All, quick update from me here. I was starting to see some 'interesting' things happening within the 7/29 FW so I looked at the codebase specifically around SmartIR. Sure enough the fixes I put forward
ARE in fact in this version. After I saw that I went back to a number of the 5442 cams (model and revision) to see what was going on as these were still washing out on 7/29 (I captured this in video) BUT not on 5/24. What I found was that certain build date of 5442 cameras were having more of an issue moving from lower revisions to the new one. Specifically I saw a bigger issue (more on this in a minute) with 5442's with build dates of 2020-08 (August). I also saw that different releases of FW were 'addressing' the upgrade approach differently hence as an example 5/24 always worked well with or without specific order for upgrading the cam (reboot, factory default etc) whereas others did not.
So what was I seeing ? Well, it appears that some of these older (v1 of 5442) cams hold a portion of the boot loader and stale config from existing version and this impacts the cameras ability to fully wipe and start clean. I decided to test this theory on 3 x 2020-08 builds (as well as others) and on these 3x 08 dates this happened consistently. This meant that although the camera would show 7/29 successful upgrade that you still saw impact from previous version(s).
So how do you fix it ? Well this is where it got interesting, the punchline is that you ABSOLUTELY MUST factory default as I and others always recommend on each FW release BUT there's more. I found that on those impacted cams, if you only factory reset AFTER the FW upgrade then it took multiple (in some cases up to 6 was the highest I've ever seen) factory defaults to clear and work properly (i.e. SmartIR working well as expected and other features). However, I wanted to share a slightly different approach that worked more cleanly and much quicker (no multiple factory defaults) and that is restart then factory default BEFORE you run the upgrade.
Specific steps would be:
- Login to your cam running your current version may be 04/03 or 5/20 etc
- Restart the camera (on current version) without any defaulting BEFORE step 3
- Now complete a factory default (not just regular default) while still on current version
- Next, upgrade to latest FW (7/29 in this example)
- Once upgrade completes, log back in and force 1 more reboot (no default needed)
Taking this approach (on these build date cams I was testing against) allowed these older units to correctly take the upgrade with just the 1 factory reset (rather than multiples when taking the regular approach for factory default) and appeared to clear stale entries in config before upgrade. Now does that mean that all revisions and builds of cam with any version of FW the cams were coming from showed the same issue ? No. Some build dates (and depending on FW version they were on) took the upgrade without any need to default
BUT its not consistent. That is why I always recommended and advocate (as do others here) that you factory default on each upgrade. However, maybe try the workflow above yourself in future (regardless of camera) as it does seem to work better and make it a little less onerous and impactful than multiple factory defaults
Therefore to conclude, this latest FW (7/29)
does work well from SMD 3.0 AND SmartIR and I'm pleased to see that these fixes I built did make it into the v1 of the 5442's as I recommended to Dahua rather than just v2's. This is great as it means the fixes (and new features) will work regardless of build version of 5442 you have.
Lastly, its absolutely evident that certain cams, certain revisions of build along with certain FW versions (that people run at any given time) AND uptime of a cam without reboots, play into this larger issue with FW releases. They are processed just slightly differently and this speaks to consistency of FW builds (Along with pre-upgrade checks) that does need work for sure as a wider focus.
@EMPIRETECANDY please let Dahua know about this and the steps to take. It might be worth them looking at boot loader and resisting overall upgrade workflow in the codebase for future releases (regardless of camera model segment) so there is a more consistent upgrade experience. Also
@EMPIRETECANDY please pass on my thanks again for the work Dahua did in integrating the SmartIR fixes I shared and worked on with them, very much appreciate it and hope all 5442 owners here will benefit ! Next is to ensure this SmartIR code makes it into ALL IR based cameras in the future
HTH all
