Review-Dahua IPC-HFW7842HP-Z AI, ANPR Ultra 8MP Varifocal Starlight Cam

[EMPIRETECANDY]

Setting IR to auto still is not working with this cam or others of the same series.

View attachment 47721 View attachment 47722

I have Automobile AI filtering working well now.

I asked an engineer today, here is his thought.

The first thing I would do to check the Smart IR is lock entirely the exposure. Now you don't know if it is smart IR reacting, or it is just the camera's exposure reacting. There is also a question on how is the exposure metering system working.

 

[Parley]

Thanks Andy. Working with the Dahua engineers will only make the product better.

 

[looney2ns]

View attachment 47732
At 4:23 the pic is very good and very close to the camera.

That shot was taken when the camera was zoomed all the way in, meaning that is most likely Zoom priority trying to work. This is the same problem that @bigredfish has with his test camera. Washing out faces with IR.
All my settings were at factory default, which means Zoom Priority was in use.
Compared to the 5231 cams, the IR does a very poor job with faces on these cameras.

 

[ThomasPI]

I was just about to ask, your response timing dead on.

 

[Dave Lonsdale]

Bit rate on the 8mp is now at 12,228
See attached.

Thanks for posting the 8MP vs 2MP snapshot comparison looney2ns. At 12Mbps, the 8MP cam does show more detail than your snapshot last Friday when it was set to 8Mbps. But to me, your 2Mbps cam shows very nearly as much detail as the 8MP at 12Mbps and more than the 8MP at 8Mbps. Do you agree? So, an argument could be that there's too much data to transfer in a typical system. And with other settings unchanged, if my 10 cam system comprised 8MP/12Mbps cams, my 2TB storage would be gobbled in far less than one day (I record continuously).

 

[Dave Lonsdale]

I test the 7442 one, the IR work great.

Nighttime select HLC can make the pic not too bright, pics looks more fresh.

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I tested at storgae room, very dark, seems the IR light works ok.I make some walking, also ok.

View attachment 47744

It's interesting to see that in general the city scene in colour shows more detail than when in monochrome except for the HUAWEI building in the far distance.

 

[looney2ns]

Thanks for posting the 8MP vs 2MP snapshot comparison looney2ns. At 12Mbps, the 8MP cam does show more detail than your snapshot last Friday when it was set to 8Mbps. But to me, your 2Mbps cam shows very nearly as much detail as the 8MP at 12Mbps and more than the 8MP at 8Mbps. Do you agree? So, an argument could be that there's too much data to transfer in a typical system. And with other settings unchanged, if my 10 cam system comprised 8MP/12Mbps cams, my 2TB storage would be gobbled in far less than one day (I record continuously).

Yes, I agree, and I should note: The 5231ze that the 2mp shot cam from is set to:

 

[Steveee]

Some night video from my 7842, No security light coming on this time.
I didn't think this was to bad for a 8mp cam at night, but I might have settings wrong, I'm quite new to all this.

 

[looney2ns]

Car captures.

 

[Wildcat_1]

That shot was taken when the camera was zoomed all the way in, meaning that is most likely Zoom priority trying to work. This is the same problem that @bigredfish has with his test camera. Washing out faces with IR.
All my settings were at factory default, which means Zoom Priority was in use.
Compared to the 5231 cams, the IR does a very poor job with faces on these cameras.

@looney2ns yes this is frustrating not having the Smart IR as it does make a huge impact and certainly on an AI cam one would argue that this should be a standard. On the B5442 (which washes out similarly and doesn't have Smart IR) I ended up using Manual for the best results and tweaking the Near vs Far to where now it seems 'ok' but still would like to see Smart IR introduced in FW for the 5442 series and especially these newer, even more high end AI cams. While we're asking, I'd like it on the x831 cams as well @EMPIRETECANDY I know you're working with Dahua on trying to get Smart IR on a number of these cams, hope we will see something soon. Thanks as always for your help with this, I know we all appreciate it

 

[Wildcat_1]

Cables must go through the grommet-ed holes regardless, then you can choose to run conduit or out the back of the box. That what you mean?

Yes, just wanted to make sure that if I wanted to mount flush to a wall that I could feed cables horizontally through the back of the junction box. Similarly if I want to run conduit up or across to it, had that option to. Seems like I have both options still with this pre-bundled junction box, in which case, GREAT !

