Reolink?

There is no Dahua equivalent of any Reostink. Try a IPC-2231T-ZS, review here Review-OEM IPC-T2231T-ZS 2mp Varifocal Starlight Camera . It's a 2MP turret with a 13.5mm varifocal lens. It'll blow the Reostink away. Granted, it's a little more expensive but your comparing Kool Aid to champagne.
 
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Mundo said:
I understand all the comments about Reolink. I have three and they are ok but not having anything else I have nothing to compare against.
I'd like to give Dahua or Hikvision a try but it's really confusing to find the right model. There seems to be so many varients, with different firmware.
So would someone help me and recommend something comparable to a Reolink 420. I realise I'll be paying more but I can't be spending hundreds.
Thanks..
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@Mundo - I believe that the camera you mention is an eyeball cam. Take a look at this shortlist of cams that are Dahua eyeballs. Any of these should run circles around that Reo.

IPC-T5241TM-AS 2MP - $120'ish
1/2.8” 2Megapixel progressive scan STARVIS™ CMOS
2.8 mm fixed lens (3.6 mm, 6.0 mm optional)
Built-in MIC

*** This next one is my favorite overall
IPC-HDW5231R-ZE 2MP- $160'ish
1/2.8” 2Megapixel progressive scan STARVIS
2.7mm ~13.5mm motorized lens
Built-in MIC

IPC-HDW2231R-ZS - $123'ish
1/2.8” 2Megapixel progressive StarvisTM CMOS
2.7~13.5mm varifocal lens
IP67, PoE
No Mic

IPC-T5442TM-AS-LED - $150'ish
4MP Starlight+ WDR Eyeball AI Network Camera
1/1.8” 4Megapixel progressive scan CMOS
2.8mm fixed lens (3.6mm, 6mm optional)
Built-in Mic

If $$$ really an issue you can look at this one which while on the lower end, I would argue would still outperform the Reolink

IPC-T2431T-AS 4MP Starlight - $79'ish
2.8mm or 3.6mm fixed lens
4MP, 1/3” CMOS image sensor
Built-in MIC

So there is the list. 5 cameras that if you purchased, you would never go back to Reolink again. Take some time and figure out what your needs are. Study the cliff notes and items in the wiki. Each one of these cams has potentially different use cases due to light conditions, fixed versus varifocal lenses ...etc. Only you know what would work best in your location. For questions, that's what the forum is here for. Good luck.
 
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I've had four reolink wifi cameras for a long time and found them great with BlueIris. They are well priced and have features I want (5ghz, optical zoom, great quality to identify faces etc)

But something happened recently which has definitely lowered my opinion of them.

I upgraded my firmwares on my cameras and noticed that the shutter speed option doesn't work at all which means that motion is blurry.

I've been talking to their support so I'm still hoping on a resolution as I don't have a copy of the stock firmware, but its still quite disappointing that there is no quick fix like downloading the stock firmware.
 
minecart1 said:
I've had four reolink wifi cameras for a long time and found them great with BlueIris. They are well priced and have features I want (5ghz, optical zoom, great quality to identify faces etc)

But something happened recently which has definitely lowered my opinion of them.

I upgraded my firmwares on my cameras and noticed that the shutter speed option doesn't work at all which means that motion is blurry.

I've been talking to their support so I'm still hoping on a resolution as I don't have a copy of the stock firmware, but its still quite disappointing that there is no quick fix like downloading the stock firmware.
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Your issue is based more in the fact that Reolink does not allow you to adjust the frame interval not the shutter speed. Blue Iris works best when you can align the FPS and I-Frame interval to be set the same. I learned the same the hard way when I bought a Reolink solely because it was cheap. You have no idea how much those cameras stink until you get a quality Dahua or Hikvision to compare it to. I would never go back.
 
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mikeynags said:
Your issue is based more in the fact that Reolink does not allow you to adjust the frame interval not the shutter speed. Blue Iris works best when you can align the FPS and I-Frame interval to be set the same. I learned the same the hard way when I bought a Reolink solely because it was cheap. You have no idea how much those cameras stink until you get a quality Dahua or Hikvision to compare it to. I would never go back.
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Fair point, I was happy with the night quality when I could adjust the shutter speed to get rid of motion blur, even from cars driving past.

Any suggestions on a Dahua or Hikvision with Wifi for outdoors?

