IPC-T5442T-ZE pulsing at night

mooch91

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I have had the subject camera installed for about a week. Seemed to work well, but last night I noticed a continuous motion alert from the time my landscape lights went out until sunrise this morning. Went and checked and the camera was pulsing all night, dim to bright. Has anyone ever seen this, anything I can do to troubleshoot, or should I reach out to @EMPIRETECANDY Andy?
Thanks!
 

TonyR

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I have had the subject camera installed for about a week. Seemed to work well, but last night I noticed a continuous motion alert from the time my landscape lights went out until sunrise this morning. Went and checked and the camera was pulsing all night, dim to bright. Has anyone ever seen this, anything I can do to troubleshoot, or should I reach out to @EMPIRETECANDY Andy?
Thanks!
By "....pulsing all night, dim to bright", do your mean the IR was turning on and off?
 

mooch91

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By "....pulsing all night, dim to bright", do your mean the IR was turning on and off?
It doesn't look like IR keeps going on and off - there is a plant in the foreground of the image that stays illuminated while this is happening. But perhaps it is - hard for me to tell. I do have the transition set to a low value on all of my cameras - 2 sec I think. I could always play with that if it continues. It worked fine for 5 nights, it was just this last one where it gave some issues.
 

sebastiantombs

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I have a 5442T-ZE that was doing the same thing sporadically. The view is from a dark area toward an area well lit by a street light. I fooled around and found that by adjusting gain and HLC levels I could eliminate it. YMMV.
 

wittaj

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Could that plant be interfering with Smart IR and that is what is causing it to pulsate like that. That thing is right in the center of the frame and it could be thinking that is something it needs to be adjusting IR on. Try turning Smart IR off and see what happens.
 

sebastiantombs

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I should have mentioned that the IR is shut off in my case. There's enough ambient light to get good video without it.
 

looney2ns

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Yeah, move the plant or the camera, the reflection from the plant is messing with your exposure.
Also, the IR may be reflecting off of the soffit above, and causing the issue.
 

looney2ns

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Just remembered, I had a 5442 doing this, it has a large bush only partly in the FOV, I changed the IR from smart, to manual, and adjusted as needed and that stopped the pulsing.
 

mooch91

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Let's see, will try turning smart IR off this evening... Not sure why it worked for 5 days then suddenly got funny...
 
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