I don't think the 225 is as amazing as you think, just that particular camera the person bought was optimized for low light settings so probably has extremely low shutter speed.
SMTSEC 5MP Low LIght 1/2" Sony IMX178 Dome
- Thread starter tomw
- Start date
I don't think the 225 is as amazing as you think, just that particular camera the person bought was optimized for low light settings so probably has extremely low shutter speed.
Dragon
Getting the hang of it
- Mar 19, 2016
- 68
- 30
Do you really think someone who spent all that money on all those cameras is going to accidentally miss that one is using super low shutter speed while all the rest aren't? Please see my post over here for more reasons I think 225 is far more light sensitive than the competition.
I do actually, I see no mention of how they perform during motion in the blog. The 225 looks like nothing special here https://shopdelta.eu/ip-vandalproof-camera-apti-13v2-36w-onvif-2-0-960p-3-6-mm_l2_p6834.html https://shopdelta.eu/ip-vandalproof-camera-apti-13v2-36-onvif-2-4-960p-3-6-mm_l2_p6833.html
Dragon
Getting the hang of it
- Mar 19, 2016
- 68
- 30
Well, perhaps the fact that IMX225 is the world's most light sensitive sensor (at least in 2014) and the first sensor to meet night time, moonless driving requirement for autonomous cars (which involves a lot of movement) might mean more to you? From here:
The numbers don't mean anything, nor do the pics from Sony's page as it's an advertisement. I agree the picture posted in that blog looks good but it is clearly 'enhanced' most likely with a very low shutter speed. Similar to the imx178 picture posted here where the moving person is disintegrating https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/7170-SMTSEC-5MP-Low-LIght-1-2-quot-Sony-IMX178-Dome/page2 You can see the normal pic below it with IR.
No other videos/pics from anything with an imx225 look anyway impressive.
Attachments
Benjamin Blanco
n3wb
- Mar 14, 2016
- 12
- 3
As far as the dome goes, do you think car wax or plastic polish would have fixed your issues with scratches, etc.? I waxed my old scratched up glasses and it cleared them up pretty good, though they're glass lenses--plastic polish might be the better option in your case. I guess it doesn't matter now, but for anyone else considering it, it's worth a shot if you have it on hand already.
Dragon
Getting the hang of it
- Mar 19, 2016
- 68
- 30
You call Sony's specs an "advertisement", yet point to a camera seller's videos (advertisements) as proof that Sony is wrong. Interesting.
As for the blog, if you look at the parent page, the blog owner has been working with dozens of cameras, builds his own board cameras, modifies board cameras, builds his own enclosures, and helpfully publishes info about how to do it all. The guy is an engineer, not a marketer trying to trick us with enhanced images. He's not going to make a stupid mistake with shutter speed in choosing the best camera for his own security. I'll believe a DIY engineer over a marketing page any day of the week.
Regardless, I've ordered some IMX225 camera boards (~$35 each shipped) so in about a month, I'll be able to post some pics of my own.
The camera is tweaked to give an enhanced image in low light without IR, same as with the IMX178 pictures posted a few pages back. Whatever trickery is used is will have negative effects. The image looks amazing, until you see a moving person composed of speckles and missing half a leg.
The sellers page isn't biased as they sell many brands, I've seen some absolutely terrible images posted there that would make nobody want to buy it but they still post it, as they do on every camera.
The sellers page isn't biased as they sell many brands, I've seen some absolutely terrible images posted there that would make nobody want to buy it but they still post it, as they do on every camera.
May have helped. Did not try. Polishing plastic can be a pita and id think there would still be swirls.
Was really easy to swap it out but understand that is not something others will be happy to do.
Was really easy to swap it out but understand that is not something others will be happy to do.
I have one of these NVS-DM36-HD (TI DaVinci module) 5mp h264/h265
It is onvif 2.4 but I cannot get to work with my NVR Dahua4232 except for ptz functions only
I want the NVR to configure this camera and use the motion detect feature
Looks like it needs another protocol other than onvif
It is onvif 2.4 but I cannot get to work with my NVR Dahua4232 except for ptz functions only
I want the NVR to configure this camera and use the motion detect feature
Looks like it needs another protocol other than onvif
Dragon
Getting the hang of it
- Mar 19, 2016
- 68
- 30
I've been playing with "P-Iris auto focus Motorized Zoom Lens RS422/RS485 1/2" Sony IMX178 CMOS 5.0MP H.265 CCTV board camera (SIP-E500LA+Autolens)" from aliexpress for a few days and basically, the camera is a fraud and has many problems.
They have what is claimed to be a P-iris lens plugged in to a DC Auto iris connector while the P-iris connector on the camera board is completely missing. The lens has no manufacturer or model number on it so I can't even be sure it's a P-iris, but it certainly can't operate as a P-iris without a P-iris connector.
