Side of house camera and neighbor's light issue

[rsg]

Hello
I have a Dahua IPC-HFW1200 covering the side of my house, pointing towards the front of my house. My neighbor has a sunset-sunrise light on that adjoining side. I have masked his side of the fence so it never records his activity.
Here's my problem: at night the camera never turns to night vision mode. My side of the fence is completely dark--I wouldn't see anyone entering the gate and walking to the back of my house.
What adjustments do I need to make in the camera settings or in Blue Iris to fix this?
Thanks

 

[fenderman]

@rsg, welcome to the forum. It would be ideal if you can get blue iris to control the IR. BI can do this for some cameras. To test, right click on the camera and select ptz>ir and toggle it. If it works, then use the event schedule in blue iris to toggle ir on/off relative to sunrise sunset. Otherwise you will need to set it in the camera but it wont automatically adjust for the changing sunset times.

 

[atom]

If the neighbour's light isn't daytime-bright, depending on where the ambient light sensor is on the camera, you may be able to put some semi-transparent tape over/in front of it to "adjust" its day/night sensitivity.

 

[Del Boy]

To see if this works, extend the weather-shield with some cardboard and sticky tape about 10cm / 4inches. Rotate camera 90 degrees so the weathershield blocking light from camera.

If that works then you need a permanent extended weather-shield (pvc pipe will do) and then go into the settings and rotate the image 90 degrees so that you can mount the camera that way. This will give you a better FoV anyway so you don't have to mask his side of the fence off. This isn't really how privacy mask should be used!

 

[rsg]

Thanks for all of your replies. Since the camera was installed about 25 feet high on the second story, I focused on the software fix that fenderman suggested. Unfortunately, Blue Iris could not control the camera to change the IR settings. I changed them in the camera settings and it is now permanately in night mode. The daytime view is in black and white but the quality is still great.

 

[Del Boy]

Great news. This camera is massively underrated! The IR can't be controlled in the software btw. Should've mentioned that earlier.

 

[nayr]

I think BI can switch between day/night profile and force it into B&W mode at night.. thats how my cameras are setup.. day profile = color, night profile = b&w, no automatic switching its flipped externally at sunrise/sunset

 

[rsg]

I tried all the Dahua profiles in the PTZ/IR settings page but couldn't get any to control the camera functions. Maybe it will be released in a future BI update.
Del Boy, I agree. The camera is very high quality both in build and image quality. At around $85 each on eBay (about a year ago) they were a great deal as well.