Troubleshooting Circuitry in Old SD49225T-HN PTZ Cameras

[EDIT] Will refer to this camera as Alpha for this thread [End EDIT]

Reporting a successful fix of an ailing Dahua SD49225T-HN. It wasn't suffering the dreaded rebooting, but was beginning to routinely lose IP communications for a few seconds after any large, rapid PTZ maneuvers. Basically, it was acting as though the PTZ motors were dragging down the power supply enough to disrupt IP communications. It would always recover, but rapidly becoming unusable as a PTZ. After all, what good is a PTZ camera if it cuts out for 10-20 seconds after you change its direction?

I took off the top dome from camera to examine the POE power board. I could see one electrolytic cap on its top surfaces. That was a 63 volt 50 uFd unit. It measured (in circuit) at 47 uFd.

View attachment 184707

On the bottom surface of the POE board, I found a small sized 16 volt, 100 uFd capacitor. That measured only 80 uFd, a limits of acceptable tolerance. Also, there was a jumper wire that had been placed at the factory. Surmising that this little 100 uFd capacitor was probably one for filtering the POE board output, I decided to try replacing it.

View attachment 184710


I didn't have an exact match in my drawer, but happened to have a good supply of 16 volt 1000 uFd caps. Typically, one doesn't make that big of a capacitance change, but nothing to lose....
Here is the new capacitor soldering in place of the old one. I made sure to observe proper polarity on the electrolytic cap and insulate its leads.

View attachment 184712

Put it all back together and reinstalled the camera. Repeated PTZ moves to greatly differing preset positions work fine. Manual maneuvering also without inducing the aforementioned loss of IP communications.
This may have solved it. It certainly is a lot better than it was before the capacitor replacement.

Interestingly, the POE power board on another camera did not have the jumper wire and capacitor on its underside. Were the jumper and capacitor a hot fix for a undersized POE power supply design? It may well be so.
That definitely looks like a after thought fix, Kind of surprised to see a add on cap and a bodge wire on that board. I cannot speak for dahua, but I do know some electronics makers will use the same board but different caps (and other components) depending on the environment or 'Region" you live in. BTW I'm really enjoying this thread, I wish I had a few to tinker with, thanks for doing this.
 
Because Delta is in such a PITA access location, I've ordered a PTZ5A4M-25X to take its place rather than putting Charlie there.
I'd rather a reliable, new unit there and avoid excess rounds up/down. Gotta figure in the risk/benefit ratio.

Delta will still get worked on to see whether I can get its camera board to behave. I'm still interested in what exactly is wrong with Delta. I'm just not going to risk my neck and house damage in multiple attempts to fix it.
 
I don't know if what I'm going to say will be correct, but why not monitor the camera through the Uart port and see what is happening, what information can it give us through the port?
 
Mostly because nobody has succeeded in connecting to the UART of the SD49225T-HN.

PTZ5A4M-25X arrived today and going through its initial evaluation.
1. New camera is big and heavy compared to the SD49225T-HN. I had seen the comparison in pictures, but didn't strike me as much as when placed side by side live,
2. It is a huge step up in night time sensitivity. Areas that were a dark murk on the SD49225T-HN look almost like daylight accidentally set for B&W despite a 6 msec shutter time and about 12 x zoom.
3. Most telling shot was with the PTZ5A4M-25X pointed at Orion's belt.

Orion nebula at 250 msec shutter speed and the camera autofocused.

The performance difference stunning - enough to feel okay about it near doubling cost vs the SD49225T-HN when that was new.
orion nebula.jpg

The problem now is whether I can esthetically fit the larger camera where Delta is mounted. It's enough a camera body size change that WAF is going to be in play. It's body will definitely need to be painted to match the house if I'm going to have any chance of it being okayed.

If not, Charlie is going to replace Delta and this new PTZ is going to get mounted on one of my camera poles.
 