I found the wiring diagram for the camera board on the CD that came with the camera and found that the P-iris connector on the board is completely missing. The p-iris connector is labeled J4 in the diagram below and has a big P next to it, just like in the photo of the missing connector on the actual board. Also, the firmware does not mention p-iris anywhere. It does have an option to enable DC-Auto iris which I did enable with no effect.
When you power the camera on, the zoom and focus both move their gears through their full range of travel and I also see the iris move, so they are all physically working. I don't know whether those movements are programmed into the lens itself or if the camera board is causing those movements (in which case the lens is actually a DC Auto Iris).
The iris controls in the ActiveX control have zero effect despite repeatedly clicking them. Pointing a 100 lumen flashlight in the lens has no effect on the iris day or night, nor does pointing it at a blue sky. Basically it looks like the lens has an iris but the firmware does absolutely nothing with it.
Focus control in activex works but seems pointless. Pressing - focus once does nothing obvious. Pressing it twice puts the camera wildly out of focus. Pressing + twice puts it back in focus.
Zoom control in activex doesn't move the zoom gear on the camera at all. Instead, it triggers the auto focus which takes about 3 seconds to swing out of focus and back in focus a few times before it stabilizes. If you try to zoom and trigger autofocus just 3 times the autofocus motor becomes too hot to comfortably touch. If the camera is pointed at something confusing so it can't decide on focus, it keeps trying to focus forever and I'm almost certain it would have burned out the motor if I'd let it keep going. Instead, after about 30 seconds of trying to focus I aimed the camera at something else and it finally achieved focus. I touched the motor at that point and burned my finger.
Another major problem is the product page says you can get 109 horizontal FOV from the lens, but it's more like 75-80FOV because the lens is meant for a 1/1.8" (0.55") CCD and the actual CCD in the camera is 1/2".
Since mounting the camera I've found that I can't set up its internal motion detection using a VMWare or VirtualBox machine. I did managed to blindly set up one area and the motion detection triggered in the log of the camera interface, but it did not report the detection to Milestone XProtect. I have XProtect seeing motion events from an HIKvision camera so I know it can work. I have the same problem with alarm input triggered on the IMX178 camera not getting passed to XProtect (again, it works with HIKvision). The camera is also sending out pure grey keyframes periodically where only things that are moving update until the next keyframe (I seem to have fixed that problem by switching to VBR 'better' quality with default data rate 6144Kb/S). So in general, this camera has terrible firmware. I can't figure out who even makes the camera to see if there is a firmware update, though I suspect based on a filename on the CD that it's Unifore Security (Vstar). Unfortunately I can't find a board camera listed on their site or any firmware updates.
EDIT: I keep getting broken useless Engrish responses from SMTSEC support and they refuse to understand/admit that what they sold me is not a P-iris camera nor does it have anything close to the 109FOV advertised. I've asked them for a refund for the lens (listed as worth around $57.50) and they still want to send a technician in to look at software settings as if that could somehow fix two physical problems.
EDIT 2: SMTSEC refuses to admit they did anything wrong and refuses to refund any money unless I pay for return shipping of the lens to them. I refuse to pay more money to ship to a blatantly dishonest seller who may not refund me anything even if I do ship the lens so I'm going to try opening a dispute with Aliexpress to see how they handle things.
EDIT 3: I tried booting the camera with the DC-Auto iris and zoom/focus connectors unplugged and the camera didn't do its full-range test of zoom/focus/iris, so those tests were being performed by the camera. That makes me strongly suspect the lens is actually a DC Auto iris lens since it's plugged in to a DC Auto connector. As to why the zoom and iris do nothing while the camera is in normal operation, I suspect that's just poor firmware. Note that when the iris is left unplugged, it defaults to being as small as possible which leads to no visible picture in low light. I ended up leaving auto iris connected and unplugging zoom/focus so I could force the zoom out as far as possible. This gave me a tiny bit of extra FOV but I still doubt it's over 80FOV. I've been searching for a ~98FOV lens for a 1/2" sensor for a few hours and am pretty convinced nobody sells one with 5MP clarity for under around $400. China doesn't seem to have started making many cheap lens options for these new large high res image sensors. So I think I'm going to have to live with the lens it came with.
EDIT4: The dispute process on aliexpress seems to be a joke. They only let you describe your problem using 512 characters max. They let you upload attachments as evidence, but only images - no PDF or any other file types I tried. They also let you upload a video, which of course takes a lot of time and space, so I don't know why they limit you on the other stuff. I tried twice to submit the dispute with 509 characters (refreshing the page and filling it all out each time) and each time it showed an error telling me to submit between 4 and 512 characters. I reduced it to 438 characters and it finally took the submission.
