Looking for (another) affordable night color camera

Thanks, but I dont see that happening. Even if he ships for free, if I add the VAT and import tax and customs charges, Im paying at the very least 2x more than for a brand new hview with warranty that I can ship back for free.
bigredfish said:
Shutter speed has nothing to do with FPS.
Click to expand...

It does. You cant produce more frames in a second than the sensor makes images per second. If your shutter is open for 1/4 of a second for each frame, or 250ms, how are you going to produce 25 actual frames per second, as 25 fps means 40ms between frames.

The frame rate you define in the interface is the maximum frame rate. No matter the actual shutter speed, the camera will never produce more than what you set it. But it will drop if there isnt enough light and the shutter needs to stay open longer to get enough light (or it will get really really dark). Try it. Set your frame rate to 30 or as high as it will go. Kill the IR, kill all lights. If your camera supports lower than 1/25 shutter speeds, you will see <25 FPS and it will drop to whatever is needed to produce something visible, until it reaches the shutters slowest speed (1/3 or 1/4 typically) and thus 3 or 4 FPS.

Similarly at least on my hikvisions and hview, the shutter speed is the maximum time the shutter will stay open (minimum frame rate). If you set that too small (as in 1/1000th at night with no IR), it will still produce the corresponding frame rate (up to maximum set frame rate) but you wont see a lot. The cameras will also decrease the shutter speed if there is more light to avoid over exposure, up to 1/10000th, but of course, the encoding chip cant encode 10000 fps. But it will not increase the shutter speed (or decrease frame rate) beyond your defined setting. No matter how dark the result.
 
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I think maybe your confusing Auto shutter or a shutter range (0-16.67 for example) with a fixed shutter speed. I'ts possible to set a fixed shutter speed (desirable in fact) to reduce motion blur at night especially.

Both clips are at 1/120 exposure or 8.33ms (fixed/constant)
8192 bitrate - CBR (fixed)

*Make sure and change youtube player to 1440

4 FPS


30 FPS
 
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I don't do YouTube so no video, but here're two captures, one still and one with motion. The still, empty scene, is at 1/4 shutter speed. The other one with the car in it, the car was doing at least 30MPH, is at 1/30. Both are from a Dahua 4231E-S 2MP with a 3.6mm lens at a frame rate of 10FPS, iframe at 10 and a bit rate of 2048.

04_still.JPG

30_color_motion.JPG
 
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bigredfish said:
I think maybe your confusing Auto shutter or a shutter range (0-16.67 for example) with a fixed shutter speed. I'ts possible to set a fixed shutter speed (desirable in fact) to reduce motion blur at night especially.
Click to expand...

None of my camera's have fixed shutter speed. Only maximum shutter time, which is the same as minimum frame rate.
, let me show you:

 
I see, your HiK doesnt seem to have a fixed shutter option.

Most all Dahua cameras allow either.
 
Doesnt change the point though. If a camera produces 4 FPS at night, it is because the shutter speed has been reduced to 1/4th of second. Likewise if it produces 25 actual frames per second (and not interpolated or duplicated frames), then shutter speed can not possibly be shorter than 1/25th of a second. So saying they are unrelated is just incorrect. They are closely related.
 
Actually it does.

See this clip using a Dahua 4MP HFW5442E-ZE Starlight variable focus bullet shows how shutter speed (exposure) affects motion blur. The clip begins with a fixed shutter speed of 1/120 of a second or 8.33ms, a little past midway, the shutter is changed to a much longer exposure of fixed 1/4 second or 255ms.
The entire video is at 30FPS, the FPS doesnt change.

((*remember to change Youtube player to 1440)



Example, shutter changes, FPS remains the same. Only the time that the shutter is open changes.
0B5185D1-7ADD-44ED-B74E-B2133CA084D6.gif
The blue bars represent shutter speed (the time that the shutter is open). There are three different shutter speeds shown.

  • At a setting of 1/25, the shutter is "open" for 1/25th of a second. This is the same as the frame rate so the shutter is open for the entire duration of each frame.
  • At 1/50, the shutter is open for 1/50th of a second which is half the duration of each frame.
  • At 1/100, the shutter is open for 1/100th of a second which is quarter the duration of each frame.

Think of the "missing time" as a gap between when the shutter closes and when the next frame begins.

As you can see, the shutter speed can be varied without affecting the frame rate. If the shutter is open for a shorter time, it's closed for a correspondingly longer time. The total always equals the frame duration.