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First, moving Delta's camera module into Charlie moved Delta's problems into the Charlie camera body. That pretty much isolated Delta's issues as being in its camera module (which has the main camera board). Delta's current issues are not with its POE or PTZ boards. So, moved Delta's camera module back to its body for the rest of testing today.

Major board reflow work was performed on Delta's main camera module board. More details to follow, but Delta is better now, rather than being unreachable on network.
Once more stores its IP address settings, but really weird results regarding storing settings. Sometimes, they stick across reboots, It's also unpredictable which settings stick. Yes, I did factor default three times..

[Removed erroneous thoughts regarding EEPROM having a delayed write]
 
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Hmmmnn. More testing suggests it's not a delayed write to EEPROM, but rather an unreliable write to EEPROM that doesn't always record new data

EEPROM is a Toshiba TC58BVG0S3HTA00 1 GBIT (128M x 8 Bit) CMOS NAND serial type EEPROM

RAM is Samsung K4B4G1646E-BYK0 DDR3 4 Gb 512M x 8


main board.jpg
 
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Still really odd results regarding when settings get preserved. Overlay text, image condition settings, data bit rates all get saved, but not always.
PTZ presets get retained across reboots rarely, but once they DO get stored, they are reliably recalled.

It's as if the EEPROM is not able to be written to reliably, BUT that theory doesn't align with my also have successfully updating Delta's firmware today between three different versions. The firmware updates succeeded and ran. Those were definitely stored. I would expect those to be in EEPROM.

The Toshiba EEPROM chip is only $2 = $3, but a programmer to clone a new one would be another $200. Can't just install a blank EEPROM. It would have no firmware on it. At least, I don't think that would work.
I doubt it is worth my while to attempt replacing the EEPROM. Would have to desolder the old EEPROM, read it, write it out to a new chip, and resolder a new EEPROM.

Because I've already seen how completely screwy these PTZ's become when the RAM battery is low, I rechecked the new battery in Delta and it read only 2.45 volts rather than the 3.1 I got with Bravo's new battery. Swapped out Delta's memory battery for another new battery in Delta.

We'll let Delta stay running for a while and charge up the new battery. Also, gives me a chance to see whether its rebooting issue is still present.

I guess getting three out of four ill cameras back into working condition isn't horrible.
 
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Which Toshiba IC is that? I had an issue with a Toshiba IC in Kenwood navigation unit, and by reheating it with the soldering station, it worked again properly.
 
It is the Toshiba TC58BVG0S3HTA00 (larger TSOP 48 package) on the board. Come to think of it, the camera did go from being unreachable to functional after I hot air reflowed this area of the board. I had not thought about heat possibly making an EEPROM function better rather than just fixing bad solder connections.
main board.jpg
 
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I have it, but I have not used it only once on a small IC.
 
Delta has not done its usual spontaneous reboots, but now staunchly refuses to store any new settings into permanent memory. Settings do take effect and remain active until next reboot (either soft or via disconnect ethernet cable.)
Also, Delta readily saves and imports its configuration. Once imported, the settings are active. The just won't survive a restart.

Possibly just specific pages in the EEPROM have gone bad - the ones used to store configuration settings. Delta DOES accept and store firmware updates. Going to be firmware gets written to a different EEPROM locations than configuration settings. Make me wonder whether Dahua put any effort into rotating storage amongst EEPROM pages to implement wear leveling. I'm suspecting they did not.

The RAM chip is 4X larger capacity than the EEPROM. It is even possible that Dahua keeps a live copy of firmware in RAM. If so, one might not even need to clone the EEPROM data to a new chip, just replace the EEPROM and let the systemwrite out a copy of itself during a firmware upgrade? That would be convenient, but again unknown likelihood.

I've ordered an Xgecu TL866-3G, ten EEPROMs and a TSOP48 adapter. It will be about a month before everything arrives from China. Could have gotten a bit things faster, but that would have cost more than I was willing to spend on a probable failed mission.