EDIT5: Aliexpress feedback system is also a joke. You are limited to 1000 characters and forced to rate "communication with seller" even if you had zero communication. If you rate 3 stars or less you get a yellow exclamation that suggests you contact the seller before leaving a bad rating. Once feedback is submitted, it doesn't appear on the product page unless the seller okays it! No wonder no products have bad feedback. Ordering anything from aliexpress again will definitely be a last, desperate resort if I can't find it elsewhere. It's basically gambling.
EDIT6: on 5/6/16, "AliExpress Case Management Team" sent a notice that my dispute case has been closed with all funds released to the seller and all my disputes marked as "Invalid" due to "No valid evidence such as pictures or video's". This is despite me including multiple pictures, and there is no option to appeal or do anything else on my end. I later discovered they'd sent me a notice on 4/29 asking for more evidence and I did not see the email until I searched for it today. This is incredibly frustrating because I had created a filter to flag in red all messages from "@aliexpress.com" so I wouldn't miss notices regarding this case but they sent the notice from "aliexpress@notice.aliexpress.com" which my filter did not match.
EDIT7: This camera keeps getting worse... The lens is not well (or at all?) IR corrected so either things in daylight look sharp and things in IR light at night look blurry, or vice versa. So I re-connected the motorized focus to theoretically let the motor focus things day and night. It wouldn't auto focus correctly for some reason even after rebooting so I manually clicked +/- till it was focused at night. Next night it was out of focus (no idea why) so I manually adjusted it via the UI again. It seemed to hold focus for a few days, but then a car pointed its headlights towards the camera while turning around and it went wildly out of focus and did not correct itself. So I corrected the focus at night and disconnected the lens motor. I'm probably going to have to buy a new manual focus lens with proper IR correction. The daytime image on the camera has also developed a severe blue-green tint during many hours of the day for no reason I can determine other than I think the auto white balance logic is broken. I also had to turn the backlight compensation way low to avoid overexposure in IR lighting at night but that makes the day image annoyingly dark. I tried many settings and can't get a good image both day and night. I don't have any of these problems with an HIKvision camera so I think it's just bad bad firmware.
Exactly what they asked for was "In your evidence you meantioned your goods didn't have a p-iris connector, please show us more evidence of a p-iris good to compare with yours.And please mark valuable evidence in your evidence of mannual." and they gave me 6 days to supply that evidence. I'm not even sure what they're asking for in the second part (maybe a picture of the CD containing the manual?) nor am I sure where I could find a picture of a product with a p-iris connector (this was the only IMX178 camera I could find when I searched for p-iris camera on Aliexpress so I don't know if it's possible to find a picture of a working p-iris camera using the same model of camera board or if that's really what they wanted). So, I don't know how the dispute would have worked out if I'd sent more evidence, but I can at least say that Aliexpress does not make it easy to dispute against fraudulent sellers nor do they use agents that can write easily understandable requests. They also could have sent me multiple notices before closing the case, but they only sent that one email asking for more evidence before closing it.
I tried disputing the charge with the credit card company but they say I must attempt to return the item for a refund and if the merchant fails to provide the refund, then the card company can refund me. However, AliExpress has now made it impossible to return it for a refund since they've closed my dispute case. So I guess I'm screwed.
---
My log of the last few interactions with SMTSEC is below. Notice Andy's English magically gets better as I won't back down.
Andy Liu:
Dear x
How are you?
Please do not test the module and lens any more.
and please let me know your email ID, then I send the the connect picture to you after engineer checked.
thsnks
best regards
andy
Me:
What do you want to send me through email? I'd rather not give out my email.
Dear x
yes,please let me know your email.
Thanks
some file can send here.
best regards
andy
You can send files to x but I don't see how files are going to fix the lack of a p-iris connector. I spent extra money on this camera for a p-iris and I didn't get a p-iris. I also bought this camera because the product page claims it gets 109 degrees FOV but in reality it gets 75 or 80 FOV (maybe slightly more if your files will get the zoom motor to work, but it won't get the advertised 109 FOV because it's a lens made for a 1/1.8" image sensor, not for the 1/2" image sensor on the camera it's installed on) which means I will likely need to buy a different lens for it anyway.
Not a happy customer.
Dear x
Sorry you the checking time.
Engineer did not find the problem of your Photo,
And did you install the activex?
can you pls setup teamviewer?
