Dahua Starlight Varifocal Turret (IPC-HDW5231R-Z)

i got it off ebay, the guy had a bunch of em and mis-listed the price.. he honored my $100 purchase but doubled the price for the other dozen he had to offload.

just gotta be on the eye for deals.. paid $150 for my whole house amp and used they typically sell for $400-500 still


ah yes, the bay, haha.
 
@nayr two quick questions, did the turret you get have the IVS features? On the website it says optional, also I thought I saw in one picture you had a turret on the side of the house exposed, do you run into any issues with them getting rained on? I know they are ip67 but what about water on the actual front of the camera, does it mess up visability or does the water just kinda run off. I have a few locations where I may need to put them where they are exposed.
 
yes it has IVS, screenshots of it are in first post.. they will be just fine getting rained on, in an actual rain visibility can be poor as it reflects light back; the electronics inside are safe.. The glass lens cover may need cleaned of water spots from time to time, that depends.. sometimes it seems like its raining utah on us with as muddy as it gets and my cameras will start refracting light back weirdly until the glass is cleaned.
 
  • Like
Reactions: hmjgriffon
I received mine today from Andy, just 2 for a quick house survey. Super simple to setup, tons of settings I still need to mess around with. Will do some snapshots at proposed installation spots, and if everything works well, on to buying a bunch more gear. :) So far very happy with this.
 
  • Like
Reactions: nayr and hmjgriffon
yes it has IVS, screenshots of it are in first post.. they will be just fine getting rained on, in an actual rain visibility can be poor as it reflects light back; the electronics inside are safe.. The glass lens cover may need cleaned of water spots from time to time, that depends.. sometimes it seems like its raining utah on us with as muddy as it gets and my cameras will start refracting light back weirdly until the glass is cleaned.

Awesome, I think my first one is going out tomorrow I hope so I'll be able to find out for myself soon. :D
 
I received mine today from Andy, just 2 for a quick house survey. Super simple to setup, tons of settings I still need to mess around with. Will do some snapshots at proposed installation spots, and if everything works well, on to buying a bunch more gear. :) So far very happy with this.

I kinda wanted the bullet version to hook PIR to, but I think I'm going to try and perfect the motion detection in BI so I can have much nicer looking turrets that are easy to mount more than one next to if needed etc. etc. How long did it take to get yours from the time you ordered?
 
I kinda wanted the bullet version to hook PIR to, but I think I'm going to try and perfect the motion detection in BI so I can have much nicer looking turrets that are easy to mount more than one next to if needed etc. etc. How long did it take to get yours from the time you ordered?


A little over a month, but I told Andy not to rush my order, I didn't want to rush him since he is so accommodating. I'm still waiting on other equipment before I can get wild with ordering more and installing. I think earlier today he said he has stock now. Shipping only took 4 days.
 
  • Like
Reactions: hmjgriffon
A little over a month, but I told Andy not to rush my order, I didn't want to rush him since he is so accommodating. I'm still waiting on other equipment before I can get wild with ordering more and installing. I think earlier today he said he has stock now. Shipping only took 4 days.


yeah I believe the one I ordered yesterday will go out tomorrow and the site says 6-13 days so hopefully less than two weeks, I really want to try it out and see if I really like it enough to buy some more.
 
  • Like
Reactions: wantafastz28
My unit finally arrived. It looks better in low light, but it's tricky to compare these cameras when the exact noise-reduction settings make such a huge difference. I thought I had a great image with everything static, Manual, 1/30 sec, Gain 0-50 and 3D NR ON. Then someone walked by, and it was scary to see just a floating torso: his legs (darker and moving faster than the upper body) had been erased by the 3D Noise Reduction (set to Grade 5 out of 100). Any lower setting looks exactly the same as "off" and I get a lot of speckly noise, more blocky details (noise hitting my 2M bitrate limit, better at 4 Mbps) and very noticeable pulsing every 2 seconds at the I-frame interval. I'm using H.264 as that's all my NVR can use.
I wish there was more fine-grained control over 3D NR between settings 4 and 5. At 4/100 it is significantly noisy and at 5/100 it becomes suddenly and totally noise-free (for a still scene), but with sometimes significant motion artifacts in darker areas.

In Setup/Conditions/Exposure with "3D NR" set ON, you can move the "Grade" control slider from 0 all the way up to 100, but for me, from 5 to 100 looks exactly the same. As far as I can tell there is no analog control here; it's simply 3D NR ON at 5 and above, and OFF below 5. Has anyone observed differently?
 
Last edited:
My unit finally arrived. It looks better in low light, but it's tricky to compare these cameras when the exact noise-reduction settings make such a huge difference. I thought I had a great image with everything static, Manual, 1/30 sec, Gain 0-50 and 3D NR ON. Then someone walked by, and it was scary to see just a floating torso: his legs (darker and moving faster than the upper body) had been erased by the 3D Noise Reduction (set to Grade 5 out of 100). Any lower setting looks exactly the same as "off" and I get a lot of speckly noise, more blocky details (noise hitting my 2M bitrate limit, better at 4 Mbps) and very noticeable pulsing every 2 seconds at the I-frame interval. I'm using H.264 as that's all my NVR can use.
I wish there was more fine-grained control over 3D NR between settings 4 and 5. At 4/100 it is significantly noisy and at 5/100 it becomes suddenly and totally noise-free (for a still scene), but with sometimes significant motion artifacts in darker areas.