Reference links:
Frame Rate Guide for Video Surveillance
Video Camera Shutter vs Frame Rate
Frame rate vs. shutter speed, setting the record straight - Vimeo Blog
 
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sebastiantombs said:
I don't do YouTube so no video, but here're two captures, one still and one with motion.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Looking at those stills, I was thinking they looked eerily similar to what my camera can do. So I googled the type and sure enough, in the spec sheet:
· 1/2.8” 2Megapixel progressive scan STARVISTM CMOS

I suspect you will find all those 2MP color night / starnight camera's (and ones they sell as '3MP' by upscaling like my hview) will use that same sony IMX 3x7 sensor. Sony has some larger and more sensitive 2MP sensors in that lineup but they are all targeting industrial applications, the 1/2.8 are explicitly designed for for surveillance cams. I would expect them to all perform very similarly in low light. And I wouldnt be surprised one bit if the Wyzecam 3 uses it too. A $20 cam.. Sure hope they make that one available in Europe.

But for now, anyone in europe who wants such a cam but with POE and metal housing for 55 quid / 60 euro (20% VAT incl), the hview may be be worth considering, because I seem to have solved my stability issues. In case anyone ever finds this thread and runs in to the same problem, here is what I did:
  • Set resolution to 1080p (you want that anyway, its the native res of the sensor. Upscaled 3MP just wastes bandwidth, diskspace and decode resources)
  • Disabled OSD (set it in your NVR or BI)
  • Disabled motion detection and line crossing (I will play with this later, because ONVIF motion events work and could be useful. Not impressed at all with Blue Iris motion triggering on zone crossing so having to disable this option on the camera would be a bit of a bummer).
  • Disabled sub stream. Ill try reenabling that, but with just 2MP, not a huge loss if substream turns out to be a problem.
 
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I still suggest that you contact Andy and see what he can do for you. He also has Hikvision of that's your preference. I will say that Dahua has a manual shutter mode that allows a range for the shutter. You can set both minimum and maximum times, in milliseconds, which affords complete shutter speed control. The big point being that rebranded cameras, whether Dahua or Hikvision, all have firmware features removed that are standard in the "real" versions. That's how they get the price down.

All of my cameras, Dahua, Hikvision and the few junk ones I have, are using their own OSD for date/time and camera name. All of them that support dual streams are using substreams, even the junk ones(only one doesn't support dual streams), the Dahua cameras all use IVS and BI sees the ONVIF events. All of the cameras are also using hardware acceleration, even the junk cameras. BI zone crossing works best with the standard motion detection, not with "Edge Vector". By using substreams in BI the CPU utilization has dropped from 25-30%, when I had 10 cameras on the system, to under 10% with a total of 14 cameras on the system now.
 
Like I said, I have zero interest in importing camera's from the US. Besides the obvious reasons (warranty, service, etc), I have my own very good but less obvious reasons to want to buy from amazon locally.

As for buying hikvision or dahua's rather than this one; Ive reenabled substream and motion detection, and its still looking good. Im beginning to think just disabling the pointless resolution upscaling is all it took. If true, this camera is perfect for me. I see no point in spending 2-3x as much for getting similar image quality, and Im not going to get meaningfully better night time mage quality without spending ~4x as much, and frankly, I dont need better than this. I just needed it to not disconnect all the time, and it looks like I may have achieved that.
 
As Blue iris motion detection; the main problem I have with it is that only considers the center of the object. There is no way to make it trigger on the bottom of the object (like you know, feet or wheels, the things that matter) crossing a zone. So a tall van may not cross a zone because the center is still "on the road" and Ive joked that you can defeat any blue iris system that uses zone crossing by carrying a large plank of wood. ive explained it in detail here:
 
Andy is in Hong Kong, not the US. Did you even bother to ask him? You like what you like and don't want to expand your horizon. Affordable is a very flexible word. What is affordable to one may be expensive to someone else. You're happy with what you have, so why even ask for an alternative? As far as BI is concerned, find another VMS that is as flexible, reliable and inexpensive.
 
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Just an update; my hview has been 100% stable for the past few days with substream re-enabled, motion detection enabled and OSD (although I turned it off again as I prefer a more uniform BI OSD).

Though I have not tested this for very long due to being pointless, it also appears to work ok with just 3MP upscaling enabled, but not upscaling + all of the above. Im guessing it occasionally runs out of memory or something when you do that? but once you know the sensor is only 2MP, I dont see why anyone would want to upscale to 3MP on the camera anyway.

Since its working now, I experimented a little more with the cams features. The camera motion detection is fairly limited; it has zoned motion detection, human and car detection, line crossing and intrusion, but you can only run 2 of those at a time. Zoned motion detection + 1 of those "smart" things, and even then you will need to choose if you want to trigger on cars or humans or line crossing it doesnt look like you can combine them. It does ONVIF event triggering, but AFAICT, I can not use this in Blue Iris without disabling Blue Iris own object detection which strikes me as a weird limitation and especially painful when I forced to chose just 1 smart rule on the camera.

Im trying to overcome this in Home Assistant, by catching motion events directly from the camera. The camera allows me to configure a HTTP "event server" and select the event server as an action upon motion detection:
1604388493490.png
Does anyone know how that works? I had hoped it would be a webhook, but entering a HA webhook URL doesnt appear to work (test says 'Fail'). Documention is completely silent on this (and most other features).