Engineer can help you online.
please
best regards
andy
Dear x
Please check our engineer's advise:
1. Online help
2. Please check the graphics card driver of your computer,or change to another computer
3. please check the activex installing ，Successful installation or not .
best regards
andy
(Note: They never sent me anything in email. Probably just wanted it to sell to spammers or worse. There's no good reason they can't send me files by posting links to them instead of emailing so I gave them an email I don't really use)
I have tried running the ActiveX and mCMS software in WinXP and Win7 on two computers. Zoom behavior is the same (no zoom occurs but an autofocus is triggered).
Let's stop wasting time trying to fix zoom when this camera simply does not have the features advertised. I bought the camera for p-iris but the camera board has no p-iris connector. I also expected 109 FOV as advertised on the product page but it has under 80 FOV. Therefore, I would like a refund for the cost of the lens and I will purchase a lens with around 109FOV (and no p-iris) elsewhere.
The lens used on the camera can be found from other sellers for $57.50: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/F1-5...23754.html?spm=2114.10010108.1000014.4.3Ma2qx
Since I bought the camera at a discount of 10%, I would like a refund of the cost of the lens at 10% discount, so a 57.50*0.9 = $51.75 refund.
Dear x
Thanks for your patience to message.
Actually, our engineer just need the chance to solve the problem that how to use the the camera with the lens,if all can be solved,we can save much time, for you and us.
If he can not finish this work, then, you return the products,and we refund,this is the thing happened not on the way.if it goes like this, we feel very very sorry.
But if we have a chance to solve the problem,why not to try?
of course,if you decide to cancel the lens, you need send the lens back to us, then we refund the cost of the lens.
thanks for you understanding.
best regards
Andy
There is no way for your engineer to fix the problem. Both of my issues are physical hardware problems. Your product page states the lens has 109FOV and it has nowhere near that. The 75-80FOV I get with the camera is not acceptable for my application.
The Lens is a p-iris lens plugged in to a DC Auto iris connector. The two connectors might look the same but they are not electrically compatible. You can see on the image I attached earlier, p-iris pins are: IRIS A-, IRIS B+, IRIS A+, IRIS B-. DC Auto pins are: Drive-, Damp-, Damp+, Drive+. There is no physical way to make a P-iris lens work when plugged in to a DC Auto port as has been done in what you sent me. The camera board has spaces for both a DC Auto Iris connector and a p-iris connector because the two are not interchangeable or compatible in any way.
You seem to be claiming ignorance of all this, but your product listing is flat out wrong and fraudulent. If you want me to send the lens back before you will offer a refund, I expect you to pay for return shipping. I should not have to pay extra to send you back an item that is not even close to what was advertised.
dear x
Thank you for your message
once again, i have reported your issue to our engineer in charge, and we are confirmed that our lens parameters everything is correct
and we have sell this lens for a long time, we dont have any negative comments.
regarding for the return, we do take returns, but you have to make sure the lens is in good condition.
plus, we have made it clear on aliexpress shipping cost can not be refund
Buyer is responsible for the shipping fees of returned item(s).
Shipping cost wont be refund.
once again, we do suggest you keep the lens, and everything is clear on the manual, as return shipping cost can be high, it will be able for you to order a new one.
hope you consider this thanks.
The lens parameters may technically be correct in that it's a p-iris lens that can achieve 109FOV with a 1/1.8" (0.55") image sensor. The fraud is that you have paired the lens with a camera that has no p-iris connector and with an image sensor that is 0.5" (too small for the lens), which means it can't achieve 109FOV. You can easily verify this by placing the camera in the corner of a room, zooming out as far as possible, and finding that you can't see the far end of both the walls of the room at the same time, meaning the lens has under 90 FOV on the camera it has been paired with.
I will be opening a dispute with aliexpress and including a video showing these two problems and letting people on forums know not to purchase from a seller that commits fraud.
They have what is claimed to be a P-iris lens plugged in to a DC Auto iris connector while the P-iris connector on the camera board is completely missing. The lens has no manufacturer or model number on it so I can't even be sure it's a P-iris, but it certainly can't operate as a P-iris without a P-iris connector.
I found the wiring diagram for the camera board on the CD that came with the camera and found that the P-iris connector on the board is completely missing. The p-iris connector is labeled J4 in the diagram below and has a big P next to it, just like in the photo of the missing connector on the actual board. Also, the firmware does not mention p-iris anywhere. It does have an option to enable DC-Auto iris which I did enable with no effect.
When you power the camera on, the zoom and focus both move their gears through their full range of travel and I also see the iris move, so they are all physically working. I don't know whether those movements are programmed into the lens itself or if the camera board is causing those movements (in which case the lens is actually a DC Auto Iris).
The iris controls in the ActiveX control have zero effect despite repeatedly clicking them. Pointing a 100 lumen flashlight in the lens has no effect on the iris day or night, nor does pointing it at a blue sky. Basically it looks like the lens has an iris but the firmware does absolutely nothing with it.
