Dahua Starlight Varifocal Turret (IPC-HDW5231R-Z)

Why pay double when you can warranty yourself? There is no us equivalent to this varifocal turret..only a fixed turret or varifocal dome or bullets...

@fenderman Can you walk me through the following? Just never have bought a device like this so have some concerns.
  • Where I get new firmware from
  • What happens if I brick the device unrecoverably? (not sure if that's an issue with these)
  • Some part of the hardware breaks (lens won't focus, overheating and shuts off, won't power up, etc.
 
@fenderman Can you walk me through the following? Just never have bought a device like this so have some concerns.
  • Where I get new firmware from,
  • What happens if I brick the device unrecoverably?
  • Some part of the hardware breaks (lens won't focus, overheating and shuts off, won't power up, etc.
  • Where I get new firmware from, normally dahua website has the firmware for upgrading, but i normally update the latest new one here.
  • What happens if I brick the device unrecoverably? (not sure if that's an issue with these) Within warranty can send China to fix up. Normally just cost 20-30usd for the shipping.
  • Some part of the hardware breaks (lens won't focus, overheating and shuts off, won't power up, etc. 0.2-0.5% failed rate from us, but normally we can handle well, dahua we sold all good quality seldom have problem, because we fully tested before shipping.
I help @fenderman reply you questions.
 
  • Where I get new firmware from, normally dahua website has the firmware for upgrading, but i normally update the latest new one here.
  • What happens if I brick the device unrecoverably? (not sure if that's an issue with these) Within warranty can send China to fix up. Normally just cost 20-30usd for the shipping.
  • Some part of the hardware breaks (lens won't focus, overheating and shuts off, won't power up, etc. 0.2-0.5% failed rate from us, but normally we can handle well, dahua we sold all good quality seldom have problem, because we fully tested before shipping.
I help @fenderman reply you questions.
How long is warranty, @EMPIRETECANDY ?
 
@EMPIRETECANDY has proven most reliable and sorted out any issue forum members have had when faults occur but this has been very low. I for one have never had any issues with him or any camera supplied.
Like @fenderman said you will pay double for the same product in US / UK so the math makes sense to purchase two for the same price and have a spare! if needed, But the failure rates are very low with Dahua products.
I'm sure if you googled enough you may be able to find the exact % of failures somewhere but I imagine it to be lower than most other brands.
 
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forget about the warranty, when you buy from china assume no warranty...the US price is almost double, necessitating a 50 percent failure rate...this is easy math.
this is the best for explaining,LOL.
 
I don't see where it says if it is PAL or NTSC.
For a camera with only digital video, it doesn't make much of a difference. You can change between PAL and NTSC at your convenience, you just upload a different firmware. I think Andy said that later this year they'd release a new firmware that lets you change between PAL/NTSC simply by selecting an option, ... so no need to upload firmwares then to change between them.
 
@EMPIRETECANDY has proven most reliable and sorted out any issue forum members have had when faults occur but this has been very low. I for one have never had any issues with him or any camera supplied.
Like @fenderman said you will pay double for the same product in US / UK so the math makes sense to purchase two for the same price and have a spare! if needed, But the failure rates are very low with Dahua products.
I'm sure if you googled enough you may be able to find the exact % of failures somewhere but I imagine it to be lower than most other brands.

i recently bought from andy and also on aliexpress from dragoneye security (mentioned many pages earlier from a buyer in australia). the dahua starlite turret from dragoneye (ali express) went kaput after 35 days. the contact at dragoneye (susan su) had always been a bit slow to reply about shipping, etc, but this time they really disappeared when i asked about help / warranty service. so while sales of these "international version" cameras are akin to rolling the dice, i really do NOT recommend dragoneye. my experience with andy has been much better.

as a quick note on getting whole with the camera that broke, i did buy the camera with my amex--and, after a lot of legwork, it was covered under accidental damage. if you have a fancier card (like a platinum) they even have return protection. but in the search to get a legitimate repair estimate as part of my amex assurance submission, one of the places i talked with was dahua N. America and dahua asia. and when they ran the serial numbers for my various cameras, they told me these were not in their database and not able to be serviced by them (as was probably mentioned in the prior 194 pages of this thread). if it had been sold by an authorized dahua dealer, it would have been covered by a 3 year warranty (and probably cost twice as much).

the camera i got from andy did seem to take longer to get dropped off to send--but the two i got from him still both work, and he continues to reply to my questions via email. sometimes i do ask some politely annoying questions about return policy, warranty, etc--but he does reply usually with a day or two. and he assured me if i had any problems to just deal directly with him for up to two years. his reputation on ipcamtalk is something he protects--so that has been comforting. if you have to roll the dice, the odds are way better with andy for sure.

i'm sure much of this is covered in this thread as well as in others, but just wanted to share my experience and thank the many generous and truly people who share their ipcam knowledge with we newbies.
 
i recently bought from andy and also on aliexpress from dragoneye security (mentioned many pages earlier from a buyer in australia). the dahua starlite turret from dragoneye (ali express) went kaput after 35 days. the contact at dragoneye (susan su) had always been a bit slow to reply about shipping, etc, but this time they really disappeared when i asked about help / warranty service. so while sales of these "international version" cameras are akin to rolling the dice, i really do NOT recommend dragoneye. my experience with andy has been much better.