I know wifi is disliked by many but I like it myself, its easy to get good frame rates at high resolution if you have something decent like ubiquiti.
 
minecart1 said:
Fair point, I was happy with the night quality when I could adjust the shutter speed to get rid of motion blur, even from cars driving past.

Any suggestions on a Dahua or Hikvision with Wifi for outdoors?

I know wifi is disliked by many but I like it myself, its easy to get good frame rates at high resolution if you have something decent like ubiquiti.
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I run zero cams outdoors with wifi so, I have no experience there. Maybe someone else can chime in with a suggestion. I take it then you have no possibility of outdoor Ethernet runs then?
 
mikeynags said:
I run zero cams outdoors with wifi so, I have no experience there. Maybe someone else can chime in with a suggestion. I take it then you have no possibility of outdoor Ethernet runs then?
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Its more that I don't see the need and find wifi very convenient and well performing, and it costs as little as $50 USD.

the cost and effort to do cable everything doesn't seem worth it to me, although I guess It might enable access to some higher end cameras that don't have wifi.
 
minecart1 said:
Its more that I don't see the need and find wifi very convenient and well performing.

the cost and effort to do it doesn't seem worth it to me, although I guess It might enable access to some higher end cameras that don't have wifi.
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Understood. WiFi cams are more consumer oriented and when you look at the type of cams made by Dahua and Hikvision that are typically discussed here, they are more aimed at the "commercial" type of use-case. You are correct though, you can do some really great things like low light operation, full-time color and license plate reading if you upgrade your cameras. Of course, the added expense to run ethernet would have to be factored. I ran all my Cat5 connections myself. I had one that was really difficult to get to that I had an electrician (who was working on something else for me at the time) run for me. It's made such a difference. I only have 1 or 2 wifi cams left and they are in a non-critical role at this time and I may do away with them altogether. All my critical cameras are wired. Good luck in your search - this camera thing turns into more of a hobby than anything else :)
 
I tried a WiFi camera when I first started with cameras. It was outside, mounted in a tree. The first problem was getting power, a wire, out there. The second problem was dropouts happening all too often. In the end I ended up hand digging trenches and using conduit, with flex conduit up the trees (expanding system). No dropouts with PoE.

I know WiFi has improved since then, but bandwidth still seems to be a problem when using more than a few, plus a 15 year old with an app gotten off the internet can take down your WiFi pretty effectively. Granted the chance of that happening is small, but Murphy can be a bitch.
 
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sebastiantombs said:
I know WiFi has improved since then, but bandwidth still seems to be a problem when using more than a few, plus a 15 year old with an app gotten off the internet can take down your WiFi pretty effectively. Granted the chance of that happening is small, but Murphy can be a bitch.
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Bandwidth really isn't an issue if you have decent wireless hardware, for example Ubiquiti.

Also curious what this app is called? I've never heard of a simple app being able to do that.

A 2.4/5ghz jammer would work, but then so would a simple mask and that means wired won't be useful either.
 
minecart1 said:
Its more that I don't see the need and find wifi very convenient and well performing, and it costs as little as $50 USD.

the cost and effort to do cable everything doesn't seem worth it to me, although I guess It might enable access to some higher end cameras that don't have wifi.
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the cost of running cable is well worth the stability..wifi is crap even with a ubiquiti access point. You will find out soon enough. All cameras can be made "wifi" with a cheap wifi bridge. Its just not worth it.
 
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minecart1 said:
I've had four reolink wifi cameras for a long time and found them great with BlueIris. They are well priced and have features I want (5ghz, optical zoom, great quality to identify faces etc)

But something happened recently which has definitely lowered my opinion of them.

I upgraded my firmwares on my cameras and noticed that the shutter speed option doesn't work at all which means that motion is blurry.

I've been talking to their support so I'm still hoping on a resolution as I don't have a copy of the stock firmware, but its still quite disappointing that there is no quick fix like downloading the stock firmware.
Click to expand...
reolink cameras are not compatible with blue iris. This is because the iframe cannot be adjusted, therefore you will see tearing in the video unless you reencode the video at the cost of significant cpu power. They deliberately automatically adjust the exposure to 1/12 in low light so the static image looks awesome but any movement will be blurry.
 
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fenderman said:
the cost of running cable is well worth the stability..wifi is crap even with a ubiquiti access point. You will find out soon enough. All cameras can be made "wifi" with a cheap wifi bridge. Its just not worth it.
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My first camera was purchased in 2017 and I've yet to have issues.