Focus control in activex works but seems pointless. Pressing - focus once does nothing obvious. Pressing it twice puts the camera wildly out of focus. Pressing + twice puts it back in focus.
Zoom control in activex doesn't move the zoom gear on the camera at all. Instead, it triggers the auto focus which takes about 3 seconds to swing out of focus and back in focus a few times before it stabilizes. If you try to zoom and trigger autofocus just 3 times the autofocus motor becomes too hot to comfortably touch. If the camera is pointed at something confusing so it can't decide on focus, it keeps trying to focus forever and I'm almost certain it would have burned out the motor if I'd let it keep going. Instead, after about 30 seconds of trying to focus I aimed the camera at something else and it finally achieved focus. I touched the motor at that point and burned my finger.
Another major problem is the product page says you can get 109 horizontal FOV from the lens, but it's more like 75-80FOV because the lens is meant for a 1/1.8" (0.55") CCD and the actual CCD in the camera is 1/2".
Since mounting the camera I've found that I can't set up its internal motion detection using a VMWare or VirtualBox machine. I did managed to blindly set up one area and the motion detection triggered in the log of the camera interface, but it did not report the detection to Milestone XProtect. I have XProtect seeing motion events from an HIKvision camera so I know it can work. I have the same problem with alarm input triggered on the IMX178 camera not getting passed to XProtect (again, it works with HIKvision). The camera is also sending out pure grey keyframes periodically where only things that are moving update until the next keyframe (I seem to have fixed that problem by switching to VBR 'better' quality with default data rate 6144Kb/S). So in general, this camera has terrible firmware. I can't figure out who even makes the camera to see if there is a firmware update, though I suspect based on a filename on the CD that it's Unifore Security (Vstar). Unfortunately I can't find a board camera listed on their site or any firmware updates.
EDIT: I keep getting broken useless Engrish responses from SMTSEC support and they refuse to understand/admit that what they sold me is not a P-iris camera nor does it have anything close to the 109FOV advertised. I've asked them for a refund for the lens (listed as worth around $57.50) and they still want to send a technician in to look at software settings as if that could somehow fix two physical problems.
EDIT 2: SMTSEC refuses to admit they did anything wrong and refuses to refund any money unless I pay for return shipping of the lens to them. I refuse to pay more money to ship to a blatantly dishonest seller who may not refund me anything even if I do ship the lens so I'm going to try opening a dispute with Aliexpress to see how they handle things.
EDIT 3: I tried booting the camera with the DC-Auto iris and zoom/focus connectors unplugged and the camera didn't do its full-range test of zoom/focus/iris, so those tests were being performed by the camera. That makes me strongly suspect the lens is actually a DC Auto iris lens since it's plugged in to a DC Auto connector. As to why the zoom and iris do nothing while the camera is in normal operation, I suspect that's just poor firmware. Note that when the iris is left unplugged, it defaults to being as small as possible which leads to no visible picture in low light. I ended up leaving auto iris connected and unplugging zoom/focus so I could force the zoom out as far as possible. This gave me a tiny bit of extra FOV but I still doubt it's over 80FOV. I've been searching for a ~98FOV lens for a 1/2" sensor for a few hours and am pretty convinced nobody sells one with 5MP clarity for under around $400. China doesn't seem to have started making many cheap lens options for these new large high res image sensors. So I think I'm going to have to live with the lens it came with.
EDIT4: The dispute process on aliexpress seems to be a joke. They only let you describe your problem using 512 characters max. They let you upload attachments as evidence, but only images - no PDF or any other file types I tried. They also let you upload a video, which of course takes a lot of time and space, so I don't know why they limit you on the other stuff. I tried twice to submit the dispute with 509 characters (refreshing the page and filling it all out each time) and each time it showed an error telling me to submit between 4 and 512 characters. I reduced it to 438 characters and it finally took the submission.
EDIT5: Aliexpress feedback system is also a joke. You are limited to 1000 characters and forced to rate "communication with seller" even if you had zero communication. If you rate 3 stars or less you get a yellow exclamation that suggests you contact the seller before leaving a bad rating. Once feedback is submitted, it doesn't appear on the product page unless the seller okays it! No wonder no products have bad feedback. Ordering anything from aliexpress again will definitely be a last, desperate resort if I can't find it elsewhere. It's basically gambling.
