Firmware not upgradable

Basjke

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I need to replace my el cheapo ip cameras, which have served me well for about 5 years, and saw some recommendations about Dahua and Hikvision which I find on Ebay at prices that wont break the bank.

I'm particularly looking at the IPC-HFW4431M-AS-I2 and DH-IPC-HFW1320S-W as they are in my price range.

What I notice is that they have all the warning in the listing that the firmware is not upgradable.

Would this be a reason to avoid them at all costs or not.

The price range I'm looking at is $70 to $90, so if you should have better recommendations in that price range feel welcome to post here.

I need probably 2 wireless and 4 wired cameras, but I'm really not looking for the top of the range product, as it is more a deterrent than a real observation system, but a clear picture is of course always preferable.

Another requirement is the memory card slot which both types I posted have.

Thanks in advance.
 

tigerwillow1

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I have one HFW4431M-I2 (not -AS) and it is far superior to different manufacturer 4 MP cameras I have. The picture is significantly sharper, there are more useful configuration options, and a few other things make it just easier to deal with in general. I'm planning on adding more. The update capability is just a judgement call. The 4431M cost me half the price of the ones I don't like, but the ones I don't like are upgradeable. For me, the sharper image is more important. Bird in the hand vs. the other one that may never show up.
 

Basjke

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I have one HFW4431M-I2 (not -AS) and it is far superior to different manufacturer 4 MP cameras I have. The picture is significantly sharper, there are more useful configuration options, and a few other things make it just easier to deal with in general. I'm planning on adding more. The update capability is just a judgement call. The 4431M cost me half the price of the ones I don't like, but the ones I don't like are upgradeable. For me, the sharper image is more important. Bird in the hand vs. the other one that may never show up.
Thank you for the reply, I didn't worry too much about the picture quality, rather than the not upgradeable firmware.

It is English firmware, and the camera with memory slot and original bracket is listed on Ebay at $94 include shipping.

Is that a favorable price or should I look elsewhere?

The I2 including bracket, but no memory slot, is listed at $81 but I consider the memory slot an important option as you can let it record constantly and don't have to worry.
 

cor35vet

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Nothing else in that price range other than the chinese Dahuas and Hikvision cams.
There is no support from the sellers or Dahua regarding firmware upgrades. These are grey market cameras.
If you want official support you have to pay double or triple the chinese price (though the prices on ali etc. are already marked up heh)

sdcard slot is useless in security cameras, use a DVR or a NAS/Server with NFS that is in a secure location so thieves can't steal your recordings... (or back up the recordings to a server/cloud automatically)
 

Basjke

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Nothing else in that price range other than the chinese Dahuas and Hikvision cams.
There is no support from the sellers or Dahua regarding firmware upgrades. These are grey market cameras.
If you want official support you have to pay double or triple the chinese price (though the prices on ali etc. are already marked up heh)

sdcard slot is useless in security cameras, use a DVR or a NAS/Server with NFS that is in a secure location so thieves can't steal your recordings... (or back up the recordings to a server/cloud automatically)
Tanks for your reply, but can you elaborate why you consider the memory card slot a useless function?

I read somewhere that 32Gb sd card would record about 15 days of footage and the cameras support 128Gb. Since the cameras are mounted 3 meters high, and the card slot is not easily accessible, I don't see a burglar go search for a ladder to remove the sd cards.

Back up to a cloud server I assume will not be possible straight from the cameras without going through a NAS server first, and probably will also not be free.

So with the sd card I would save quite a bit of money as I don't need a server, but I'm open to your argumentation, as I have no experience with this.
 

cor35vet

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Any old computer can act as a NAS (I don't recommend buying these little NAS boxes anyways, overpriced for the shit HW you get) and you have all your recordings in one place.
Possibility to use RAID (which I'd definitely do). Also I had very bad experience with SD and micro SD cards dying way too fast, especially with high write workloads.

If the camera is mounted high enough then theft/vandalism shouldn't be a problem.

I guess I am pretty biased because of my negative experience with SD cards (and all of the cards I had were from SanDisk, Transcend or Samsung)
 

nayr

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memory cards are not useless; they make a good redundancy incase your NVR fails to record for some reason..

You gotta buy quality cards, not el-cheapo shit.. Ive had quality SD cards in the field for several years writing constantly w/out failure... gotta do burn tests before deploying the things I agree but its a trivial task. (hint: buy Samsung, avoid SanDisk.. and get high speed cards even though you dont need em, they have much higher grade NAND than the bottom of the barrel cards)

The vast majority of my Dahua devices are running the stock firmware they came with, upgradability is over-rated.. if it works out of hte box to your epectations, you'll likely never have a valid reason to update.

however, @cor35vet has been able to release modified firmware for these devices so they are updatable... if you use his or modify your own firmware.. otherwise they will revert to Chinese translations once you update.

I have a IPC-HFW4431M-AS-I2 @ 12mm, and while the daytime image is extremely good it did not do its job for me at night.. its getting yanked down and replaced with a Starlight Dahua after only a couple months of use.
 

Basjke

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Thanks for elaborating about your negative experience with the sd cards, and since you used the 3 major brands, that means that all cards behave the same.

