Dahua Starlight Varifocal Turret (IPC-HDW5231R-Z)

[hmjgriffon]

Andy did far more work on his first day back from the Holiday break than I intend to accomplish today, remember there is a language barrier and geographically he is practically on the other side of the world.

Think we blew out his stocks as his store shows 0 pieces available, and his parent store is showing only 1.. If I translated his Chenglish correctly then the next big shipment in stock is not due from Dahua until right before the Chinese new year, and not with enough time to process back orders before then so were back in the same boat as November, waiting for the OEM to get another large quantity onto the markets.

These might be hard to get your hands on until February I suspect, just be glad you got your orders in early.. Hopefully after the Chinese new years shutdown the limited availability of this camera will start to relieve, I kinda expect/hope these issues to be behind us come spring.. The Mini Black Face PTZ was hard to get like these when it was announced in summer of 2015, was not until spring of 2016 that they became widely available.

Meanwhile I ordered a IPC-HFW8232E-Z, 1/1.9" Starlight Varifocal Bullet from @EMPIRETECANDY and will soon do a head to head shootout with the Varifocal Turret with the big sensor starlights.. 0.002Lux@F1.53, and 0.0001Lux in B&W... This is not a budget friendly camera, but it'll be interesting to see how these two stack up against eachother.. UltraSmart 1/1.9" vs EcoSavy 3.0 1/2.8"

$276, meh, wasn't there a way I can connect motion sensors to a device that connects to my computer too trigger cameras that way? Also can you choose which cameras it triggers?

 

[looney2ns]

Excellent, thanks @nayr you are always making excellent choices. I was just wondering the other day how these two would compare and if the price difference would be worth it or not.

I know I sound like a broken record but thanks again for doing endless research, comparisons, and above all else posts on these boards about your findings and ideas. You are the main reason I keep coming back to these boards, your knowledge, willingness to learn and try new things, your endless patience answering the same questions again and again, to help and educate new and existing users alike, you are truly such a generous person with your time and knowledge. Thank you @nayr from the bottom of my heart, I really appreciate everything you do on these boards and I am sure countless others do as well. I am sure many people will say I am being overly flattering or sucking up to @nayr and perhaps I am, but I challenge them to find another user on any other forum of any topic who can rival him. So from all of us on ipcamtalk, thank you so much @nayr for doing such good work.

I agree x10.

 

[Newbie123]

Hi,

does anybody know how to power the cam without PoE? On the cam the power plug only marked with 12 Volt but no polarity...

Thx

 

[Lucasw]

Positive on the pin, I believe. I happened to have a DC adapter laying around that put out enough amperage at 12v to run the cam

 

[hmjgriffon]

Hi,

does anybody know how to power the cam without PoE? On the cam the power plug only marked with 12 Volt but no polarity...

Thx

It looks like the bullet has a 1/1.9" sensor while the turret has a 1/2.8", so the turret has a bigger sensor but the turret has .006 lux and the bullet has .002, so it should do a little better in the dark but the picture may not look quite as good? Not even sure if the difference in those numbers will be visually noticible but I guess the shootout will show that.

 

[nayr]

It looks like the bullet has a 1/1.9" sensor while the turret has a 1/2.8", so the turret has a bigger sensor but the turret has .006 lux and the bullet has .002, so it should do a little better in the dark but the picture may not look quite as good? Not even sure if the difference in those numbers will be visually noticible but I guess the shootout will show that.

I think you'll be quite surprised, the difference between the non-Starlight and starlight 2MP Varifocal Turret was 0.004lux, and thats the same difference between the 1/1.9" and 1/2.8" starlight sensors.. and the B&W specs you find on the gun-bullet models show B&W of the 1/2.8 Starlight at 0.001Lux and 0.0001Lux on the 1/1.9".. thats an order of magnitude bro.

This wont be THE camera for everyone in every location; but for those looking for the best in low light capabilities, damned the cost.. I dont think your going to beat this for less than a grand.. Its going to be my anti-prowler camera and replace the HFW4431M-AS-I2 12mm that I was very disappointed with.. If it works as well as I think it will I'll be in full color at a very respectable shutter speed and still kick the shit out of the 4MP its replacing while giving the Exmor-R Turret a good run for its money.

It also has more features than the Eco3.0 line, one I am interested in is SSA, this seems like its auto-WDR and that could be really nice.. it also does a 1080p substream, so if I wanted to display a high framerate and record a low framerate I could.. or for license plates I could have a 1080p MJPEG stream going to OpenALPR and a 1080p h264/h265 stream being recorded.

 

[tigerwillow1]

@EMPIRETECANDY check your pm/conversations please.

Sounds like a few of us are waiting for a pm response from last few days. If anybody hears back, could you post that so I and others can know if our message got lost? I assume Andy is just heavily backlogged right now.

 

[Squeeker]

Sounds like a few of us are waiting for a pm response from last few days. If anybody hears back, could you post that so I and others can know if our message got lost? I assume Andy is just heavily backlogged right now.

Same here. After all the praising of the Dahua Starlight, I opened a conversation too.
Haven't heard back yet, but as has been mentioned it sounds like the forum is keeping him pretty busy. Good for him, patience for us.....