EDIT6: on 5/6/16, "AliExpress Case Management Team" sent a notice that my dispute case has been closed with all funds released to the seller and all my disputes marked as "Invalid" due to "No valid evidence such as pictures or video's". This is despite me including multiple pictures, and there is no option to appeal or do anything else on my end. I later discovered they'd sent me a notice on 4/29 asking for more evidence and I did not see the email until I searched for it today. This is incredibly frustrating because I had created a filter to flag in red all messages from "@aliexpress.com" so I wouldn't miss notices regarding this case but they sent the notice from "aliexpress@notice.aliexpress.com" which my filter did not match.
EDIT7: This camera keeps getting worse... The lens is not well (or at all?) IR corrected so either things in daylight look sharp and things in IR light at night look blurry, or vice versa. So I re-connected the motorized focus to theoretically let the motor focus things day and night. It wouldn't auto focus correctly for some reason even after rebooting so I manually clicked +/- till it was focused at night. Next night it was out of focus (no idea why) so I manually adjusted it via the UI again. It seemed to hold focus for a few days, but then a car pointed its headlights towards the camera while turning around and it went wildly out of focus and did not correct itself. So I corrected the focus at night and disconnected the lens motor. I'm probably going to have to buy a new manual focus lens with proper IR correction. The daytime image on the camera has also developed a severe blue-green tint during many hours of the day for no reason I can determine other than I think the auto white balance logic is broken. I also had to turn the backlight compensation way low to avoid overexposure in IR lighting at night but that makes the day image annoyingly dark. I tried many settings and can't get a good image both day and night. I don't have any of these problems with an HIKvision camera so I think it's just bad bad firmware.
Exactly what they asked for was "In your evidence you meantioned your goods didn't have a p-iris connector, please show us more evidence of a p-iris good to compare with yours.And please mark valuable evidence in your evidence of mannual." and they gave me 6 days to supply that evidence. I'm not even sure what they're asking for in the second part (maybe a picture of the CD containing the manual?) nor am I sure where I could find a picture of a product with a p-iris connector (this was the only IMX178 camera I could find when I searched for p-iris camera on Aliexpress so I don't know if it's possible to find a picture of a working p-iris camera using the same model of camera board or if that's really what they wanted). So, I don't know how the dispute would have worked out if I'd sent more evidence, but I can at least say that Aliexpress does not make it easy to dispute against fraudulent sellers nor do they use agents that can write easily understandable requests. They also could have sent me multiple notices before closing the case, but they only sent that one email asking for more evidence before closing it.
I tried disputing the charge with the credit card company but they say I must attempt to return the item for a refund and if the merchant fails to provide the refund, then the card company can refund me. However, AliExpress has now made it impossible to return it for a refund since they've closed my dispute case. So I guess I'm screwed.
---
My log of the last few interactions with SMTSEC is below. Notice Andy's English magically gets better as I won't back down.
Andy Liu:
Dear x
How are you?
Please do not test the module and lens any more.
and please let me know your email ID, then I send the the connect picture to you after engineer checked.
thsnks
best regards
andy
Me:
What do you want to send me through email? I'd rather not give out my email.
Dear x
yes,please let me know your email.
Thanks
some file can send here.
best regards
andy
You can send files to x but I don't see how files are going to fix the lack of a p-iris connector. I spent extra money on this camera for a p-iris and I didn't get a p-iris. I also bought this camera because the product page claims it gets 109 degrees FOV but in reality it gets 75 or 80 FOV (maybe slightly more if your files will get the zoom motor to work, but it won't get the advertised 109 FOV because it's a lens made for a 1/1.8" image sensor, not for the 1/2" image sensor on the camera it's installed on) which means I will likely need to buy a different lens for it anyway.
Not a happy customer.
Dear x
Sorry you the checking time.
Engineer did not find the problem of your Photo,
And did you install the activex?
can you pls setup teamviewer?
Engineer can help you online.
please
best regards
andy
Dear x
Please check our engineer's advise:
1. Online help
2. Please check the graphics card driver of your computer,or change to another computer
3. please check the activex installing ，Successful installation or not .
best regards
andy
(Note: They never sent me anything in email. Probably just wanted it to sell to spammers or worse. There's no good reason they can't send me files by posting links to them instead of emailing so I gave them an email I don't really use)
I have tried running the ActiveX and mCMS software in WinXP and Win7 on two computers. Zoom behavior is the same (no zoom occurs but an autofocus is triggered).
Let's stop wasting time trying to fix zoom when this camera simply does not have the features advertised. I bought the camera for p-iris but the camera board has no p-iris connector. I also expected 109 FOV as advertised on the product page but it has under 80 FOV. Therefore, I would like a refund for the cost of the lens and I will purchase a lens with around 109FOV (and no p-iris) elsewhere.
The lens used on the camera can be found from other sellers for $57.50: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/F1-5...23754.html?spm=2114.10010108.1000014.4.3Ma2qx
Since I bought the camera at a discount of 10%, I would like a refund of the cost of the lens at 10% discount, so a 57.50*0.9 = $51.75 refund.