Could it be that some brands of cameras may be the cause for the sd card issues, and that with other brands it is less of a problem?

Were your cards of high capacity, as I understand that a 128Gb card may be more fragile than a 32 Gb. What period of time you talking about before the cards failed?

I still have a few days before I make the purchase, so I hope some more members will join in with their experience with sd cards.
 

cor35vet

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I mostly used small sdcards with 16gb, bigger capacity ones should behave better. The big highspeed ones for cameras should probably work good enough (but they're a lot more expensive too)
 

Basjke

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Thanks for your contribution Nayr, I noticed the thread from cor35vet already and have bookmarked it, but didn't read through all the posts yet. Definitely that custom firmware is a big positive.

What was the reason that you considered the night footage not to satisfaction? Do the IR not beam near as far as it says in the spec?

Could the 12mm lens have anything to do with it? I consider to go mostly with 3.6 and 6 mm lenses, and maybe 8 at the most.

12mm is a real fish eye, is that correct? The only camera where I would consider a fish eye will have only a distance of less than 10 meters to cover.
 

cor35vet

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more mm lens = more zoom
so no, 12mm would be eagles eye :p
2.8mm and less is fisheye, 3.6mm works pretty good on the 4MP cams, 6mm on scenes which are further away.
turning off IR works amazingly well on these cams btw.
I can see the appeal of the starlight cams but they are just a lot more expensive :/
 

Basjke

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more mm lens = more zoom
so no, 12mm would be eagles eye :p
2.8mm and less is fisheye, 3.6mm works pretty good on the 4MP cams, 6mm on scenes which are further away.
turning off IR works amazingly well on these cams btw.
I can see the appeal of the starlight cams but they are just a lot more expensive :/
Thanks for clarifying about the lens spec, as I was really from the opinion that it was just the opposite, and would have ordered the wrong ones.

What do you mean with your remark about the IR? Is it that it works well automatically or is there and advantage to switching off manually?
 

nayr

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What was the reason that you considered the night footage not to satisfaction? Do the IR not beam near as far as it says in the spec?
I'm trying to identify prowlers walking down my sidewalk late at night, its about 35ft away from my house so im using 12mm optics to zoom in as much as I can on the sidewalk.. its the narrowest FOV you can get, not WIDE at all.

I have a 10W IR Cannon and visible security lighting out front helping this thing; and its just not able to run at a high enough shutter speed with low enough gain to get the identification results I had hoped for.

The Starlights cost less than 2x as much as this camera; yet the night time performance is an order of magnitude better.. plus you get varifocal optics along with Starlight capabilities so in the grand scheme of things they are quite feature rich for the $170 price tag.
 

Basjke

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I'm trying to identify prowlers walking down my sidewalk late at night, its about 35ft away from my house so im using 12mm optics to zoom in as much as I can on the sidewalk.. its the narrowest FOV you can get, not WIDE at all.

I have a 10W IR Cannon and visible security lighting out front helping this thing; and its just not able to run at a high enough shutter speed with low enough gain to get the identification results I had hoped for.

The Starlights cost less than 2x as much as this camera; yet the night time performance is an order of magnitude better.. plus you get varifocal optics along with Starlight capabilities so in the grand scheme of things they are quite feature rich for the $170 price tag.
Is Varifocal something I should seriously consider, and does Dahua has any varifocals in my price range?
 

cor35vet

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You really need to try yourself with the IR, in some cases leaving it on auto works well - in some cases turning off IR manually yields better results.
For example when it's humid or foggy outside IR will make your picture snowwhite because of all the reflections.

You can get HDW4431C-A for about $60 incl. shipping, that's a lot cheaper than $170.
 

nayr

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I paid $100 bux for my IPC-HFW4431M-AS-I2 and im not seeing the HDW4431C-A has 12mm optics.. I leave it on auto and try all sorts of things and its still crap compared to my 12mm Mini Black Face PTZ @ 2MP thats not a starlight.. Fog/Humidity? I live in desert, those conditions rarely exist.

@Basjke, Varifocal is something you should consider.. takes all the guess work out of picking the right lens/fov as you get all of them.. When someone steals something from you and you only realize after the fact you were far too wide angle to get enough pixels for ID you can zoom it in a little more instead of buying a whole new camera (this exact scenario plays out here all the time).. You can dial in the FOV to the install instead of dealing with a bunch of wasted pixels watching walls/soffits/etc.

Varifocals are typically well beyond the $100 per camera budget; regardless of starlight or not.. but you also get better optics with larger apertures which greatly increases light gathering.. Fixed Lens cameras you usually get F2.0, Varifocals you get F1.4 which is almost 2x as large of aperture to gather light with.. you also get an AutoIris and that keeps people's faces from washing out due to strong lighting.. Many benefits are gained with varifocal cameras.
 
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Basjke

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Do I need PoE to operate a motorized varifocal lens?
 

Basjke

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Hi guys, sorry for the delay.

I'm completely won for the varifocal cameras, though there are a few cameras that have to be wireless, and it seems difficult to find a wireless varifocal Dahua. At least at a reasonable price.

Is there a way to add an accessory to a IP camera that makes it wireless, or do you have any suggestions for a reasonable priced wireless varifocal camera from another brand.

I try to stay below the US$100 mark.
 
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