Review - Dahua SD49225XA-HNR 2MP 25x Starlight + IR PTZ AI Camera with Deep IVS & SMD Plus

sebastiantombs

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I believe that motion limitation is baked into a chip and not in the firmware. I could certainly be wrong about that but that's the impression I get. As I said in another thread, the number of motion events of the PTZ can get stupid high really fast and that has to be considered when buying a PTZ that will be on constant patrol.
 

wrapter

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He says he reset the cycle count .
 

Ryushin

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Unfortunately he left no instructions on how to fix it, other than he used ssh. I logged into the camera using ssh (username admin with a password of 7ujMko0<your admin password goes here>. What I can do there is essentially useless and I could drop to another shell that the help menu shows. Typing shell lists "Domain Accounts:" Probably some secret menu items for Dahua's support staff to use. Some googling did not results in any links I could fine showing anything further.

I message @Speed666 to see if he could provide me with information on how he managed to reset it.
 

Ryushin

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Have not had time to looks at this for the last month or so. Camera now says Locked Status, ATWDisabled, which I assume means Auto Tracking Disabled as it would have been tracking me since I was outside removing some snow outside. Blue Iris is still having the camera moving on it's patrol though without a problem. @Speed666 has not responded to my PM or replied to a thread asking how he did it. I find it terrible that a manufacture would disable something that was working fine after it his some kind of artificial threshold.
 

Sybertiger

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Curios to know how long ago you installed this PTZ and on average, how many times it auto tracked per day. And, is there a counter you can view. Does reflashing the firmware reset the count?

p.s. I haven't read the entire thread, so apologies if questions where already answered.
 
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wittaj

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Curios to know how long ago you installed this PTZ and on average, how many times it auto tracked per day. And, is there a counter you can view. Does reflashing the firmware reset the count?
It sounds like he had it on patrol and that is likely why it hit the limit. And no flashing the firmware does not reset the count.
 

Ryushin

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Curios to know how long ago you installed this PTZ and on average, how many times it auto tracked per day. And, is there a counter you can view. Does reflashing the firmware reset the count?

p.s. I haven't read the entire thread, so apologies if questions where already answered.
Installed it July 28, 2021. It moves on PTZ patrol every 7 seconds. At least Blue Iris is still causing the camera to move on it's patrol. But the auto tracking is now disabled. From what I gather @Speed666 is able to hack the firmware.

I've emailed Andy again asking if can make me a modified firmware. If @Speed666 can do it, I'm sure Andy and his engineers can do it.
 

The Automation Guy

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I definitely think the camera has hit it's movement limit. With a 7 second patrol, you are moving the camera 12,342 times a day and 4.5 million movements a year! Since July 28, 2021, the camera has moved over 6.2 millions times just on patrol (not counting any other movement like tracking, etc).
 

Ryushin

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Yea, for sure. What irks me is the artificial limit. It's not like the camera is broken. I'm use to repairing stuff. So when it stops working, I'll replace the broken part in it. But someone laughed at me when I suggested that as I guess it's not easy to get parts.
 

ljw2k

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Not when you think of say a cars piston how many ups and downs that moves per second per min and per hour, if that was the case you would be lucky to get a day out of a brand new car :)

So I disagree sorry the camera should not have it written into it to stop after so many movements and should be a hardware failure only not software.
 

cams2007

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On a similar note to Ryushin's issue, does anyone have any recommendations to stop the camera from auto tracking snowflakes when it is snowing? I tried adding a minimum size in the IVR settings but that doesn't seem to have helped, maybe it is still to small.
 

wittaj

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On a similar note to Ryushin's issue, does anyone have any recommendations to stop the camera from auto tracking snowflakes when it is snowing? I tried adding a minimum size in the IVR settings but that doesn't seem to have helped, maybe it is still to small.
Mine never tracks for snowflakes - are you using the AI features for human and vehicle (or whichever one you want?) or are you using it based on size or simply motion detection?

For AI, you should leave min size as 0,0 and only add in a min size if 0,0 results in false triggers.