Dear x
Thanks for your patience to message.
Actually, our engineer just need the chance to solve the problem that how to use the the camera with the lens,if all can be solved,we can save much time, for you and us.
If he can not finish this work, then, you return the products,and we refund,this is the thing happened not on the way.if it goes like this, we feel very very sorry.
But if we have a chance to solve the problem,why not to try?
of course,if you decide to cancel the lens, you need send the lens back to us, then we refund the cost of the lens.
thanks for you understanding.
best regards
Andy
There is no way for your engineer to fix the problem. Both of my issues are physical hardware problems. Your product page states the lens has 109FOV and it has nowhere near that. The 75-80FOV I get with the camera is not acceptable for my application.
The Lens is a p-iris lens plugged in to a DC Auto iris connector. The two connectors might look the same but they are not electrically compatible. You can see on the image I attached earlier, p-iris pins are: IRIS A-, IRIS B+, IRIS A+, IRIS B-. DC Auto pins are: Drive-, Damp-, Damp+, Drive+. There is no physical way to make a P-iris lens work when plugged in to a DC Auto port as has been done in what you sent me. The camera board has spaces for both a DC Auto Iris connector and a p-iris connector because the two are not interchangeable or compatible in any way.
You seem to be claiming ignorance of all this, but your product listing is flat out wrong and fraudulent. If you want me to send the lens back before you will offer a refund, I expect you to pay for return shipping. I should not have to pay extra to send you back an item that is not even close to what was advertised.
dear x
Thank you for your message
once again, i have reported your issue to our engineer in charge, and we are confirmed that our lens parameters everything is correct
and we have sell this lens for a long time, we dont have any negative comments.
regarding for the return, we do take returns, but you have to make sure the lens is in good condition.
plus, we have made it clear on aliexpress shipping cost can not be refund
Buyer is responsible for the shipping fees of returned item(s).
Shipping cost wont be refund.
once again, we do suggest you keep the lens, and everything is clear on the manual, as return shipping cost can be high, it will be able for you to order a new one.
hope you consider this thanks.
The lens parameters may technically be correct in that it's a p-iris lens that can achieve 109FOV with a 1/1.8" (0.55") image sensor. The fraud is that you have paired the lens with a camera that has no p-iris connector and with an image sensor that is 0.5" (too small for the lens), which means it can't achieve 109FOV. You can easily verify this by placing the camera in the corner of a room, zooming out as far as possible, and finding that you can't see the far end of both the walls of the room at the same time, meaning the lens has under 90 FOV on the camera it has been paired with.
I will be opening a dispute with aliexpress and including a video showing these two problems and letting people on forums know not to purchase from a seller that commits fraud.
Last edited by a moderator:
Dragon
Getting the hang of it
- Mar 19, 2016
- 68
- 30
Also, as to the argument of whether IMX225 or 178 are better in low light, my initial findings are that 225 can see in lower light levels, but its range in uneven illumination is more limited (this is exactly what the Sony spec sheets predicted). Thus 225 tends to show a lot more overexposed areas vs 178 in all light levels I tried. That, plus the lower resolution, generally makes the 225 image less desirable. Overall 225 can be good for seeing in low, even light such as full moonlight (starlight is probably asking too much unless you use low shutter speed which makes it useless for seeing movement) or street light, and for watching large areas that can't be lighted via IR, but 178 with IR illumination or motion security lights is probably preferable for most security applications. I hope to post a full review with images eventually but am too busy right now.
WARNING: All the IMX225 board cameras I received had a hidden iframe directing to a site known to install malware. Just loading the camera's firmware web page was enough to set off Avast antivirus saying the page contains "JS:Iframe-BQC [Trj]". This trojan is contained in the latest firmware on the camera board maker's web site at xiongmaitech. HLong, who sold me the cameras, said xiong could offer no newer firmware without the trojan but HLong got hold of an older firmware that I was able to install to remove the obvious trojan. However, xiongmaitech makes most of the camera boards that get rebranded and sold by various sellers, including some name brand models, and I highly suspect they are purposely leaving security exploits in all these cameras, most far less obvious than this iframe trojan. Back in 2011, an exploit was found in DVRs resold by dozens of name brands like Swann that would install a UPnP hole in your firewall and leave you open to remotely taking over the DVR and then doing whatever on your local network, and I suspect the same shenanigans are going on with IP cameras today. Because of all this, I disabled UPnP and now run any ActiveX camera controls in a virtual machine and I set up a firewall in DD-WRT to isolate the cameras onto their own network which has no access to my normal computers and no access to the internet.
