New Dahua LPR

jd415

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The only thing that sets these apart from the 5241 Z12E cams is the in camera plate identification and processing. It has the same 2MP 1/2.8" sensor. Are these really new?
 
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Home users the IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E is good for using.
I totally agree. Here are some snapshots out of BI today for one of my LPR cams that I got from Andy, an HFW5241E-Z12E:

LPR-E.20201029_063239998_1.jpgLPR-E.20201029_063912579_1.jpgLPR-E.20201029_072304780_1.jpgLPR-E.20201029_072908401_1.jpgLPR-E.20201029_075707437_1.jpgLPR-E.20201029_083755623_1.jpgLPR-E.20201029_113804371_1.jpgLPR-E.20201029_134221869_1.jpgLPR-E.20201029_162600150_1.jpgLPR-E.20201029_170701636_1.jpgLPR-E.20201029_195023493_1.jpgLPR-E.20201029_203348599_2.jpgLPR-E.20201029_205021423_1.jpgLPR-E.20201029_214339849_1.jpgLPR-E.20201029_220039892_1.jpg

These start out in the wee morning hours, go through the day and into the night. I have tried to show all different lighting angles from today. The cam faces ENE and the distances are 55-100 feet. By far the toughest is dusk and dawn. Both daytime and after dark come out fine.
 

wrybread

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I just got the IPC-HFW7442H-Z. Thank you @EMPIRETECANDY for the lightening fast shipment and good packaging as always.

I set it up yesterday. I haven't done much testing on it yet, just mounted it. It's next to a IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E so it'll be interesting to do some comparison.

Eventually I'll be sending its stream to OpenALPR, but I thought it would be interesting to see how the camera does on it's own. Ideally I'd love for the camera to take a snapshot of the vehicle along with the OCR'd license plate as text, upload the pic, and make an entry in my external database by running something like myserver.com/myscript.py?plate=asdf. Not sure if that last step will be possible, but I'm still going through the manual.
 
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wrybread

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I'm far from a master of the IPC-HFW7442H-Z, but a few thoughts after playing with it for a few hours today:

- the firmware doesn't seem to have been updated in almost a year and a half. That's a bit odd for a new camera with complicated features:


Mine says V2.800.0000000.2.R, Build Date: 2019-07-09, which looks like the same version as on the site.

- and the features are far from ironed out. I'd call the license plate recognition almost completely useless. Granted it's still early in my exploring the manual, and I might be missing something, and I could have a better camera angle, but it's getting about 50% of the plates in the best daytime lighting. My other experience with LPR is with OpenALPR, and it would get close to 100% in these conditions. Missing this plate for example is unforgivable, and typical of this camera:



Interestingly the camera successfully cropped that vehicle from the live feed, it just couldn't read that license plate.

- and if there's a way to automatically send the plate data to an external system, I don't see it. And the internal database of plates is far too rudimentary to rely on as far as I can tell. It's not even possible to search for a plate or see other records for a given plate! Or even to export all the license plates! Hopefully I'm wrong about that and I just haven't found it yet, since that makes it hilariously incomplete.

However, poking around the settings, the "violence detection" feature is interesting... Enabled!

My initial impression is that this camera tries to do a ton of things, like "seatbelt detection", even trying to detect inspection stickers for some reason. But it does such a poor job that even if that was important info I don't see the use of including it. If I didn't have such a high opinion of Dahua hardware I'd never buy anything from them again after trying this camera.

But it does have the same great picture as the Z12E, although I think a bit less zoom. But at this moment I think I'll be going to back to using a IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E and OpenALPR or whatever external ALPR service. But again I'm new to this camera, hopefully in a few days I'l update this review with some more positive impressions.
 

biggen

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This is one of my major frustrations with Dahua. They kinda just throw hardware out there without giving it much testing. If not for @EMPIRETECANDY and him relaying valuable information from members here back to Dahua engineers would any of these cameras actually work properly?
 

EMPIRETECANDY

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I'm far from a master of the IPC-HFW7442H-Z, but a few thoughts after playing with it for a few hours today:

- the firmware doesn't seem to have been updated in almost a year and a half. That's a bit odd for a new camera with complicated features:


Mine says V2.800.0000000.2.R, Build Date: 2019-07-09, which looks like the same version as on the site.

- and the features are far from ironed out. I'd call the license plate recognition almost completely useless. Granted it's still early in my exploring the manual, and I might be missing something, and I could have a better camera angle, but it's getting about 50% of the plates in the best daytime lighting. My other experience with LPR is with OpenALPR, and it would get close to 100% in these conditions. Missing this plate for example is unforgivable, and typical of this camera:



Interestingly the camera successfully cropped that vehicle from the live feed, it just couldn't read that license plate.

