IPC-T5442T-ZE IPC-T5442TM-AS IPC-T5842T-ZE SMD 3.0 Smart IR Latest New Firmware From EmpireTech

I haven't found a round tuit to change back to IVS on that cameras yet. I should have time tomorrow but won't get to test it, really test it, until it stops raining here, like maybe after the weekend.

I haven't seen any stuttering on any of the 5442s I have, including the one I update the firmware on.
 
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Where do you find the soft reset for the cams after updating?
 
The soft reset is in the camera GUI, system, maintenance (I think).
 
Just wanted to share my findings since I decided I take a plunge to try the July 2021 firmware with SMD 3.0. Previously, I had the 5/25/21 firmware with SMD. I had two issues which I was hoping to see if it would be fixed by upgrading to this July 2021 firmware. First issue is the choppy/stuttering every couple of seconds when you watch the camera in live view mode, which happens whether it was in Blue Iris or using IE11 accessing the camera directly. The 2nd issue was inconsistent IVS detection at night time, which I thought I fixed it by rebooting and then disabling/re-enabling IVS again. It was working great for a few weeks with almost no false alert at all. Then earlier this week, it became inconsistent again even during daytime, which thinking back, it may self-caused because I was tweaking different video fps, codec, settings, etc...

Fast forward to today, I decided to try out the July 2021 firmware posted in this thread to see if it's "better" or not. Of course, I followed instructions advised by Wildcat_1 to reboot/factory reset/flash/reboot process to upgrade to this firmware. Applied all the settings I had before including IVS. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to fix the stuttering/choppy issue during liveview. When it comes to IVS, I did a test walk this afternoon during daylight and IVS triggered as expected in Blue Iris. Earlier when it was dark outside, I did another test walk and found out IVS DID NOT trigger as expected. It looks like similar issue I had previously.

Anyway, so I decided to test this further by walking around with a laptop watching the IVS rules in live view to confirm. At first walk, I noticed none of the lines were triggering as I've walked back and forth. It seems that the AI detection process stopped working as it did not draw a blue box around me as I was working around. My guess is that process might have crashed or something when camera went into Night profile after dark (I'm using Day/Night profile btw). I tried various things again such as switching from H264 to H265, changing from General to AI Codec, disable IVS globally, and then turn it back on and even re-drawing IVS lines. None of that resolved the issue. Walking around with my laptop, I clearly saw nothing was triggering as I was crossing different lines on the screen. Finally, I decided to reboot the camera. Once the camera booted back up, I took another field walk with my laptop and as soon as I walk over the first line, it now triggering as expected and I can see camera detecting me with a blue box as I'm walking around. I've walked around for a few minutes testing all the lines and they were now triggering as expected. I rebooted the camera again to see if IVS was still working afterward and indeed it's still working after another reboot, which is a good sign. Let's see if it's going to stay consistent this time around.

Also, I decided to test Smart IR this time because previously I had turn off since I noticed the overall scene is brighter when it was turned off. But what I now see the value of Smart IR is when I was walking around with my laptop and looking directly at the camera, it washed out face. I was just standing around 8-10 feet from the camera. Once I turned on Smart IR, at first, it immediately darkens my scene, but if I was in front looking directly at the camera, my face was now more distinguishable and not washed out anymore. I think Smart IR is probably something worth looking at again if you want to better ID someone at night. I then tweaked my camera video brightness, gamma, and slightly increased the exposure compensation to make up the light loss when Smart IR was turned on. It looks ok now to my eyes.

So if any of you guys are experiencing inconsistent IVS with the July firmware, I advise you to do a field test yourself during daylight and night time to confirm this yourself. If you have a laptop, that'd be best as you can walk around and watch what's happening on the screen in live view mode using IE11 logging directly to camera itself. If it's not triggering as expected, I'd suggest to reboot the camera. Verify all the settings are still there after it boots back up and then do another field walk test to confirm. Also, test out the Smart IR feature to make sure it's not washing out your face during night time.
 
