HDW4431C-A : Doorway Camera?

[FrankOceanXray]

I'm not recording yet. I'll try and take a snapshot from tinycam if any visitors sneak up to the door. The PPF is in excess of 120 at the walkway. I think there will be no problems with recognition.

 

[sumguy]

I may be wrong about this, but can the HDW4431C be found on Dahua's website? Is the HDW4431C supposed to be made/sold to the China market only? I only see it being sold on ebay from vendors in China and Hong Kong (not that I've got a problem with that, I've just bought 3 of them and they were delivered within a week without the usual insane shipping costs associated with buying stuff from US vendors on ebay (I'm in Canada). On the other hand, all Dahua DVR's seem to be available from both China and US vendors.

 

[FrankOceanXray]

The 4431s come in a Dahua box with only Chinese text inside and out. It loads up with English settings, however. It's all good.

 

[sumguy]

Of the three 4431C-A cameras that I ordered and received last week, they came with firmware dated march 13/2016 and July 24/2016.

The july firmware has the "smart encode" option (yes/no), the march firmware does not. I believe I'm seeing substantially lower bitrate (1/3 to 1/4) with smart encode turned on with no reduction in image quality compared otherwise same video settings on the camera with the March firmware (that does not have smart encode option).

My question is - if I can find it, can I copy the july firmware to the cameras that have the march firmware? (these are exactly the same cameras otherwise).

One other observation - the march firmware has mjpg (motion-jpeg) video compression option, but the newer july firmware does not.

And one other side question - is h265 better than h264?

Oh, and one other comment - even though I have the camera menu language set as English, I still see a few places where the buttons or controls are labelled with chinese characters.

 

[FrankOceanXray]

That would be my concern, language. The way you describe yours makes me think there is a difference between our units.

I don't think you'd brick it...seems there is support to return them to original. Problem is, will original be in Chinese?

I don't think mine was sold as "do not upgrade".

There is a spreadsheet on the Dahua site with info on firmware and upgrades. I recently saw a link to it on the forum.

 

[cor35vet]

If you need the latest firmware for this camera, you can find it here: https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/13591-Dahua-Firmware-Mod-Kit-Modded-Dahua-Firmware
It has the new H265 codec and "Smart Codec" functionality, however NEVER TRY TO USE BOTH (H265 & Smart Codec), there is a bug in their software that will crash the camera every time it starts (bootloop)

H265 is better than H264 in terms of compression, however it takes more processing power and not every media player/NVR supports it (or not every PC has enough juice to play back H265 @ 4MP).

The camera has inbuilt checks that will stop you from flashing the wrong firmware, however you will most likely not be able to flash the official english firmware to it.

 

[sumguy]

> If you need the latest firmware for this camera

Yea, I'm looking at all possible sources / places. To re-cap, I have three new 4431C-A cameras, two of them have the same firmware (Software Version 2.420.0000.17.R, build : 2016-03-13) and one has (Software Version 2.420.0000.21.R, Build Date: 2016-07-24). I want to find what-ever firmware file that corresponds to the July build-date and use it to update the two cameras with the march firmware.

> however you will most likely not be able to flash the official english firmware to it.

Whether or not my one camera with the July firmware is official-english or not, I don't know. But what-ever (and where-ever) that particular july firmware is, I want to find it and use it to update the other 2 cameras.

The 4431C-A doesn't appear anywhere on any Dahua website (not even dahuawiki). The "C" must mean China. For what it's worth, my guess is that the 4431C-A is more or less exactly the same as the HDW44A1EN.

> It has the new H265 codec and "Smart Codec" functionality

All 3 of my cameras have H265 as a video option (that means H265 is an option in both the March and July firmware) but only the July firmware has the "Smart Encode" option - which I assume you are talking about when you say "Smart Codec" ?

And here's another interesting bit of info: I took apart and looked inside one of my 4431C cameras (I can post some pictures if you want to see it). It has pad-areas for a 4-pin and 2-pin connector (any ideas what they're for?) and it has the pad contacts for a micro-SD card socket. Unless someone has already tried this (and knows it won't work) I'm going to solder a card socket to the camera and see if it will recognize an SD card. I see that other related 4xxx model cameras can recognize up to 128 gb micro-SD card.

 

[cor35vet]

The 4-pin pad on the outside is for serial uart, outmost pin is gnd then rx/tx and vcc.
I've seen references in the startup scripts to configure the SD card slot, not sure if any additional components are needed for it to work.
The back of the PCB has unpopulated pads, I am guessing for the alarm I/O.

The C is the case, check https://dahuawiki.com/Template:NameConvention

And no, the HDW4431C-A and HDW44A1EN have different software (Eos and Themis)!
So they probably also have different hardware, the flash size is identical but the partition layout is different, also different u-boot setup, didn't dig too deep.

 

[sumguy]

There is this: DH-IPC-HDW4436C-A, no idea how it's different vs 4431.

http://www.chinaglobalmall.com/products/36459913918
http://www.offerany.com/p-534045140141.html

These apparently exist:

DH-IPC-HFW4431B-AS
DH-IPC-HFW4431D-AS
DH-IPC-HDW4431E-AS

I saw those in a Dahua catalog - I think one of those is the same eyeball configuration as the 4431C-A. The -AS indicates SD-card. I can find no explanation for what style case the "C" is supposed to indicate.