1. Ability to manually slow the shutter speed slower than 1/25.....Not exactly sure if this is a firmware limitation alone or if it's a hardware limitation too. Not so much a security camera necessity, but long exposure is required if you're trying to do color night nature photography.
2. Add a Semi-auto shutter speed mode, allowing the shutter speed to adjust automatically (as needed based on changes in lighting), but within a certain range that you set yourself (for example, I may want it to auto adjust the shutter speed, but not let it go slower than 1/100....Currently it's either completely manual where it's the same hard setting regardless of lighting or completely automated in which you have no control over the max/min limits.
3. Enable Telnet
4. Adjust the pan/tilt controls to match the mirror mode setting. For example, if the camera is mounted upside down, you can use mirror mode to flip the image around. However, if you click the "pan right" button, it's going to pan left. The coding (attached below) is pretty basic in that clicking the "right" button activates the 'move right' script. Simply changing this to the 'move left' script allows the button to function properly in mirror mode, but there's no way (that I can figure out, at least) to save the changes permanently....Seems like it would be pretty simple for them to include a conditional statement in the code, as in "if mirror=off: move right; if mirror=on, move left"....
5. Same problem as number 4 exists in the 3D mode. If in mirror mode and you click on the right side of the screen, the camera pans left toward whatever is on the left side of the screen.
6. Allow the "zoom box" that you draw in 3D mode to adjust the pan/tilt to center on the box as well. For example, if there's a red car in the center of the image and a blue car on the left side of the screen. I draw a zoom box over the blue car on the left side and it zooms into the red car in the center. Ideally, drawing a zoom box over the blue car on the left side of the screen should instruct the camera to zoom in to that specific location and make the camera center the pan/tilt to that spot while zooming in.
7. More White Balance algorithms. The auto setting, while decent, seems to highlight brown shades a little too heavily in outdoor lighting. Trees that are gray/slight beige will often show up as a dark brown or burnt orange. Hikvision has multiple algorithms that you can set to depending on the type of lighting (natural light, fluorescent, etc.)...The manual setting, while nice to have for indoor use or a temporary outdoor adjustment, will not take the place of a properly-formulated auto-adjust for extended use outdoors due to changes in light throughout the day.
8. (hardware related, not firmware)...Full zoom-out isn't enough. The 51mm max zoom-in is enough for most home use, but the 5.1mm minimum zoom-out is a bit too limited, in my opinion. It would be nice to have the wide zoom at around 3mm or so for more areal coverage. In a way, it sort of defeats the most ideal purpose of a motorized zoom lens; That is to start with a large areal view with the ability to zoom in close on particular locations when needed. At a 5.1mm starting point, you're not really getting a good "overview" to spot things that need zooming into. An approximate 3mm to 50mm range would be much better suited, in my opinion.
Overall, the mini PTZ is a really good camera for security purposes, but some small improvements could be made (at little to no additional cost) that could vastly improve it and allow it to be used in other industries outside of security (nature cams, dash cams, etc...)