- and if there's a way to automatically send the plate data to an external system, I don't see it. And the internal database of plates is far too rudimentary to rely on as far as I can tell. It's not even possible to search for a plate or see other records for a given plate! Or even to export all the license plates! Hopefully I'm wrong about that and I just haven't found it yet, since that makes it hilariously incomplete.

However, poking around the settings, the "violence detection" feature is interesting... Enabled!

My initial impression is that this camera tries to do a ton of things, like "seatbelt detection", even trying to detect inspection stickers for some reason. But it does such a poor job that even if that was important info I don't see the use of including it. If I didn't have such a high opinion of Dahua hardware I'd never buy anything from them again after trying this camera.

But it does have the same great picture as the Z12E, although I think a bit less zoom. But at this moment I think I'll be going to back to using a IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E and OpenALPR or whatever external ALPR service. But again I'm new to this camera, hopefully in a few days I'l update this review with some more positive impressions.
This camera has newer firmware, and has lots of update, i will send you seperatelu.

DH_IPC-HX8XXX-Nobel_MultiLang_PN_V2.800.0000000.5.R.200525.zip

For the ANPR working, you just refer to the @Wildcat_1 posting here. The best way is to use with dahua 4.0 AI NVR. 3rd party software will not work well for this ultra smart model.
 

wrybread

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Are you saying there's a firmware that isn't on their website? Would love a link if so.

3rd party software will not work well for this ultra smart model.
Why not? OpenALPR (or whatever) can receive a stream from this camera just like any other camera, right?

dahua 4.0 AI NVR
Great! Where do I find it?
 

EMPIRETECANDY

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Are you saying there's a firmware that isn't on their website? Would love a link if so.



Why not? It can just send a video stream to OpenALPR (or whatever) just like any other camera, right?



Great! Where do I find it?
Use this AI build in NVR. Support ANPR well, and support 8ch face recognition.
1605769535142.png
 
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wrybread

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rsoxhater

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I have the same camera doing high speed LPR, except its the Z4 version so it has more of a zoom. Definitely ask Andy for a firmware update, there are new ones. Check your shutter speed as well, 1/1000 or 1/2000 is where I noticed a drastic uptick in how efficient OpenALPR grabbed plates. Also, make sure your iframe matches your FPS. So if you are running 15fps make sure iframe value is 15. By default Dahua usually makes the iframe double the FPS.

You have what should be a pretty good picture for plates there.




I'm far from a master of the IPC-HFW7442H-Z, but a few thoughts after playing with it for a few hours today:

- the firmware doesn't seem to have been updated in almost a year and a half. That's a bit odd for a new camera with complicated features:


Mine says V2.800.0000000.2.R, Build Date: 2019-07-09, which looks like the same version as on the site.

- and the features are far from ironed out. I'd call the license plate recognition almost completely useless. Granted it's still early in my exploring the manual, and I might be missing something, and I could have a better camera angle, but it's getting about 50% of the plates in the best daytime lighting. My other experience with LPR is with OpenALPR, and it would get close to 100% in these conditions. Missing this plate for example is unforgivable, and typical of this camera:



Interestingly the camera successfully cropped that vehicle from the live feed, it just couldn't read that license plate.

- and if there's a way to automatically send the plate data to an external system, I don't see it. And the internal database of plates is far too rudimentary to rely on as far as I can tell. It's not even possible to search for a plate or see other records for a given plate! Or even to export all the license plates! Hopefully I'm wrong about that and I just haven't found it yet, since that makes it hilariously incomplete.

However, poking around the settings, the "violence detection" feature is interesting... Enabled!

My initial impression is that this camera tries to do a ton of things, like "seatbelt detection", even trying to detect inspection stickers for some reason. But it does such a poor job that even if that was important info I don't see the use of including it. If I didn't have such a high opinion of Dahua hardware I'd never buy anything from them again after trying this camera.

But it does have the same great picture as the Z12E, although I think a bit less zoom. But at this moment I think I'll be going to back to using a IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E and OpenALPR or whatever external ALPR service. But again I'm new to this camera, hopefully in a few days I'l update this review with some more positive impressions.
 

wrybread

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uptick in how efficient OpenALPR grabbed plates
So to be clear, you're using OpenALPR to do the LPR, not the camera's internal feature? I'm sure that would work well, it's the internal ALPR that I'm finding terrible. But I haven't done the firmware update yet, so hopefully there's an improvement once I do.

Use this AI build in NVR. Support ANPR well, and support 8ch face recognition.
Are you talking about on the NVR box (external from the camera) or on the camera itself? I have enabled LPR on the camera itself of course. But again not with the latest firmware.
 
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