless..

IoT security has been a huge debacle; most of this stuff dont have to be hard.. it just has to be supported on equipment that dont cost a fortune and require a networking certification to configure correctly.. It can be made mostly plug-n-play if enough effort is actually put into a security up design.. IT does it in enterprise with great levels of automation, just has not filtered to consumer levels quick enough to plug this IoT plague.

 

[bp2008]

My first IPC-HDW5231R-Z arrived today and I swapped it in for an older camera. Here is its view, fully zoomed in.



Here is fully zoomed out, pointed just a little differently:



And finally, this large image has all my cameras, labeled with brand, model, lens, and resolution. The new starlight camera is in the 2nd row, 2nd from the right.



I will post night versions when it gets dark here.

 

[nayr]

sweet, looks like you have a 2MP, a 4MP and an 8MP that it'll be easy to compare it with..