My Dahua camera is suddenly stuck in b&w... (And what settings do you use in day for ALPR?)

wrybread

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I was setting up nighttime schedules yesterday, which greatly helped my ALPR at night. But now my daytime image is stuck in b&w and I can't figure out why. I don't imagine anyone has any ideas?

Attached are my settings and a sample of the b&w image.

And for daytime ALPR, can I get away with an "overview" type image, or am I better off with something like this?

Any tips on daytime camera settings?
 

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wrybread

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Well shoot, rebooting the camera fixed the b&w issue. I'm hoping that's rare... Has anyone else experienced this? I guess I could set the camera to auto reboot.

Still curious what settings people are using for daytime. And oops I forgot to mention I'm using a Dahua IPC-HFW5231E-Z12E, latest firmware.
 

wrybread

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Argh, happened again this morning, stuck in black and white. I'm not sure what exactly fixed it but I think it was when I went to Conditions -> Style and re-selected "Standard". It was already selected, just needed to reselect it.

Has anyone else had this problem?
 

wittaj

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Sometimes mine does some goofy things, so when I am changing settings, I always hit Save, then refresh to make sure it took.

Are you stuck in Normal in profile management? You should either run full time or schedule. Normal does weird things as does the day/night profile settings.

Even better, look for the dahua sunrise/sunset utility someone made here - it is the best way to adjust the Dahua for night and day, especially if you are doing it for LPR duties.
 

wrybread

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I'm using the scheduler in Conditions -> Profile Management -> Schedule. It's switching between the Day and Night profile, if I'm understanding that tab correctly. Then using the slider I'm setting Day to the time of first light, and "night" to the time of last light (eventually I'll use a script to auto change that).

See attached screenshot.

Hoping it successfully switches back to Day mode tomorrow morning without a glitch!

Or it's very possible I'm doing something wrong in the settings.
 

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wittaj

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OK, yes that would be the correct one - seems to be the only one that kinda works right, which was why someone created that utility tool.

If it doesn't hold, I would suggest changing Day to color instead of auto.

Is this in an NVR or BI - if NVR maybe there is a setting overriding the camera GUI?
 

bigredfish

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You still have to have the Day/Night setting on Auto or better Color......if it's set to B&W thats what it will display regardless of your schedule.

DayNight-setting.jpg
 
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wrybread

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If it doesn't hold, I would suggest changing Day to color instead of auto.
Aha, good idea. Somehow I missed that setting before. I just set day to "color", hoping for the best.

Do most people set night to "b&w"?
 

wittaj

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If you are using it as LPR, then yes on B/W at night or you will probably never be able to read a plate at night.
 

wrybread

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Phew, today it wasn't stuck in b&w. I think I just needed to take it out of "auto" for daytime.

Even better, look for the dahua sunrise/sunset utility someone made here - it is the best way to adjust the Dahua for night and day, especially if you are doing it for LPR duties.
I'm not on Windows (I'm using Ubuntu) so I made a little Python script that does the following:

- checks when sunrise and sunset are for my (or whatever) location

- updates the day/night schedule of the camera

- fixes the zoom and focus at whatever specific number

- can work with an unlimited number of cameras

- could easily be adapted to set any setting, not just zoom and focus.

I have it set to run once a minute through crontab, which is probably overkill but I don't see a disadvantage. Working great so far. Let me know if anyone would find it useful.
 

ElvisP

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I was setting up nighttime schedules yesterday, which greatly helped my ALPR at night. But now my daytime image is stuck in b&w and I can't figure out why. I don't imagine anyone has any ideas?

Attached are my settings and a sample of the b&w image.

And for daytime ALPR, can I get away with an "overview" type image, or am I better off with something like this?

Any tips on daytime camera settings?
 

ElvisP

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Dahua is typical chinese quality = crap. I have the same problem, stuck in B/W, nightime mode. You get what you pay for but can't seem to find a good American manufacturer so I'm moving to chinese made, US QCed quality.
 

biggen

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Dahua is typical chinese quality = crap. I have the same problem, stuck in B/W, nightime mode. You get what you pay for but can't seem to find a good American manufacturer so I'm moving to chinese made, US QCed quality.
Have you rebooted or reset the camera?
 

ElvisP

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THanks for the replies.

Have you rebooted or reset the camera?
Yes but doesn't fix it.

Show us your settings.
I’ve installed a couple of hundred and haven’t had one stuck in B&W yet
It seems to do it more in the fall winter when there is a shadow over my driveway where the camera is. Even at midday though when over half of the picture is sunlight.
I believe I might be able to fix this if I could adjust my Day/Night sensitivity settings but they are grayed out and un-selectable.
 

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bigredfish

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Lots of settings can actually contribute, not just those, and seeing the the actual scene would be interesting...

If you use the "Schedule" profile you can force it to be color or B&W (day and night controlled separately)
 

wittaj

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Try a different web browser - some browsers don't let all the functionality work for some reason - seeing that black box to the left is telling me it is a browser issue.
 

SyconsciousAu

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I’ve installed a couple of hundred and haven’t had one stuck in B&W yet
I managed to get one stuck in black and white. Water got into it. I saw condensation behind the lens then the IR led's died and the Camera was forever in black and white. Still worked as a camera though, just a black and white one.
 
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