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I have upgraded 5, 5442 series cameras to the new (beta) 11/5/21 firmware, and played with it the last few weeks. I am also running an older version of Blue Iris 5.4.5.3. One of the cameras was an older hardware build ~2 yr old and one was about 1 year old (12/20), the rest are newer cameras (9/21). As noted before, this version does not have smart IR, which I really do not use anyway. I find it is too sensitive and darkens the scene too much. My main concern is camera IVS triggering back to Blue Iris, so I will focus on this. The change that is apparent for Intrusion boxes, is the addition of an "Appear" option in the Action section. There is also a "Duration" and "Repeat Alarm" option you can set. Maybe most importantly, there is now a slider bar for "Sensitivity". According to Dahua manual: "The larger this value is, the easier an alarm will be to be triggered by low-contrast or tiny objects.". There is not any GUI changes for Tripwires, but there could be some changes behind the scenes.

The first night after upgrading a camera, I had Duration set to 6 sec and Sensitivity to 7. I got a false alarm from a cat running across the drive. I quickly changed the Sensitivity to 5 and noticed the same cat came running through later that night, same place, w/o false alarm.

There seems to be a bug working w/ BI on setting font attributes. When setting anything like 64x64 or 48x48 fonts, the fonts displayed very large when viewing camera in BI groups (substreams). When maximizing the camera in BI (mainstream) the font looks good. When setting fonts to Self-Adapttation, everything works well. Fonts always look good in camera GUI.

Another anomaly I see is when you save Intrusion box IVS settings and logout of camera GUI, then log back in. The "Appear" and "Cross" settings are there and set the same as originally, but they are grayed out and can not change them. If you try to deselect the "Inside" selection, it then grays out and cannot enable it again, so I did not save setting. This happens on the new hardware build cameras, on the older hardware camera, the "Inside" selection is grayed out and the others are OK. When testing the "Inside" selection, I found that if you stand inside the box after a trigger and wait for the timeout/reset of trigger, then move around inside box, there was not another trigger. I think Dahua needs to look into this. I did not have any problems setting these parameters originally after upgrading. I always Default the cameras multiple times and reboot multiple times, not to mention save a few times.

NTP time sync works well! But the Dahua Sunrise/Sunset utility that @bp2008 generated did not work when using the new hardware build cameras, only the old builds. So this anomaly looks like it is contributed to a hardware change, not software

A few tips to think about. If you have a current camera setup in BI and you upgrade FW, do not forget to go back into BI and set "Find/Inspect" again. I had an issue on one camera where it was recording audio ok, but not the video. After another Find/Inspect, everything works well. The Max frame rate gets changed in BI when the new firmware on cameras sets its default to 30f/s. So you probably want to set BI max back to your camera frame rate setting. I think it is inefficient for the CPU if you don't. I do not try to import old camera settings into the camera with new FW. Before upgrade, I use the snipping tool and save pics of all settings/intrusion/tripwires to a Wordpad document, so I can set up the camera as before.

So far I am very happy with the new FW and it has zero false alarms after setting everything correctly for the area. I clone a lot of my cameras to use BI motion detection, so I can compare if it misses any triggers. Currently running 4 different FW versions on the 5442 series cams. Of course this "proveout" takes months, if not a 1/2 year, because of the position of Sun moving. I have lots of overhead tree canopy. so a lot of WDR shade movement everywhere. The IVS triggers have been working perfectly in that respect for no false alarms, so far. I will update post if anything changes.

Maybe one of these years Smart IR will be smart. I think Dahua must be having problems with this sensitive Sony sensor.

5442 ver 11-5-21.jpg

Here is the grayed out menu selection.
Grayed out menu.jpg
 
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Thanks for your feedback on this @handinpalm. From your experience, does IVS with this firmware works perfectly at night time as well? Just curious, but are you experiencing stuttering/choppy playback when watching it using live view in any of your 5442 cameras? If so, is it with your newer batch? Does this firmware resolve that? Also, what is your video settings look like? Are you using H264, H265? Using AI Codec or general codec?
 
cybernetics1d said:
Thanks for your feedback on this @handinpalm. From your experience, does IVS with this firmware works perfectly at night time as well? Just curious, but are you experiencing stuttering/choppy playback when watching it using live view in any of your 5442 cameras? If so, is it with your newer batch? Does this firmware resolve that? Also, what is your video settings look like? Are you using H264, H265? Using AI Codec or general codec?
Click to expand...