as a quick note on getting whole with the camera that broke, i did buy the camera with my amex--and, after a lot of legwork, it was covered under accidental damage. if you have a fancier card (like a platinum) they even have return protection. but in the search to get a legitimate repair estimate as part of my amex assurance submission, one of the places i talked with was dahua N. America and dahua asia. and when they ran the serial numbers for my various cameras, they told me these were not in their database and not able to be serviced by them (as was probably mentioned in the prior 194 pages of this thread). if it had been sold by an authorized dahua dealer, it would have been covered by a 3 year warranty (and probably cost twice as much).

the camera i got from andy did seem to take longer to get dropped off to send--but the two i got from him still both work, and he continues to reply to my questions via email. sometimes i do ask some politely annoying questions about return policy, warranty, etc--but he does reply usually with a day or two. and he assured me if i had any problems to just deal directly with him for up to two years. his reputation on ipcamtalk is something he protects--so that has been comforting. if you have to roll the dice, the odds are way better with andy for sure.

i'm sure much of this is covered in this thread as well as in others, but just wanted to share my experience and thank the many generous and truly people who share their ipcam knowledge with we newbies.
Hey buddy, no problem, We can fix up that cam for you if you can send me the ball part, i have a fixing guy at dahua who help us fix up. As told many sellers just sell cams, after protection time, they will never come to you anymore, what they need just sales and put money in pocket and gone~I try to not been like such Chinese business way, our country has a big problem for honest and professional. Though much better than before, but still have a long way to go. The local guy will not help you to do any warranty, they only tell you bought a fake dahua! Normally we ship all defective items to HK and pick up there and bring back to China. Yesterday i went to hk to bring some returns for fixing up.
 
the contact at dragoneye (susan su) had always been a bit slow to reply about shipping, etc, but this time they really disappeared when i asked about help / warranty service.

The camera I mentioned a few posts ago was also from dragoneye (I have 3 and 1 of them has failed after about 6 months including an extremely cold Calgary winter).

susan has been reasonably punctual in replying to me about the warranty (says there are 2 years of warranty on these) and I have sent mine back in. I couldnt justify spending half the price of a new camera on shipping it back with a tracking number (Canada Post is expensive but also the cheapest of the brand name carriers out there) so I sent it air mail with no tracking.

Guess now its a waiting game to find out if the package makes it through. As has been mentioned countless times, these are the risks we take to get half-price cameras. As long as they fail less than half the time, we come out ahead. Its waiting for the mail that sucks the worst.
 
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Is anyone else using 128GB microSD cards in these?

A while back I had issues after upgrading the firmware when using a Toshiba Exceria M302 microSD which I eventually solved as what seemed to be a firmware glitch at the time with the November firmware.

I'd bought a new 5231-ZE from Andy recently and bought another three of the cards - one which I put into the ZE which worked perfectly fresh from the packet, one for an SD59225-HNI which again worked fineand then another to put in the other 5231-R I bought from Andy about 18 months ago.

This time it was just constantly hot plugging the card from what I could see in the syslog output and the card wouldn't show up in the GUI - just constant hotplug events of the card being added and then instantly removed.

I tried the September 17, November 17 and latest March 18 and same problem on all - no card seen and just constant hot plug events shown in syslog with the card added & then removed.

Same problem after resetting to defaults.

The card was seen fine in Windows as exFAT but I tried formatting as FAT32 as sometimes that helps things along with larger cards but again - same problem.

At this point I'd bought some Samsung Evo Plus 128GB cards for a Raspberry Pi project so figured I'd try one and what do you know - one hotplug add event and the card came straight up and was usable.

I've got the Toshiba card currently running through a full h2testw pass and so far it's fine, but figured I'd report the feedback here in case anyone else gets stuck with a new microSD card as this one camera just wouldn't play ball.
 
Is anyone else using 128GB microSD cards in these?

A while back I had issues after upgrading the firmware when using a Toshiba Exceria M302 microSD which I eventually solved as what seemed to be a firmware glitch at the time with the November firmware.

I'd bought a new 5231-ZE from Andy recently and bought another three of the cards - one which I put into the ZE which worked perfectly fresh from the packet, one for an SD59225-HNI which again worked fineand then another to put in the other 5231-R I bought from Andy about 18 months ago.

This time it was just constantly hot plugging the card from what I could see in the syslog output and the card wouldn't show up in the GUI - just constant hotplug events of the card being added and then instantly removed.

I tried the September 17, November 17 and latest March 18 and same problem on all - no card seen and just constant hot plug events shown in syslog with the card added & then removed.

Same problem after resetting to defaults.

The card was seen fine in Windows as exFAT but I tried formatting as FAT32 as sometimes that helps things along with larger cards but again - same problem.

At this point I'd bought some Samsung Evo Plus 128GB cards for a Raspberry Pi project so figured I'd try one and what do you know - one hotplug add event and the card came straight up and was usable.

I've got the Toshiba card currently running through a full h2testw pass and so far it's fine, but figured I'd report the feedback here in case anyone else gets stuck with a new microSD card as this one camera just wouldn't play ball.

I only use the Samsung evo plus 128gb microSDXC class10 u3 4k cards. Price in Netherlands paid 40euro.
No problems with the a46, k35a, 5831r-ze.
 
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hi, after a few moths without problems 2 of my 7 5231-E are loosing the settings after each reboot. reset settings to default did't helped, any ideas? Also the time on this cams is minus 1h after each reboot. all the cams are running with the same firmware.
 
hi, after a few moths without problems 2 of my 6 5231-E have are loosing the settings after each reboot. reset settings to default did't helped, any ideas?

Are they blocked in your router from reaching the internet?
Do you have ports forwarded in your router for remote access?
Do you have UPNP turned OFF in the cams and in your router?
 
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