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

@looney2ns yes this is frustrating not having the Smart IR as it does make a huge impact and certainly on an AI cam one would argue that this should be a standard. On the B5442 (which washes out similarly and doesn't have Smart IR) I ended up using Manual for the best results and tweaking the Near vs Far to where now it seems 'ok' but still would like to see Smart IR introduced in FW for the 5442 series and especially these newer, even more high end AI cams. While we're asking, I'd like it on the x831 cams as well @EMPIRETECANDY I know you're working with Dahua on trying to get Smart IR on a number of these cams, hope we will see something soon. Thanks as always for your help with this, I know we all appreciate it

Right now we found one solution to make the camera working better in the night.
Close the WDR in the night and open the HLC and manually adjust it to the working level. Right now till dahua find a solution, we use this way to improve the pics. For the IPC-HDW5231R-ZE, smart IR can adjust itself without manual adjusting. So the firmware still need to do some big updating. For the smart IR issues we are following up.

WDR .





When it meets little light in the night, the IR will be very strong, this is the main problem for the washing out. Like this show. we test on the model IPC-T5442TM-AS-LED one.



The solution close the WDR in the night and open HLC in the night and adjust the data, we can get this pic.

 

[Wildcat_1]

Thanks @EMPIRETECANDY Andy, appreciate you sharing an update with the forum and continuing to work with Dahua on the final solution. As you said HLC or in my case even Manual can help balance this as a workaround for now. Hopefully as you said, in future Smart FW updates Smart IR will be fully introduced to these cams.

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

Thanks @EMPIRETECANDY Andy, appreciate you sharing an update with the forum and continuing to work with Dahua on the final solution. As you said HLC or in my case even Manual can help balance this as a workaround for now. Hopefully as you said, in future Smart FW updates Smart IR will be fully introduced to these cams.

dahua is sending me some report, i will post here on another topic when i get it.

 

[MikeyTech8]

Hopefully as you said, in future Smart FW updates Smart IR will be fully introduced to these cams.

Yep, fingers crossed.

For me, it seems that BLC is much better than HLC for facial identification @ night. Could vary with other models. Still doing a few tests with my new AI model.

@looney2ns - lovely new videos. By any chance can we get some night shots where colour is being forced?

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

I send Looney a latest new firmware, hope we can improve something.

 

[Dave Lonsdale]

Some night video from my 7842, No security light coming on this time.
I didn't think this was to bad for a 8mp cam at night, but I might have settings wrong, I'm quite new to all this.

So why choose an expensive 8MP camera if you could buy 3 x 5231's for the same price as 1 x 7842 and if you so wished, use all three to get a far more comprehensive and detailed view of any scene using less CPU time and hard drive space than just one 7842.

Also, to once again bang the drum about I frames, WHEN RECORDING CONTINUOUSLY, if there's any reason not to use 150 instead of 10 then please tell me what that reason is. My settings:-

All available data in almost every frame is thereby used to deliver the very best resolution image possible. In all of my tests, even a massive moving image is clearer when transferring static data as infrequently as possible. Please try it!

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

So why choose an expensive 8MP camera if you could buy 3 x 5231's for the same price as 1 x 7842 and if you so wished, use all three to get a far more comprehensive and detailed view of any scene using less CPU time and hard drive space than just one 7842.

Also, to once again bang the drum about I frames, WHEN RECORDING CONTINUOUSLY, if there's any reason not to use 150 instead of 10 then please tell me what that reason is. My settings:-
View attachment 47985
All available data in almost every frame is thereby used to deliver the very best resolution image possible. In all of my tests, even a massive moving image is clearer when transferring static data as infrequently as possible. Please try it!

Thanks for your sharing David. This cam mainly we posted the review mainly bring the latest new technology. Looney need more Time to finish this review. Too many new things have to learn. I will invite 1-2 more guys to test this model and show the best capacity of this new cam. IPC-HDW5231R-ZE surely a wonderful cam right now till now. We also met many problems for this model before , lastly it becomes a wonderful one.

 

[Steveee]

I bought the 7842 because of the various AI features it has, to go with my AI NVR, and it has a lot.
I bought 8mp cam because I normally have a motion sensor security light working, I only turned security light of to show IR close up.
I am still learning the various AI features as there are a lot of setting as @looney2ns has significantly more experience than me I'm sure he'll figure them out.
So far im very impressed with this camera, and get very few false alarms .
I don't have the experience of you guys, thanks for tip about I Frames, I'll look into that.

 

[pinko]

So why choose an expensive 8MP camera if you could buy 3 x 5231's for the same price as 1 x 7842

New tech is always more expensive. Simple case of supply and demand. Given you have the budget, would you build a killer 10th gen Intel PC for $5-6k or would you build Multiple PC's, with older processors/lower spec for the same price?
I know what I would choose and it's not the latter, same applies to the cameras. Some people will buy the best/latest, others will grab a few older models. It's nice to at least have a choice.