Suggestions for small overhead cameras

If you want manufacturer support look at Axis, just bring your check book and make sure it's well stocked. That kind of support in the video surveillance camera world is fairly expensive. IMHO its much more economical to use Dahua or Hikvision and replace them if they fail. The equivalent in Axis costs, typically, three to five times as much.
 
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@T-Halen - I don't know where you are located, but in the US, an official Dahua or Hikvision camera can cost 2 to 5 times or more than what we can purchase them for from @EMPIRETECANDY because the official US distributors want you to go through their professional installers or want you to buy in quantity, so we pay a premium markup. Neither of which most of us here want to do. Maybe some pockets of the US folks can get a good deal from an authorized Dahua dealer in the US, but most of us don't.

Further, any issues would have to go through the distributor and Dahua US will not talk to us and that is what you are experiencing purchasing from Amazon. And for the few cameras we would be purchasing from a distributor, I doubt the customer service would be very good.

Warranty & RMA - Dahua Technology USA Inc

us.dahuasecurity.com us.dahuasecurity.com

How many people here in the US are saying they are getting great deals on Dahua cameras purchasing from authorized Dahua US dealers here?

How many with official US Dahua cameras are running firmware more recent than what Andy gets for us?

In my experience with electronics, they poop out immediately or within a year. Andy's warranty takes care of that and he showed it with a recent member here that was up on the 1 year and sent back a camera and Andy sent him a new one not some refurbished unit.

In a rare instance a camera poops out after one year, the initial savings I have from purchasing from Andy can buy me a newer camera and I still come out ahead...

The few times I have had a longer warranty on an electronic, it was a painful process and long and drawn out and then they send you a clearly refurbished product. For warranty, I want either my unit fixed or a brand new unit and not someone elses that broke and they fixed.

So where ever you live, go to the Dahua or Hikvision website and find an authorized distributor that will take care of you within the manufacturer warranty and get a quote - and be willing to pay extra for that warranty. Is paying 3-5 times more than you can purchase the same camera from Amazon for to cover in the event the camera poops out within 3 years worth it?
 
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Almost every camera, and certainly the ones in these price ranges, the IR cut filter is mechanical and you can hear it in the camera when it goes from color to b/w. Anything mechanical is going to break at some point. And if the IR cut filter doesn't go out, the IR LED are rated at 30,000 hours and they will go out.

You could add more light to keep the cams in color. Those cameras still work during day correct? So add some light and keep some life in them.

But since you are researching, you will come across if you haven't already the newest claims of full color cameras. Do not be sold by some trademarked night color vision (Full Color, ColorVu, Starlight, etc.) that is a marketing ploy in a lot of ways lol. It is simply what a manufacturer wants to claim for low-light performance, but there are so many games that can be played even with the how they report the Lux numbers. They will claim a low lux of 0.001 for example, but then that is with a wide open iris and a shutter at 1/3 second and an f1.0 - as soon as you have motion in it, it will be crap. You need a shutter of at minimum 1/60 second to reduce a lot of blur from someone walking.

Check out this video at midnight. You see this and it looks like daytime and be like WOW I want that camera. But any motion in the frame and it is crap and will be a ghost blur. You notice they do not show anything with motion. I can make all my cameras look like this at midnight with no other light, but we want good motion video, not still images video. This is a very nice cameras with enough light at night - so do you have enough light at night? All cameras, regardless of what they are called, need light - either white light or infrared. Simple physics.



While this camera is not what we would call a consumer grade camera and this is a really good camera, it is these games that the consumer grade cameras of the world do to their camera to make it look good at night - but then a person walking by is a blur and people simply say well the camera isn't good at night. If you have the ability to change the settings, you can make it work. Just remember that every increase in shutter speed needs more light. So I can set mine to 1/250 second and eliminate blur at night, but then all that is visible is a 5 foot diameter around the camera IF I have enough light.

If your camera doesn't have enough light to stay in color, a 24/7 full color camera will not be of much good and now you have a camera with no IR and even if you added external IR, the camera will not see it since it does not have an IR filter.
 
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T-Halen said:
Are EmpireTech/Loryta cameras supported by Synology's Surveillance Station?
Click to expand...

Yes and they work very well. Surveillance Station has come a long way the past couple of years. Just set it to be the equivalent Dahua model, use the generic Dahua option, or set everything on the camera's GUI and tell SS to get all its settings from the camera.

Synology also now supports Dahua's smart/IVS events as well and can trigger a motion event on your timeline as well as a notification on the DSCam app that will jump to that moment. Also they actually have decent customer service; I requested they add the IPC-HDW3541T-ZAS a while back and it made it into the next device pack update.
 
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