New Hikvision Hybrid Thermal Cams

bp2008

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Much as I'd like one, it looks like these are every bit as expensive as Dahua's, which have been around for a long time now.
 

bp2008

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Looks like the DS-2TD1217-x/V1 series has been discontinued and replaced with DS-2TD1217-2/3/6/PA with a 4MP optical module. If specs are to be believed, low light performance is much worse on the new series.

Old Series: New Series:
I noticed this because it appears remaining stock of the discontinued series is being sold at a steep discount (about $250 each) from jmac.com and ShopBLT.com. Previously the best price I ever saw on these was in the $650 ballpark from B&H, so I am taking the product listings with a grain of salt. You can search these specific model numbers to find them: DS-2TD1217-2/V1, DS-2TD1217-3/V1, DS-2TD1217-6/V1

I ordered a DS-2TD1217-2/V1 from jmac and will post again later to let you all know how it turns out. My prediction is that they'll just cancel the order after a while and not even say why.
 

bp2008

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Anyway, for anyone two wants to get their feet wet with thermal imaging cams, this could be a good opportunity.

For reference, this is a snapshot of my older 80x60 thermal camera with a 25° horizontal field of view. At the same place just mounted a little higher, I have a 2MP starlight varifocal zoomed out as far as it can go.



Since the Hikvision hybrid cams use a 160x120 sensor, you could expect similar detail to the thermal screenshot above if you ordered the DS-2TD1217-3/V1 model (50° HFoV). The fence is about 85 feet away in this picture, and I have motion-triggered captures of cats at ~70 feet away from the thermal camera.
 
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Jessie.slimer

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Looks like the DS-2TD1217-x/V1 series has been discontinued and replaced with DS-2TD1217-2/3/6/PA with a 4MP optical module. If specs are to be believed, low light performance is much worse on the new series.

Old Series: New Series:
I noticed this because it appears remaining stock of the discontinued series is being sold at a steep discount (about $250 each) from jmac.com and ShopBLT.com. Previously the best price I ever saw on these was in the $650 ballpark from B&H, so I am taking the product listings with a grain of salt. You can search these specific model numbers to find them: DS-2TD1217-2/V1, DS-2TD1217-3/V1, DS-2TD1217-6/V1

I ordered a DS-2TD1217-2/V1 from jmac and will post again later to let you all know how it turns out. My prediction is that they'll just cancel the order after a while and not even say why.
Thanks for this. I just ordered one from there too. Fingers crossed that it ships.

I've wanted to get a thermal cam for a while to scan my field for coyotes. At that price, now is the time.
 

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I got a shipping notice + tracking number this morning so it looks legit. Should arrive monday.

If the cam meets expectations, I might try to order one or two more. No telling when they might run out of stock or raise the price back up to normal.
 

Jessie.slimer

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I got a shipping notice + tracking number this morning so it looks legit. Should arrive monday.

If the cam meets expectations, I might try to order one or two more. No telling when they might run out of stock or raise the price back up to normal.
Did you order it on Tues when you posted?
 

bp2008

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UPS came by at 9 PM and dropped off the camera, a couple hours after tracking said it was no longer out for delivery. I'm getting this thing figured out. There's a lot of customization that can be done for the thermal camera.

One of the first things I noticed when I plugged it in was the sound of its self-calibration procedure where it clicks a shutter into place in front of the thermal sensor and then back out. It sounds a lot like an IR-CUT filter and it was pretty frequent when the camera was cold, but has gotten rare now that the camera has warmed up.

Sure enough, the thermal sensor operates at 25 FPS, which is awesome because a lot of cheaper thermal sensors only do 9 FPS because of export laws. Here's a snapshot from the thermal sensor by itself (I turned off image blending).

HikThermal90-2 2020-10-23 09.52.22.698 PM.jpg

One of the things I played with tonight is the "defective pixel correction" feature, to see how it works. This is in the camera's web interface under Configuration > Image > DPC. This function that lets you mark specific thermal pixels as defective so that the video processor will ignore them and instead fill in the gap by averaging the values of neighboring good pixels. Basically you move a crosshair up/down/left/right with buttons on this page, then you click the crosshair button (left) to mark the center pixel as "defective", or the undo button (right) to mark the pixel as "good". And then you click Save.

Manual Dead Pixel Correction.jpg

A word of advice, don't go frivolously marking good pixels as defective. It isn't permanent, but it is a pain in the ass to mark them as good again. See the snapshot below of my hand near the lens. See how there is a little image defect circled in red? I marked a dozen or so pixels as defective right there, and haven't marked them as good again yet.

There isn't a way to clear the list of defective pixels (resetting the camera to factory default didn't clear it). There's no way to see how many pixels I've marked as dead. The only way to find them is to slowly wave my hand over the sensor, with a cold background, to see where the teeny tiny artifacts appear on the high contrast line. Then I have to target them and mark them as good. One pixel at a time. Don't do this to yourself!

1603514339944.png


I'll post more snapshots and videos tomorrow. I need to undo as many defective pixel markings as I can find and go to bed.
 

bp2008

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I don't do anything halfway it seems.

I didn't like the prospect of cleaning up my mess of good-pixels-marked-bad manually, because I knew I would miss some. So I wrote a program that uses the camera's API to clear the defective pixel flag on all the pixels, one by one. It is actually pretty fast because this camera has a fast SoC. So much for going to bed.

Surprise! It uncovered several actually-dead pixels that had been hidden at the factory.

1603525385426.png

I was able to use the DPC tool in the cam's web interface to mask these again, and it is good as new.

1603525459752.png
 
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