Finally, although HLong helped with the firmware thing, I don't recommend him as a seller. He sent all the cameras with 2.8mm lenses marked as 1/2.5" meaning they're for 1/2.5" image sensors. Problem is the 225 is a 1/3" sensor, so instead of getting the expected 90 degree FOV you get more like 65 or 70. I confronted HLong about why the cameras didn't have 90FOV and he claimed ignorance. When I finally figured out the lenses were for the wrong size sensor, he gave excuses like if you used a 1/3" lens it would have black boxes in the corners (not true). I'm still not sure if he's clueless or just trying to sell off lenses he bought a lot of, but I'm avoiding him either way and I have to go buy correct lenses elsewhere. Of course I also think a lot of the Chinese sellers are just fronts that sell out of the same factory so I may end up giving my money to the same factory again to get the lenses I need... *sigh* I've also found most lens sellers don't advertise the horizontal FOV, or they put a value that is totally inaccurate or may refer to diagonal FOV. I asked buyers or sellers to confirm FOV on about 5 listings and got zero responses. I finally decided to take a chance on this super cheap $3 lens and it has about 88FOV which is generally fine for my purposes. Unfortunately I don't think it has IR focus correction but I have yet to test that.
WARNING: All the IMX225 board cameras I received had a hidden iframe directing to a site known to install malware. Just loading the camera's firmware web page was enough to set off Avast antivirus saying the page contains "JS:Iframe-BQC [Trj]". This trojan is contained in the latest firmware on the camera board maker's web site at xiongmaitech. HLong, who sold me the cameras, said xiong could offer no newer firmware without the trojan but HLong got hold of an older firmware that I was able to install to remove the obvious trojan. However, xiongmaitech makes most of the camera boards that get rebranded and sold by various sellers, including some name brand models, and I highly suspect they are purposely leaving security exploits in all these cameras, most far less obvious than this iframe trojan. Back in 2011, an exploit was found in DVRs resold by dozens of name brands like Swann that would install a UPnP hole in your firewall and leave you open to remotely taking over the DVR and then doing whatever on your local network, and I suspect the same shenanigans are going on with IP cameras today. Because of all this, I disabled UPnP and now run any ActiveX camera controls in a virtual machine and I set up a firewall in DD-WRT to isolate the cameras onto their own network which has no access to my normal computers and no access to the internet.
Finally, although HLong helped with the firmware thing, I don't recommend him as a seller. He sent all the cameras with 2.8mm lenses marked as 1/2.5" meaning they're for 1/2.5" image sensors. Problem is the 225 is a 1/3" sensor, so instead of getting the expected 90 degree FOV you get more like 65 or 70. I confronted HLong about why the cameras didn't have 90FOV and he claimed ignorance. When I finally figured out the lenses were for the wrong size sensor, he gave excuses like if you used a 1/3" lens it would have black boxes in the corners (not true). I'm still not sure if he's clueless or just trying to sell off lenses he bought a lot of, but I'm avoiding him either way and I have to go buy correct lenses elsewhere. Of course I also think a lot of the Chinese sellers are just fronts that sell out of the same factory so I may end up giving my money to the same factory again to get the lenses I need... *sigh* I've also found most lens sellers don't advertise the horizontal FOV, or they put a value that is totally inaccurate or may refer to diagonal FOV. I asked buyers or sellers to confirm FOV on about 5 listings and got zero responses. I finally decided to take a chance on this super cheap $3 lens and it has about 88FOV which is generally fine for my purposes. Unfortunately I don't think it has IR focus correction but I have yet to test that.
Last edited by a moderator:
how come the store you listed still have 100% feedback? http://www.aliexpress.com/item/P-Ir...5-1-2-Sony-IMX178-CMOS-5-0MP/32549597048.html
Q™
IPCT Contributor
Hi,
my new SMTSEC Sip-E02-500LA from Aliexpress is arrived.
I have same problems with the software.
What is the latest firmware ?
Where i can donload them ?
Which android app is compatible ?
I hope sameone can help
Thanks
my new SMTSEC Sip-E02-500LA from Aliexpress is arrived.
I have same problems with the software.
What is the latest firmware ?
Where i can donload them ?
Which android app is compatible ?
I hope sameone can help
Thanks
Hi click this link for latest firmware.
https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthrea...stroyer-for-90?p=109282&viewfull=1#post109282
https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthrea...stroyer-for-90?p=109282&viewfull=1#post109282
Last edited by a moderator:
Hi as long its a Hi3516a chip in the camera and imx178 sensor the firmware is the same the firmware is by www.herospeed.net and as far as i can see i think the cameras are made by www.cantonk.com with their logo put on.
Hope that helps
Mark
Hope that helps
Mark
