Semi-dead Dahua: PTZ that no longer will PTZ

bigrednz

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I'm curious if anyone on here has seen a similar failure before - I have a DH-SD29204UE-GN PTZ that will no longer pan or tilt (makes a clicking/crunching noise) and the IR LEDs no longer work either. Zoom and video streams still work.

Background:
My parents built a house on poles, on a steep section that slopes down from the road. I set them up with cameras on upper side of the house, covering entrances, as well as on the sides of the house. They caught a tradesman stealing timber that was stored under their house - he didn't enter from the road but through the bushes from a neighbour. In the end it turned out the guy was a labourer working for a dodgy builder who was doing work next door. The police tracked him down & stolen materials were replaced (it's a small town). This motivated my parents to want a camera under the house as they also have gardening equipment etc stored down there. Due to the wide span, I bought my first PTZ, an inexpensive DH-SD29204UE-GN.

The problem
The PTZ cam worked well initially. I set up an auto-return to keep an eye under the house normally and configured motion triggers on the side-of-house cameras for the PTZ to point & zoom toward either side approach when someone comes down the side of the house. This worked well for several weeks. Then one day, one of the presets was activated, but the camera only adjusted its zoom but didn't pan and tilt all the way to the correct angle. The return also went a bit wrong. It had a successful preset after that, and then failed to do any more pan or tilt operations. Attempts to pan or tilt made an audible clicking/grinding noise (I'm remote so this is based on the microphone only but sounds different and much less normal than when it was working). That night the IR LEDs seemed to fail as the night vision was more or less black + noise. In the morning my father found that the camera was drooping, pointing downwards. He manually tilted & panned it up by hand and subsequent testing shows that it has a normal image during daytime, functioning zoom & focus, but no pan or tilt at all. I've disabled the presets now to avoid further stressing the mechanics.

Has anyone seen a failure like this before? Appears to be a mechanical issue - this is my first foray into PTZ so I'm unsure how robust these things are, my own and parents' various non-PTZ cams have all been flawless for years. I could find no mention on Dahua's data sheet of the endurance of the PTZ functions but estimating less than 1000 operations over the 3 weeks it lasted.
 

The Automation Guy

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That particular camera is rated for indoor use only (one reason it is so inexpensive). It has no weatherproofing at all and is only rated to 90% humidity. Even if it is protected from direct rain, it isn't protected from the 100% humidity conditions when it rains. I suspect moisture has caused an issue with the gears. You may find that you can clean them and it will keep working, or they may have already started to degrade in the moisture.
 

bigrednz

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Oh I totally missed that. All my other cameras are IP67 but model is not.
 

Parley

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I had that camera mounted outside for nearly a year and now my neighbor now has it over his front door out of the weather, but outside. When I had it, I sealed it around the base and where the cable enters. Here is a picture. Of course this does not help you now.

Camera 2B Mounting.JPG
 

bigrednz

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Thanks Parley, still interesting, thanks.

My parents’ place is coastal so it will be brutally salty long term. Under the house is very dry but we had situated the unit further out under the deck for better all around view so water may have got into it from between the timber boards of the deck. For now it’s still functional but ultimately we’ll need to upgrade. I’m vaguely considering a fisheye, but the image may be a bit poor. The location seems a good fit for fisheye with such wide range of possible approaches, but I need to do more research into the night time performance. May do an autopsy when I’ve replaced it and see what failed.
 

MC1987

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This is a common fault with that model. Have seen quite a few of these fail with that problem.
 
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