Worst case, I could monitor my FTP folder to determine if the camera triggered, but thats clunky and may be slow. The goal is to combine camera motion events with BI motion events (using MQTT) and triggering BI alerts on either or combining them with my PIR sensors to decide whether or not to trigger BI or HA alerts that send me a notification. Reason being that none of these triggers are fully reliable. PIR sensors can be triggered by birds or squirrels , camera/BI motion detection will occasionally be fooled by lighting changes or insects or indeed birds, but a fuzzy logic combination could be reasonably reliable I hope.
 
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vertigo said:
Im trying to overcome this in Home Assistant, by catching motion events directly from the camera. The camera allows me to configure a HTTP "event server" and select the event server as an action upon motion detection:
View attachment 74015
Does anyone know how that works? I had hoped it would be a webhook, but entering a HA webhook URL doesnt appear to work (test says 'Fail'). Documention is completely silent on this (and most other features).
Click to expand...

I expect you may have moved on from this, however in case you haven't.
I've just been playing with this and had a similar problem, so looked at what was happening with wireshark etc.

I don't know home assist, but

It is a web hook.
The server address is the server address so should be the ip of the home assist, I get an error if you use its network name.
port is port number. (8123)
Alias seems to be ignored
Url is and so should be
/api/webhook/some_hook_id

and it will then do a
POST
However it does have a bug in that, at least on mine it is using HTTP 1.1 but leaving off the Host parameter in the header which results in my server giving a 400 error.

Although this error didn't show up on the camera webpage, I just get test passed. I have had a 'Test Failed' but I can't remember what I set to get that.

If you are still looking into this then I'd suggest emailing support.
 
Recently got my hands on a Dahua HDW2431T-AS-S2
I thought some of you might want to see how it stacks up against the h.view E3.

A clip from each showing the same event from a different angle:
H.view E3:


Dahua HDW2431T:


(I uploaded them to youtube because this forum wouldnt accept the video from the dahua, so both are now similarly handicapped by the recoding. Also, those colors are pretty accurate, streetlights at night here are extremely dim and yellow, that light at the other side of the street is indeed blue, the light on my house is a 2W led dimmed to just 10% brightness unless triggered by motion. its enough to see where to walk, not much more).

This dahua is the second best night vision camera Ive tried, but when it comes to color night vision, the h.view is still clearly superior. Under these light conditions, the dahua has to be forced in to color mode, by default it switches to BW and in color mode, the video becomes grainy and the motion blurry. its still usable (and a bit better than the youtube vid makes you believe) but only just. The H.view copes easily with it, remains sharp and clear and it can do with a lot less light.

The Dahua however also has the ability to use B/W mode (without IR) and then I do think it is more sensitive than the h.view, but I have not tested this a lot. If you dont mind the loss of color, its a great option to get rid of IR. And its also better in almost every other regard, as its obviously sharper in day light, its motion detection works better, it has a web interface that works without IE (well kinda works, live view isnt great), ..

Still, that 2MP sensor in the h.view is remarkably good for color night vision, and I wish there was something similar available, as even the h.view E3 is becoming hard to find.
 
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vertigo said:
Still, that 2MP sensor in the h.view is remarkably good for color night vision, and I wish there was something similar available, as even the h.view E3 is becoming hard to find.
Click to expand...

Hi,
1stly I could be totally wrong on this, but as far as I can tell, h.view (+ a couple of other makes) cameras are made by Brillcam.

Based on that I'm not sure if the
'Brillcam UHD 5MP Outdoor Camera, Color Night Vision PoE Bullet IP Camera, AI Human Motion Detection, 100ft, H.265+, 2.8mm Lens, IP67 Weatherproof, Built in Audio and SD Card Slot with Surveillance' at amazon (not sure if the rules on links here)

maybe worth a look

I have the H.View HV-500G2V5 which it sort of looks like is a cut down more expensive version of that...

Brillcam have some pretty poor reviews though..
 
I tried the 5MP H.view "color night" but it was all but worthless in color at night (and not that great otherwise). No wonder they only sell it with IR illuminators. Its really the 2MP sony IMX 3x7 sensor in the E3 that is "magic", so I wouldnt hold out any hopes for the 5MP brillcam.

If they have a 2MP or 3MP (h.view upscales their 2MP sensor to 3MP and sells it as 3MP) it might worth trying though. Or something that has a more modern but larger Sony IMX chip.
 
The HV-500G2V doesn't have IR Illuminators. To me It seems ok at Colour night vision here, but I don't have anything comparable to compare it with, Just a 10 year old panasonic and a ir Reolink, both of which are much worse. But it's quite possible I could have made a better choice.
I was considering the new Annke NightChroma, but I wasn't confident about overseas ordering in the current environment.
 
Appears h.view have 2 different 5MP models and their naming seems inconsistent. Anyway, that annke looks promising, Ill keep an eye on it becoming available here.
 
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