Courtesy of @EMPIRETECANDY we have another cam to checkout in return for a fair and honest review. Thanks again to Andy! He does such a great job of supporting everyone here.
We have the:
VTO2301R-P
Full specs here: Link
Operators manual: Link
Price approximately $120 shipped.
Purchase here: Link
OR
Purchase here: Link
Night picture depicting the ring around the button being lit.
The good, it's POE, button is lit at night, Ir works well, but only comes on after a doorbell press.
The picture FOV is limited, it will need to be mounted higher than the typical door bell camera as you will see in the videos. It will need to be mounted at around 5ft at a minimum.
Using DMSS app, I had many failures when pushing the button on successfully receiving a notification on my phone. I could initiate a call from my phone with no issue's.
Callers at the door bell could not leave a message.
Callers were not recorded if the call to the phone failed, or if it was not answered.
DMSS is very hit and miss at playing back videos from the SD card in the VTO.
Update 5/12/22:
After lots more futzing around I have gotten it to work reliably.
Here's what finally worked.
I deleted the VTO from DMMS.
I reset the VTO to factory defaults.
Added VTO back to DMMS via P2P.
I had to change the settings in the phone to exclude DMSS from Android power saving.
I had to manually choose a sound file in the phone for the notification sound, otherwise it stayed silent when VTO sent a notification to the phone, even though it was supposed to use a file from the VTO.
Dahua Engineer says that callers not able to leave a message when no answer, will be added in a future firmware update.
Picture isn't up to par for a 2mp cam, but it works just fine for seeing a face near the camera.
Had it up and running about 10 days, and no reboots I've seen.
It works fine with Blue Iris, even though its ONVIF capable, it doesn't have any IVS or Motion detection to take advantage of the ONVIF to send alerts and triggers to BI.
I must give props to the noise reduction in the camera. My neighbor was mowing with his Zero Turn mower, if you are familiar with them, they are loud. No sound of it other than one or two short blips during the 15 minutes he was running it on the other side of my driveway recorded on the VTO. Impressive.
My verdict is that the DB6I is the better all around choice, it would be great if a POE ver of the DB6I would surface.
Video settings:
I used the substream in BI, as that is the only stream that allows 1080p, the main stream is limited to a max of 720p
Frame rate 15fps, bitrate 4mp, H264, scene mode set to auto, BLC turned on, brightness 45, contrast 50, Hue 50, saturation 48, gamma 50, Iframe not adjustable.
Video recorded and exported from Blue Iris
First time I walk up the steps, the IR for both the VTO and my 5442 door cam is on. Second time, just the VTO Ir is on.
A still shot from the VTO:
We have the:
VTO2301R-P
Full specs here: Link
Operators manual: Link
Price approximately $120 shipped.
Purchase here: Link
OR
Purchase here: Link
Night picture depicting the ring around the button being lit.
The good, it's POE, button is lit at night, Ir works well, but only comes on after a doorbell press.
The picture FOV is limited, it will need to be mounted higher than the typical door bell camera as you will see in the videos. It will need to be mounted at around 5ft at a minimum.
Callers at the door bell could not leave a message.
Callers were not recorded if the call to the phone failed, or if it was not answered.
DMSS is very hit and miss at playing back videos from the SD card in the VTO.
Update 5/12/22:
After lots more futzing around I have gotten it to work reliably.
Here's what finally worked.
I deleted the VTO from DMMS.
I reset the VTO to factory defaults.
Added VTO back to DMMS via P2P.
I had to change the settings in the phone to exclude DMSS from Android power saving.
I had to manually choose a sound file in the phone for the notification sound, otherwise it stayed silent when VTO sent a notification to the phone, even though it was supposed to use a file from the VTO.
Dahua Engineer says that callers not able to leave a message when no answer, will be added in a future firmware update.
Picture isn't up to par for a 2mp cam, but it works just fine for seeing a face near the camera.
Had it up and running about 10 days, and no reboots I've seen.
It works fine with Blue Iris, even though its ONVIF capable, it doesn't have any IVS or Motion detection to take advantage of the ONVIF to send alerts and triggers to BI.
I must give props to the noise reduction in the camera. My neighbor was mowing with his Zero Turn mower, if you are familiar with them, they are loud. No sound of it other than one or two short blips during the 15 minutes he was running it on the other side of my driveway recorded on the VTO. Impressive.
My verdict is that the DB6I is the better all around choice, it would be great if a POE ver of the DB6I would surface.
Video settings:
I used the substream in BI, as that is the only stream that allows 1080p, the main stream is limited to a max of 720p
Frame rate 15fps, bitrate 4mp, H264, scene mode set to auto, BLC turned on, brightness 45, contrast 50, Hue 50, saturation 48, gamma 50, Iframe not adjustable.
Video recorded and exported from Blue Iris
First time I walk up the steps, the IR for both the VTO and my 5442 door cam is on. Second time, just the VTO Ir is on.
A still shot from the VTO:
Last edited:
It started doing that about six months after it was installed. The point being that failure in that short a time, and out of the return period, just isn't acceptable. Then again, it's a piece of consumer level junk in the first place. I had hoped for better, but got worse. Simple answer for me is that unless it's PoE it's just not going to be used on my system.