I think the main issue is making sure it has strong signal, as otherwise weird things happen. My upgrade to ubiquiti made this easier as it gives you a good indicator of devices that don't have good signal.

fenderman said:
reolink cameras are not compatible with blue iris. This is because the iframe cannot be adjusted, therefore you will see tearing in the video unless you reencode the video at the cost of significant cpu power. They deliberately automatically adjust the exposure to 1/12 in low light so the static image looks awesome but any movement will be blurry.
Click to expand...

I'm aware of the iframe issue but can't find any issue with tearing, I tried to look for a video showing an example but haven't found it. I went through some recorded videos frame by frame in VLC but can't find any tearing between frames.

The automatic adjusting of exposure is only if you set it to auto, thats why I had manual shutter set so I wouldn't get blurry video.

They work fine with blueiris except for the fact that you can't have hardware acceleration, CPU usage is quite good if you record directly to disc, hardware acceleration would be nice though.
 
minecart1 said:
My first camera was purchased in 2017 and I've yet to have issues.

I think the main issue is making sure it has strong signal, as otherwise weird things happen. My upgrade to ubiquiti made this easier as it gives you a good indicator of devices that don't have good signal.



I'm aware of the iframe issue but can't find any issue with tearing, I tried to look for a video showing an example but haven't found it. I went through some recorded videos frame by frame in VLC but can't find any tearing between frames.

The automatic adjusting of exposure is only if you set it to auto, thats why I had manual shutter set so I wouldn't get blurry video.

They work fine with blueiris except for the fact that you can't have hardware acceleration, CPU usage is quite good if you record directly to disc, hardware acceleration would be nice though.
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You have not watched all your video to know that you missed video. It is impossible to have 100 percent uptime with wifi, impossible. ubiquiti is good and but it cannot compensate for the poor wifi in the camera. Even if you used a ubiquiti bridge from the camera you would have issues with constant streaming. Video steams that come from a camera to BI cannot suffer packet loss.
You may not be running direct to disk or not notice the tearing/stutter as it only occurs in recorded video and when the iframe interval is at specific points. This is not related to wifi and it will occur on a wired reolink camera. It will occur for certain when you need the video the most - Murphy says so.
Reolink is pure trash run by liars and scammers. They should be avoided at all costs.
 
fenderman said:
You have not watched all your video to know that you missed video. It is impossible to have 100 percent uptime with wifi, impossible. ubiquiti is good and but it cannot compensate for the poor wifi in the camera. Even if you used a ubiquiti bridge from the camera you would have issues with constant streaming. Video steams that come from a camera to BI cannot suffer packet loss.
You may not be running direct to disk or not notice the tearing/stutter as it only occurs in recorded video and when the iframe interval is at specific points. This is not related to wifi and it will occur on a wired reolink camera. It will occur for certain when you need the video the most - Murphy says so.
Reolink is pure trash run by liars and scammers. They should be avoided at all costs.
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Maybe I'm not very good at spotting it but I've watched multiple cars drive past frame by frame on my recorded video and I can't see any tearing. If there was any, its definitely not often enough for it to be a problem.

I do run direct to disc. Its possible I'm losing footage but I've never noticed it when watching footage.
 
Just for fun, have a look at BI stats and see what the frame, iframe and bit rates really are. Watch for a minute or two That'll tell you an awful lot about how Reolink cheats with their specs.
 
Yup, that's the bad part. It doesn't hold steady either, does it?

As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding -

Reolink 4MP with lots of additional IR, partial frame -

reolink.JPG

Dahua 5442, 4MP, with ambient light from a streetlight 200 feet away and, obviously, no IR. The building in the top center is about 350 feet away and that's moonlight causing the tree shadows -

5442.JPG
 
sebastiantombs said:
Yup, that's the bad part. It doesn't hold steady either, does it?

As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding -

Reolink 4MP with lots of additional IR, partial frame -



Dahua 5442, 4MP, with ambient light from a streetlight 200 feet away and, obviously, no IR. The building in the top center is about 350 feet away and that's moonlight causing the tree shadows -
Click to expand...

the iframe never changes and the bitrate and framerate are very steady.

Thats a very surprising image from the dahua, I'm very impressed although I'd love to see the same area just for comparison purposes.
 
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