Looking for upgrade - Replacement 4 cams - Low Light

V

vegeta

n3wb
Oct 14, 2015
17
1
Heya,

Have been running with 4 Hikvision cams (outdoor) for give or take 8 years. (DS-2CD2142FWD-IWS, DS-2CD2432F-IW, 2x DS-2CD2032F-I)
NVR = BI / Scrypted
They have been stable but annoying in terms of management and somewhat poor low light performance.
They are located on sides of a house and driveway, which are somewhat illuminated, but not enough to get some detail without ghosting and overexposure.
Distances covered about 20m

Is there something new out there that will not break the bank with great low-light performance? I am not able to add more light (well I am, but residential area, cant light everything up like a stadium)

Requirements:
  • Great low light performance
  • PoE
  • Onvif
  • No cloud services, subscriptions etc. Should be standalone and manageable from any NVR
  • No internet explorer, activex, java and other junk infested plugins for management
  • No phoning home to motherland
  • Some AI object detection would be nice to offload NVR's
  • No weird firmwares and regional BS that bricks devices (China grey import, you know what I mean)
  • Price, would be great if under 300USD per cam, if cheaper, even better.
  • Ships to Sweden :p

As an extra, I could through in idea of IR blaster/IR floodlight if such exists driven by PoE, then I could mount couple of those. But didn't have any luck finding something suitable which isn't complete scam

Did I forget something of importance?

edit: I've been looking at some Dahuas, but there are gazillion of them, honestly gave me headache and feeling of being lost at sea
 
See this thread for the commonly recommended cameras (along with Amazon links) based on distance to IDENTIFY that represent the overall best value in terms of price and performance day and night. These are the Dahua cams we recommend from their catalogue of gazillion cameras LOL.

The Importance of Focal Length over MP in camera selection

Some of your goals are goals we want but are not there yet LOL.

A trusted member here @EMPIRETECANDY sells Dahua OEM gear (same stuff just cheaper because you are not paying for the logo). Members from all over the world buy from him either on Amazon, his website, or direct. He also has a sale coming up and give-aways. You can flash his gear with Dahua firmware, thus proving they are real Dahua. Many grey markets will brick when trying that.

Just about every device that has firmware updates also have regional devices. That is why we propose international models because they work everywhere!

Once the camera is working for our needs, a big motto around here is don't fix what ain't broke. Too many times we see goofy things come from updating firmware for kicks and grins. Unless the release notes specifically state it is fixing a problem YOU have, it usually isn't worth it. We isolate the cameras from the rest of our system, so the potential for issues is remote.


While newer cameras are supposed to work with other browsers and not need the plug-in nonsense, keep in mind to ensure full compatibility, IE is still preferred. And this isn't specific to just Dahua either. And sometimes the plug-in nonsense is needed.

It comes down to IE was the most popular browser when these cameras started to be made, so they centered the firmware around one particular browser and they got lazy and never updated the internals of the program to play nice with other browsers as more became available and IE started to fade.

Back when the firmware was written, it was probably a pain to get it to play nice with every different browser, so they went with the most popular one.

They haven't had a need to address this because their intended market (hint it isn't us) is mainly businesses where they have enough light they can stay in default settings so they don't have a need to login to the camera via browser. It is us homeowners that push these to the limits and actually change settings.

So we either deal with outdated browsers but better cameras or go with crap consumer grade cameras that use fancy apps (but probably more vulnerabilities than this plug-in) and modern browsers but horrible images.


A trusted member here wildcat_1, who works closely with Dahua and gets "under the hood" of the firmware, including this new GUI, said in this thread:

"Not a case of only using IE for testing, it's more the case that this is the only fully compatible browser that truly work with Dahua GUI's. As we've all discussed before, other browsers unfortunately (up to Firefox support most recently) cause anomalies in config, maintenance modes, updates etc. All of this reported back to Dahua to tackle in future but while we all await compatibility with wider browser and platform acceptance OR browser agnostic GUI's, this is unfortunately where we're all at."

So while Dahua claims other browsers are supported, someone that looks at the fine details of the firmware, coupled with many users experience here, that Internet Explorer provides the best opportunity to set up the camera and the setting stick.

Doesn't mean you won't have a problem with another browser, but it is rolling the dice.

Simply use Internet Explorer or Pale Moon and be done with it.

Even brand new NVRs still have Explorer coded into them to access the cameras:

1731339050458.png
 
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Yes.
Note though that the fixed lens version of that and most models will always be superior in low light performance if/where you can use the fixed lens focus.

It has to do with the FStop of variable focus cameras degrading as you zoom
 
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bigredfish said:
Yes.
Note though that the fixed lens version of that and most models will always be superior in low light performance if/where you can use the fixed lens focus.

It has to do with the FStop of variable focus cameras degrading as you zoom
Click to expand...
OK, gotcha, will have to go out and do some proper measuring then for different scenario and map it based on the chart in that other thread, thank you!
 
Question, bit unclear in regards to mounting brackets. This is how my cam's are currently mounted.
Do the empiretech ones come out-of-the-box with this type of mounting (top/ceiling)? Or do I need to purchase additional accessory?

1731424851779.png
 
Most all cameras come with a base like that that can be turned anyway you like.

Most cameras also have accessory junction boxes that can be attached to that to allow more space to make up connections and store the cables
 
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