 

[hmjgriffon]

I think you'll be quite surprised, the difference between the non-Starlight and starlight 2MP Varifocal Turret was 0.004lux, and thats the same difference between the 1/1.9" and 1/2.8" starlight sensors.. and the B&W specs you find on the gun-bullet models show B&W of the 1/2.8 Starlight at 0.001Lux and 0.0001Lux on the 1/1.9".. thats an order of magnitude bro.

This wont be THE camera for everyone in every location; but for those looking for the best in low light capabilities, damned the cost.. I dont think your going to beat this for less than a grand.. Its going to be my anti-prowler camera and replace the HFW4431M-AS-I2 12mm that I was very disappointed with.. If it works as well as I think it will I'll be in full color at a very respectable shutter speed and still kick the shit out of the 4MP its replacing while giving the Exmor-R Turret a good run for its money.

It also has more features than the Eco3.0 line, one I am interested in is SSA, this seems like its auto-WDR and that could be really nice.. it also does a 1080p substream, so if I wanted to display a high framerate and record a low framerate I could.. or for license plates I could have a 1080p MJPEG stream going to OpenALPR and a 1080p h264/h265 stream being recorded.

Well damnitt, now I want this, will there be an update to the turret lol. I agree auto WDR would be killer, I guess I will wait for your review, doesn't hurt anything that I bought one of the turrets

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

[hmjgriffon]

Same here. After all the praising of the Dahua Starlight, I opened a conversation too.
Haven't heard back yet, but as has been mentioned it sounds like the forum is keeping him pretty busy. Good for him, patience for us.....

I don't feel bad, he's making money hand over fist lok

 

[wantafastz28]

Sounds like a few of us are waiting for a pm response from last few days. If anybody hears back, could you post that so I and others can know if our message got lost? I assume Andy is just heavily backlogged right now.

Just be patient, he's awesome at customer support and taking care of his customers... if he isn't answering, he is busy as shit or has something going on.

 

[wantafastz28]

I don't feel bad, he's making money hand over fist lok

Go find another supplier that can do what he does... goodluck.

 

[mmdb]

Just be patient, he's awesome at customer support and taking care of his customers... if he isn't answering, he is busy as shit or has something going on.

yes im thinking the same ..im also waithing
@nayr you are killing me with this new
HFW8232E-Z ..how do you compare it to starlight 5231?

 

[nayr]

yes im thinking the same ..im also waithing
@nayr you are killing me with this new
HFW8232E-Z ..how do you compare it to starlight 5231?

just wait some more and you'll see.. emailed my buddy at print shop and asked him for some focus/quality targets and I have multiple ethernet ports ready for head to head testing of up to 4 cameras at same time. I'll throw everything I have against it.

I just hope the ground is not all snow covered; that will skew the light in my back yard.

 

[hmjgriffon]

Go find another supplier that can do what he does... goodluck.

Okay???

 

[hmjgriffon]

just wait some more and you'll see.. emailed my buddy at print shop and asked him for some focus/quality targets and I have multiple ethernet ports ready for head to head testing of up to 4 cameras at same time. I'll throw everything I have against it.

I just hope the ground is not all snow covered; that will skew the light in my back yard.

Do to happen to have any high quality files off those targets? My wife works for a company that can print them high def.

 

[nayr]

no, I left that in the hands of my friend as his print shop probably already has better calibration files on hand than I'll find online.. Bastard has a spectrum calibrator sitting on his work desk heh.. and no I cant use it, its tied to his work PC , one day I might drag all my displays to his office lol

Naturally he's a photo geek much like my self; so I guess we'll see what I get.. beggars cant be choosers lol

 

[hmjgriffon]

no, I left that in the hands of my friend as his print shop probably already has better calibration files on hand than I'll find online.. Bastard has a spectrum calibrator sitting on his work desk heh.. and no I cant use it, its tied to his work PC , one day I might drag all my displays to his office lol

Naturally he's a photo geek much like my self; so I guess we'll see what I get.. beggars cant be choosers lol

Perhaps you can get him to give you one or two of the files lol.

 

[hmjgriffon]

just wait some more and you'll see.. emailed my buddy at print shop and asked him for some focus/quality targets and I have multiple ethernet ports ready for head to head testing of up to 4 cameras at same time. I'll throw everything I have against it.

I just hope the ground is not all snow covered; that will skew the light in my back yard.

Yep, this looks awesome:

• For backlight scene, SSA can automatically lower the brightness of high brightness area and increase the brightness of low brightness area according to the environmental brightness, and try to make it clear to see what is in the picture.

 

[TechBill]

Both of my 5231 arrived today, Thank you Andy for speedy shipping!

I hooked one up and my network found it quickly. Then next thing I did was to logged in and changed the password. Then I set the network to DHCP since I will assign ip to it via router. I haven't play with it much but it looking very good!

Right now it sitting on my desk and powered by an Ethernet PoE injector.

I may get a PoE switch something like this for it Amazon.com: BV-TECH 8 Port 120W 10/100Mbps Power over Ethernet Switch - Designed for IP Camera Use(Gray): Computers & Accessories

Switch is fanless and the quality may not be the top of the line. Since my NVR does not have a PoE ports built in so I will use this to tie all camera system together to the NVR and use uplink to tie it to my network. I didn't want a NVR with built in PoE anyway and this switch is probably just as good as the one built in. This make it easier for me to hide the NVR in some storage away from the PoE switch when there no heat issue to worry about.

No point taking screenshot and post it here since there're plenty of screenshots in this thread on this camera

Bill