Yes, performance at night is as good as day for IVS triggers, except for maybe some farther non illuminated areas. One thing I have been playing with lately is to dramatically increase IR illumination through camera and external IR lighting, then setting faster shutter speeds to bring the brightness down and better movement recognition. Another reason I don't want smart IR to change the illumination.

I have 14, 5442 series cameras over the last 2+ years and have not ever experienced choppy video in BI playback, or noticed it in the camera GUI. I set my substream bit rate on the high side to get better resolution on the group video through BI. I also don't run hardware acceleration in BI.

Even before I upgraded to BI5, I was running 10 cameras on BI 4.8, some 5442, and my CPU was screaming at around 70% - 75%. Things were Rock solid.

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Hi Guys need some help. i just upgraded one of my cams for testing with this new firmware; General_IPC-HX5XXX-Volt_MultiLang_PN_Stream3_V2.840.0000000.11.R.211105, but when i active IVS and then head to the menu for IVS, nothing is there.. i did a factory reset before apllying the firmware and using Ms IE 11 as the browser
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The answer is always right there, behind the milk ;)
 
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Hey Guys,

We invite @looney2ns to make the testing on the latest new fw, the IVS work much better than the old ones.
So we will add the smart IR on this fw, and will be released at Feb. Dahua will have 2 weeks off Chinese new year soon later this month to early Feb.
Currently engineers' work before Chinese new year are full :D

If anyone no need smart IR, can contact me for the fw.

Andy
 
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Here is another update on the beta 11/5/21 firmware. I started out with sensitivity at 6 and small min sizes for IVS setting on all 5 cameras. As I got a few false triggers from rodents (cats/possums/coons), slowly increased the min size and decreased sensitivity between 4 & 5 on various cameras. Things were looking good as far as false triggers, until packs of coons (2-3) started coming through close together. Kind of hesitant about increasing min size any larger for some cameras, because I do not want to miss threats. I feel that the IVS AI for human detection still needs more improvement, since it was readily triggering on rodents. Sometimes on a closeup possum where his legs were not seen, so just more like a blob, got a trigger. No where near looking like a human, so don't think much on the discrimination of human/animal intelligence of the algorithms. Looks like I am filtering based on size instead of intelligence. Don't know what will happen when the coyotes/dogs come through, since I have not seen any since updating.

Also have lots of WDR shadows from moving tree canopy and have only got about 1 false alarm in about a month, which is very good. Of course the past FW versions worked very well too. Especially since Dahua states that IVS will probably not work well in these scenes.

Curious to see if other users are having problems with the "Appears/Cross/Inside" setting being grayed out/disabled, after first setting it up? Anyone?

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Just curious as to what people set for the min size for IVS tripwires? I had a lot of triggers last night due to rain and flies buzzing the cam so was wondering if setting the min size might be a way to stop these?
 
IAmATeaf said:
Just curious as to what people set for the min size for IVS tripwires? I had a lot of triggers last night due to rain and flies buzzing the cam so was wondering if setting the min size might be a way to stop these?
Click to expand...

Since the camera has AI, you should leave min size at 0,0. Only use a minimum size if you are getting false triggers like from a cat or dog so then you make the size just larger than that.

All of my AI cams are set to 0,0 and I get virtually zero false triggers.
 
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I’m currently running the latest version with IVS sending the alerts to Blue Iris, but it looks like the IVS are not “catching” all triggers. I first thought that it was Blue Iris that was not sending/catching them. So I enable email alerts from the cams. And can see that IVS is the issue. Have anyone else experienced this issue?
 
wittaj said:
Since the camera has AI, you should leave min size at 0,0. Only use a minimum size if you are getting false triggers like from a cat or dog so then you make the size just larger than that.

All of my AI cams are set to 0,0 and I get virtually zero false triggers.
Click to expand...

Yes it’s currently set to 0, 0 but whenever a fly or with heavy rain it triggers the IVS as I have cars parked on my driveway and I have person and car detection enabled.
 
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