In Setup/Conditions/Exposure with "3D NR" set ON, you can move the "Grade" control slider from 0 all the way up to 100, but for me, from 5 to 100 looks exactly the same. As far as I can tell there is no analog control here; it's simply 3D NR ON at 5 and above, and OFF below 5. Has anyone observed differently?
Nayr has example videos in the day and night with him walking around and everything looks fine, maybe it's your NVR or a setting? Since I don't have mine yet I'm not sure what all those settings do.
 
the built in IR on these is not very high power, im measuring only a 2.5W difference between it off and it on at full power.. if your using it at full zoom in a very low light situation you may need additional lighting; but you'd of needed that w/anything really.. just a little bit of light seems to go along way though.

here's the spread of the starlight seen from the perspective of the 3MP 4300S:
Galileo NVR-Back Patio-2016-12-28-22-14-36.jpg

The tree trunk is roughly 75ft away from the camera, its pretty wide and the zoom seems more capable than the IR when compared to say a PTZ thats blasting >10W of IR..

My dogs get pretty noisy (visually, sometimes audibly heh) when way out by play equipment, but im in wide angle mode and thats kinda expected @ 85ft away.. anything that comes within the optical performance looks pretty damn good.. I had never put anything over here because even the black face PTZ struggles w/out maximum IR when trying to do a wide view of the back yard, then its just a hotspot in the middle.

Im fond of supplemental IR lighting; even with Starlights I'd highly suggest it wherever possible.. more light === more detail and this is no exception.
 
Last edited:
the built in IR on these is not very high power, im measuring only a 2.5W difference between it off and it on at full power.. if your using it at full zoom in a very low light situation you may need additional lighting; but you'd of needed that w/anything really.. just a little bit of light seems to go along way though.

here's the spread of the starlight seen from the perspective of the 3MP 4300S:
View attachment 13450

its pretty wide and the zoom seems more capable than the IR when compared to say a PTZ thats blasting >10W of IR.
Interesting, where does one get those external IR illuminators if they need one?
 
This one is the one used in the Hi-Lux portion of the 2MP vs 4MP Shootout in the first post: IR Cannon w/Adjustable Focus

its a 10W Laser heh heh, even with lots of light the Starlight Spanked the Higher Megapixel.
 
I may be asking too much of it. I've got the internal IR turned off to avoid bugs etc. As you see from the shadows I have some IR spotlights mounted on the garage where the camera is looking, Nearly but not quite fully zoomed in, 1/30 sec, Manual, Gain 0-20, 3D NR Off. H.264 CBR 10 FPS, 4096 kbps, Iframe 20.

Dahua2.jpg
 
whats it like with the IR on?
 
  • Like
Reactions: hmjgriffon
In this position, the internal IR lights up the lawn in the foreground, and the taillights on parked cars even across the street, but relatively little effect on skin or clothing in the position where I'm standing, which is about 50 feet away from the camera. That is what I'd expect, since they aren't super-focused like the IR cannon. With NR active I can do better boosting the gain for still scenes, but then I'm just fooling myself since detail fades away on anything moving.
 
I may be asking too much of it. I've got the internal IR turned off to avoid bugs etc. As you see from the shadows I have some IR spotlights mounted on the garage where the camera is looking, Nearly but not quite fully zoomed in, 1/30 sec, Manual, Gain 0-20, 3D NR Off. H.264 CBR 10 FPS, 4096 kbps, Iframe 20.

View attachment 13451
From what I understand turrets don't really attract bugs, what does it look like with IR on?
 
then thats pretty good with just ambient light at that range, 50ft with 12mm is ~70ppf, if your at 10mm its ~60ppf and thats not enough to get facial ID.. even at full zoom this camera and most any other camera w/12mm 1080p wont be able to identify anyone beyond ~35ft.

Use the: Camera Calculator / Design Software and you want a MINIMUM 100 PPF for facial ID capabilities.. not much is really offered at greater than 12mm for surveillance as the focal points become tighter.. thats PTZ Range

What about auto exposure? seems to work well enough for me
 
  • Like
Reactions: hmjgriffon
Awesome, the white one looks like it could be powered with Poe and one of those Poe splitters?

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk
I did some tests with POE powered ir units here: Thoughts on this mains powered IR illuminator

On the back of the house there is water, and the edge of that is estimated 25-30 meters from the camera.
I tested a 90 and 30 degree angled unit and a 3.6 watt ir cannon.
It was a short test, and the quality of it is not that good, but you can get an imprssion what external ir can do.

In the front garden tests you can see the difference of ir from a hikvision turret against the 90 degree external.

I can take (IR) footage of my hikvision ptz (5220) what that ir does at 25 meters, you can count the stones in the street, as it is zoomed in on one car. (Ptz is at 8 meter high installed)
This is on google drive, hope it works for someone else to view..
ch02_20160928031500.mp4

Somewhere in the clip a person cycles from right to left. This is at 03:15 am and we live on some island where there is no reason to be there unless you live there, and this person dos not live there..
 
Last edited: