looney2ns
IPCT Contributor
You've not looked very hard for Dahua reviews on this forum, there are multitudes. Reolink is not worth a comparison.
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Reolink - good & bad
- Thread starter TL1096r
- Start date
heikowiner
n3wb
Would maybe like to buy a Dahu turret 8mp camera, but having a hard time to find a shop to buy them from Germany. Any tips for a model number for a good turret 8mp camera?
heikowiner
n3wb
What would be the recommendation for a 4 or 5 mp Dahu turret camera with audio. Nithvision shouldn't be a problem as the area is well light, if there is any motion
Thank you guys for opening my eyes. I will buy Dahua equipment for my house. We have some stores here in Romania and the prices seem good. Indeed I found some comparisons and Dahua is very feature rich, in fact is everything I needed.
IAmATeaf
Known around here
Andy @EMPIRETECANDY on these forums is a seller/reseller of Dahua and some Hikvision cams, might be worth contacting him to get prices.
I’ve ordered from him twice now and no issues whatsoever and the cams were on my doorstep to the UK in around 5 days.
I’ve ordered from him twice now and no issues whatsoever and the cams were on my doorstep to the UK in around 5 days.
I am working through a power surge issue right now that took our my entire system. Per insurance I needed someone to come out to verify anything that is bad over $500 value.
So I had to get a tech in to verify my NVR and cams were bad. When I sent the pricing of my cameras and NVR over to them from Andy they initially said no they cant believe cameras and a NVR cost that much. THey sent me a link to a complete set up from Reolink for under $500 that they were going to replace my system with.......
So I had to get a tech in to verify my NVR and cams were bad. When I sent the pricing of my cameras and NVR over to them from Andy they initially said no they cant believe cameras and a NVR cost that much. THey sent me a link to a complete set up from Reolink for under $500 that they were going to replace my system with.......
EMPIRETECANDY
IPCT Vendor
That is not good. You just show them the invoice you pay and send amazon links.
WTF sounds like some cut-rate insurance.
Show them the model numbers you have with links to Amazon - if anything the prices are higher now.
And show them picture differences between the $500 Reolink system versus yours.
EMPIRETECANDY
IPCT Vendor
The insurance is playing some trick, 500usd even can't buy any camera on high end ones.
sebastiantombs
Known around here
Have a look at the language in your policy. There should be a "like kind and quality" clause regarding replacement equipment. I beat up my insurance company over that, years ago, to get a Jag MK10 repaired back to original.
looney2ns
IPCT Contributor
Geez, just keep in mind the insurance company is not your friend, they will try every trick in the book to get off as cheap as they can.
I looked around for where to place my post and questions and came to the conclusion, that this thread may actually be fitting, as it draws fast attention (the key word) and is on topic. (TLDNR: I look for an alternative now)
Before I go on, here is a disclaimer: I really wanted to like reolink. I did. It would have been so nice if their low priced products worked well at night. I never would have been here. But...
I own a Reolink Argus 3 pro. To be fair to the company, the detection does work without a known miss yet: All person alerts were true person alerts. 100% spot on. And every time I passed, I got a person alert. It never missed me. The camera also recorded many other alerts, but none of them contained a person. Birds, laundry... They were all labled as non-person correctly. I am getting to the point where I would dare to enable the siren alarm at night. For me, that kind of detection is good enough. I'll give them credit here.
However, the footage at night is basically useless. I can see my porch brightly and a ringwraith moving about. Which is very bad! And I find no way to improve it. There is no obvious control over shutter speed. Does anyone know if lowering the brightness setting on the camera will affect the shutter speed? There are several such settings. Using the LED color spotlights doesn't help. Even the porchlight doesn't help.
My very cheap Reolink Lumus works the other way around. It has a big enough sensor (1/2.8") for full HD and a controllable shutter speed. On default, the ringwraith is still roaming about, but if I shorten the shutter time manually, I start to decloak and turn into someone recognizable albeit semi transparent. But this cam has neither battery nor smart detection algorithms. But at least it has a chance to do the job at night.
Now here are my questions:
Does the battery operated Reolink Argus 2e (fullHD on 1/2.8") have a shutter speed setting to deblur moving people? Maybe some reolink owner could tell me? The setting is pretty well hidden on the Lumus.
Is there a battery operated outdoor camera with decent night vision and perhaps even an intelligent detection beyond PIR?
Before I go on, here is a disclaimer: I really wanted to like reolink. I did. It would have been so nice if their low priced products worked well at night. I never would have been here. But...
I own a Reolink Argus 3 pro. To be fair to the company, the detection does work without a known miss yet: All person alerts were true person alerts. 100% spot on. And every time I passed, I got a person alert. It never missed me. The camera also recorded many other alerts, but none of them contained a person. Birds, laundry... They were all labled as non-person correctly. I am getting to the point where I would dare to enable the siren alarm at night. For me, that kind of detection is good enough. I'll give them credit here.
However, the footage at night is basically useless. I can see my porch brightly and a ringwraith moving about. Which is very bad! And I find no way to improve it. There is no obvious control over shutter speed. Does anyone know if lowering the brightness setting on the camera will affect the shutter speed? There are several such settings. Using the LED color spotlights doesn't help. Even the porchlight doesn't help.
My very cheap Reolink Lumus works the other way around. It has a big enough sensor (1/2.8") for full HD and a controllable shutter speed. On default, the ringwraith is still roaming about, but if I shorten the shutter time manually, I start to decloak and turn into someone recognizable albeit semi transparent. But this cam has neither battery nor smart detection algorithms. But at least it has a chance to do the job at night.
Now here are my questions:
Does the battery operated Reolink Argus 2e (fullHD on 1/2.8") have a shutter speed setting to deblur moving people? Maybe some reolink owner could tell me? The setting is pretty well hidden on the Lumus.
Is there a battery operated outdoor camera with decent night vision and perhaps even an intelligent detection beyond PIR?
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See my responses in your other thread
Hello everyone, I most probably need your help ;-)
Hello everyone! I have registered here to benefit from your compiled experience. My minimum goal is to recognize a moving person at night at 10 ft. or less. If the person is unknown, the ability to identify would be great. There are several light sources present, street lights, motion activated...
And to answer your new questions here:
"Does anyone know if lowering the brightness setting on the camera will affect the shutter speed?" That will slow the shutter speed even more.
As I have tried to explain to you, Reolink (and most consumer grade cameras) favor nice bright static images at night over performance. So at some point even if you can set shutter settings, the camera will override your input in favor of a nice bright image. This is done by slowing down the shutter and increasing the gain. So then you see what Reolinks are notorious for - ghost blur invisible person images at night.
So the difference between say a Dahua and a Reolink is that you can set parameters on the Dahua and it will hold. If you set parameters on the reolink that would result in a darker image the algorithm internally says "idiot alert" and it won't let you set parameters that the firmware thinks will result in not displaying a nice bright image. Don't believe me, set the shutter to 1/10,000 at night and the image should be completely black. It won't with the reolink...or any cheap camera. It will override your 1/10,000 shutter and favor a bright image. It is a good test to determine how good the camera is.
I actually did that on the cheap Reolink Lumus at night while in BW mode. I decreased the max shutter speed in increments from 125ms and the image got indeed darker with every step. At the same time, I started to be less blurred when moving. I still noticed a decrease in brightness when I switched from 20ms to 10ms. But while I turned into something recognizable, I started to gain transparency. I read in another post of yours that reducing gain might help here. I will check that out next. The camera holds these settings.
I didn't see much difference when doing this in color mode, so the setting may not take effect in that mode.
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Yes the faster the shutter, the more light that is needed, so the darker the image gets.
Please post an example of a freeze-frame still you took from an object in motion with that camera.
And then some cams will start to play with the other parameters like gain to brighten the image, and then you get the invisible man.
Try 0.1ms and the image should be completely black at night unless you have a ton of stadium quality light. That will prove if the camera holds user settings.
But if you can get down to 10ms (1/100 shutter) on a reolink at night AND produce an IDENTIFY capture of an object in motion then maybe you will be the first to prove in this thread that an IDENTIFY capture can be obtained from an object in motion at night with a reolink LOL.
Reolink: Deconstruction of a dangerous misleading youtube review "Finding the BEST 4K Security Camera NVR Package (Reolink vs Amcrest vs Swann)"
Executive Summary: DO NOT be a sheep. Ask what a reviewer can be missing, ask if a reviewer is using hype words to sell the cheapest product. Test your cameras and kits right away. Just do a bench test. Test real world conditions. Test moving suspects. Test at night, test at day. Use a test rig...
looney2ns
IPCT Contributor
Nope, there is not. Stay away from Wifi cams if you expect any reliability and able to capture useful images.
Same goes for Reolink, a junk company, stay away.
As I stated "somewhere" I am trying to capture a region which gets a lot of light. I can still read a page. All I am saying is that the more expensive argus 3 pro is not capable to produce a recognizable image of me moving (even with it's lights added), the much cheaper lumus does manage after tweaking the shutter, without adding it's lights. I had not read about the gain when I tested, but I will try that in combination. And I don't think I said Identify in that regard, I used recognize.