Will be an adventure in cloning the old EEPROM to a fresh Toshiba TC58BVG0S3HTA00. Pulling and reattaching chips to the board shouldn't be too hard, but I have zero experience with these programmers. Will the camera even survive that attempt? Will a fresh EEPROM fix the storage issue? Did Dahua do anything in the firmware to make EEPROM cloning impossible. Won't know for about a month.

Meanwhile Delta doesn't seem to be spontaneously reboot - That particular symptom seems most closely associate with little memory battery being bad.

The goodies being awaited shown below...
Screenshot 2024-03-12 at 01.43.57.jpgScreenshot 2024-03-12 at 01.44.32.jpgScreenshot 2024-03-12 at 01.45.25.jpg
 
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Delta has not done its usual spontaneous reboots, but now staunchly refuses to store any new settings into permanent memory. Settings do take effect and remain active until next reboot (either soft or via disconnect ethernet cable.)
Also, Delta readily saves and imports its configuration. Once imported, the settings are active. The just won't survive a restart.

Possibly just specific pages in the EEPROM have gone bad - the ones used to store configuration settings. Delta DOES accept and store firmware updates. Going to be firmware gets written to a different EEPROM locations than configuration settings. Make me wonder whether Dahua put any effort into rotating storage amongst EEPROM pages to implement wear leveling. I'm suspecting they did not.

The RAM chip is 4X larger capacity than the EEPROM. It is even possible that Dahua keeps a live copy of firmware in RAM. If so, one might not even need to clone the EEPROM data to a new chip, just replace the EEPROM and let the systemwrite out a copy of itself during a firmware upgrade? That would be convenient, but again unknown likelihood.

I've ordered an Xgecu TL866-3G, ten EEPROMs and a TSOP48 adapter. It will be about a month before everything arrives from China. Could have gotten a bit things faster, but that would have cost more than I was willing to spend on a probable failed mission.

Will be an adventure in cloning the old EEPROM to a fresh Toshiba TC58BVG0S3HTA00. Pulling and reattaching chips to the board shouldn't be too hard, but I have zero experience with these programmers. Will the camera even survive that attempt? Will a fresh EEPROM fix the storage issue? Did Dahua do anything in the firmware to make EEPROM cloning impossible. Won't know for about a month.

Meanwhile Delta doesn't seem to be spontaneously reboot - That particular symptom seems most closely associate with little memory battery being bad.

The goodies being awaited shown below...
View attachment 189214View attachment 189215View attachment 189216
I use my Xgecu quite a bit, lots of bang for the buck, far cry from 10 years ago, Its amazing how much it will do. I Don't know the half of it. The only issue I have with it is trying to maneuver their website for firmware updates. Looks like you got ALL the adapters, i have not had a need yet so let us know how it goes.

xgu.jpg
 
+1 Radio Shack - I'm still using spools of their solder and rosin flux :)

I seem to have dowloaded their software rar file, but yes their hosting system is a landmine field.
 
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+1 Radio Shack - I'm still using spools of their solder and rosin flux :)

I seem to have dowloaded their software rar file, but yes their hosting system is a landmine field.
That Station is about 14 years old, been decent for what I do, Getting harder to find "Decent" Tips and heating elements for her. I do love my Andostar Microscope, I work on a lot of OLD crap so its been nice to actually see bad traces and cold joints.
 
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I use an Amscope rebrand trinocular. SMD Stuff these days is too small for my eyes. Would love a Mantis but that’s not going to pass wife budget controls
 
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I use an Amscope rebrand trinocular. SMD Stuff these days is too small for my eyes. Would love a Mantis but that’s not going to pass wife budget controls
Haha, Everything is too small for my eyes at this stage in the game, Yea My wife might bring up the New scope is 3 years worth of car payments.
 
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I have the Amscope copy as well, with a monitor mount and I made an extension for it.
 
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