Are you using default/auto settings for things like shutter, brightness, etc.?

Can you post a sample video clip and your camera settings?
 

cams2007

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Great, will make the adjustments and wait for some snow. Will update when I have some results. Thank you both for the responses.
 

wittaj

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Great, will make the adjustments and wait for some snow. Will update when I have some results. Thank you both for the responses.
It appears you have made the mistake that most do - aim for a nice bright static image. But then with the gain cranked up and a slower shutter, the snow becomes long and tricking the AI in to thinking it is human.

It is a matter of getting the brightness/contrast/shutter speed, etc. adjusted, and these can change during different seasons for some FoVs.

I always knew that you shouldn't chase a bright picture - it looks nice and people migrate towards a brighter TV for example, but upon closer examination, most images need to be toned down in order to get all the details. You will be surprised how much changing a parameter like gamma could impact tracking or the AI. For example, if you have a pesky tree or something in the middle of the view during an autotrack, just by changing some image parameters you can get autotrack to pass it. Making the image a little darker at night actually helped with tracking someone across the street, which was opposite of what I thought you would think to do. So add some contrast to your image and see if it improves.

Here is my "standard" post that many use as a start for dialing in day and night that helps get the clean captures. These are done within the camera GUI thru a web browser.

Every field of view is different, but I have found you need contrast to usually be 6-8 higher than the brightness number at night.

We want the ability to freeze frame capture a clean image from the video at night, and that is only done with a shutter of 1/60 or faster. At night, default/auto may be on 1/12s shutter or worse to make the image bright.

In my opinion, shutter (exposure) and gain are the two most important parameters and then base the others off of it. Shutter is more important than FPS. It is the shutter speed that prevents motion blur, not FPS. 15 FPS is more than enough for surveillance cameras as we are not producing Hollywood movies. Match iframes to FPS. 15FPS is all that is usually needed.

Many people do not realize there is manual shutter that lets you adjust shutter and gain and a shutter priority that only lets you adjust shutter speed but not gain. The higher the gain, the bigger the noise and see-through ghosting start to appear because the noise is amplified. Most people select shutter priority and run a faster shutter than they should because it is likely being done at 100 gain, so it is actually defeating their purpose of a faster shutter.

Go into shutter settings and change to manual shutter and start with custom shutter as ms and change to 0-8.3ms and gain 0-50 (night) and 0-4ms exposure and 0-30 gain (day)for starters. Auto could have a shutter speed of 100ms or more with a gain at 100 and shutter priority could result in gain up at 100 which will contribute to significant ghosting and that blinding white you will get from the infrared or white light.

Now what you will notice immediately at night is that your image gets A LOT darker. That faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. But it is a balance. The nice bright night static image results in Casper blur and ghost during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?

In the daytime, if it is still too bright, then drop the 4ms down to 3ms then 2ms, etc. You have to play with it for your field of view.

Then at night, if it is too dark, then start adding ms to the time. Go to 10ms, 12ms, etc. until you find what you feel is acceptable as an image. Then have someone walk around and see if you can get a clean shot. Try not to go above 16.67ms (but certainly not above 30ms) as that tends to be the point where blur starts to occur. Conversely, if it is still bright, then drop down in time to get a faster shutter.

You can also adjust brightness and contrast to improve the image.

You can also add some gain to brighten the image - but the higher the gain, the more ghosting you get. Some cameras can go to 70 or so before it is an issue and some can't go over 50.

But adjusting those two settings will have the biggest impact. The next one is noise reduction. Want to keep that as low as possible. Depending on the amount of light you have, you might be able to get down to 40 or so at night (again camera dependent) and 20-30 during the day, but take it as low as you can before it gets too noisy. Again this one is a balance as well. Too smooth and no noise can result in soft images and contribute to blur.

Do not use backlight features until you have exhausted every other parameter setting. And if you do have to use backlight, take it down as low as possible.

After every setting adjustment, have someone walk around outside and see if you can freeze-frame to get a clean image. If not, keep changing until you do. Clean motion pictures are what we are after, not a clean static image.
 
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