I would get some pics, but I am currently totally absorbed by struggling with the T5442T. That is all new territory and quite a bit of it.
To satisfy your immediate curiosity, I just did that all the way to 0 ms. The image is then dark. Pitch black! However, when I raise the illuminating light to the point where color mode kicks in, it switches back to color and ignores the setting. If I turn off enough lights, it switches back to infrared and goes pitchblack. So this setting is for IR only. I get back to it once I find the time.
I just ran a comparison of several of my cams in my back yard, full moon. I set the cams up on a ladder at the hight of the bushes, then I tried to sneak in around a corner in about 20 ft distance. Infrared camera lights on. I had the cams set to 20ms shutter maximum, gain at 1/3 of the gain scale. Recording on motion detection.
The results varied greatly:
My Andy-tek 5442T zoom (set for about 90° fov) caught me when I came around the corner. When I got nearer, I looked as I do on classic B/W pictures. Clear winner.
I also bought a cheap Dahua 2231 3.6mm 2MP on 1/2.8". It took a little longer to detect me (or it is due to the shorter pre-buffer). The footage looks OK, slightly more pixelated due to 2MP vs 4MP. More contrast, less nuances, less detail.
Reolink Lumus (same resolution and sensor size as Dahua 2231 but 2.8mm): Struggles. Catches me later than the 2231 (uses PIR, so it needs to detect my IR-signature but has pre-recording too). Picture is darker, even more contrast, less nuances. I can be recognized once close enough, but it is not comparable to the 2231 in clarity.
Reolink 520 only shows darkness without the 16(!) LEDS turned on. It was full moon and all other cams showed something without LED. Not the 520 with 5MP on 1/2.7"! Motion detection got me a little later than the 2231 but before the Lumus' PIR did. Picture quality was way below even the Lumus.
Conclusion: The claim made in this forum (a 2MP Dahua will run circles around a 4MP Reolink at night) is no exaggeration. The comparison is somewhat skewed, as the Reolink 520 costs a bit less than the Dahua 2231 (both sell for under $100). But if night motion matters, the Dahua 2231 is at least an option while the Reolink 520 simply is not. If night motion really matters, then there is no question. For about twice the price of a Dahua 2231 one gets a T5442T, which does the job amazingly well in comparison to the other three contenders.
After running this test, I could easily decide what camera models to get: The 5442 offers the best performance for the dollar.
I ordered a 2231S as a test camera for a simple reason: It offers the suggested resolution to sensor ratio for decent starlight vision while being significantly cheaper than the EmpireTech T5442T Series. I wanted to know if it would be a viable alternative.
The results varied greatly:
My Andy-tek 5442T zoom (set for about 90° fov) caught me when I came around the corner. When I got nearer, I looked as I do on classic B/W pictures. Clear winner.
I also bought a cheap Dahua 2231 3.6mm 2MP on 1/2.8". It took a little longer to detect me (or it is due to the shorter pre-buffer). The footage looks OK, slightly more pixelated due to 2MP vs 4MP. More contrast, less nuances, less detail.
Reolink Lumus (same resolution and sensor size as Dahua 2231 but 2.8mm): Struggles. Catches me later than the 2231 (uses PIR, so it needs to detect my IR-signature but has pre-recording too). Picture is darker, even more contrast, less nuances. I can be recognized once close enough, but it is not comparable to the 2231 in clarity.
Reolink 520 only shows darkness without the 16(!) LEDS turned on. It was full moon and all other cams showed something without LED. Not the 520 with 5MP on 1/2.7"! Motion detection got me a little later than the 2231 but before the Lumus' PIR did. Picture quality was way below even the Lumus.
Conclusion: The claim made in this forum (a 2MP Dahua will run circles around a 4MP Reolink at night) is no exaggeration. The comparison is somewhat skewed, as the Reolink 520 costs a bit less than the Dahua 2231 (both sell for under $100). But if night motion matters, the Dahua 2231 is at least an option while the Reolink 520 simply is not. If night motion really matters, then there is no question. For about twice the price of a Dahua 2231 one gets a T5442T, which does the job amazingly well in comparison to the other three contenders.
After running this test, I could easily decide what camera models to get: The 5442 offers the best performance for the dollar.
I ordered a 2231S as a test camera for a simple reason: It offers the suggested resolution to sensor ratio for decent starlight vision while being significantly cheaper than the EmpireTech T5442T Series. I wanted to know if it would be a viable alternative.
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