Worlds First Review - Dahua DH-IPC-PFW5849-A180-E2 - Dual Lens 180 Degree Full Color 4K (8MP Stitched) Camera

So that is why @Wildcat_1 highly recommend the PFA122, this junction has bigger space can hide more cables well. The junction box also can use as wall mount.
Those extra cables some installers/users need them, so we add as many as we can. It has alarms in/output and the audio input/output.
If not use those cable can cut off it.
 
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Have any changes or updates been made on the aspect ratios to bring it to 32:9 at full resolution or to otherwise address the image warping?

To his credit, Rob (The Hook Up) makes a good case for how that 32:9 ratio comes in clear and fits nicely in on BI.
 
I'm back in town and took advantage of the 50deg weather to finally install the camera and play with the new camera interface.

Am I blind, where is the option for Day/Night auto switch? @EMPIRETECANDY can you help?
Screen Shot 2023-01-11 at 7.08.07 PM.pngScreen Shot 2023-01-11 at 6.59.07 PM.png
 
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I kinda dislike the new UI. Its pretty awful.

@HMC8403 look under the settings on that page for a drop down in purple named Time Settings or something like that.

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If I'm reading the specs on this correctly, the camera operates in full-color mode only? I'm curious how well this would pick up things with no illuminator and just ambient city light/streetlights.

Background: I'm looking for a camera that I can mount higher up, pointing down at the road in front of my house, but I would NOT be able to use ambient light illuminator. I run a Christmas light display synced to music, and I am looking to use AI to track how long individual cars stop to see the show. I tried a side view camera but the AI really gets tripped by cars occluding one another, so a more top-down view is desirable. This likely means being close to the road, and thus this 180 cam looks desirable.
 
If I'm reading the specs on this correctly, the camera operates in full-color mode only? I'm curious how well this would pick up things with no illuminator and just ambient city light/streetlights.

Background: I'm looking for a camera that I can mount higher up, pointing down at the road in front of my house, but I would NOT be able to use ambient light illuminator. I run a Christmas light display synced to music, and I am looking to use AI to track how long individual cars stop to see the show. I tried a side view camera but the AI really gets tripped by cars occluding one another, so a more top-down view is desirable. This likely means being close to the road, and thus this 180 cam looks desirable.
I am very new to this camera and haven’t had time to fine tune the settings. This camera doesn’t have IR but the illuminators. Since mine is for overview and not identification, plus the fact that I don’t like how the illuminators look, I have them turned off.
I have attached shots from midnight and noon so you can compare.
 

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I am very new to this camera and haven’t had time to fine tune the settings. This camera doesn’t have IR but the illuminators. Since mine is for overview and not identification, plus the fact that I don’t like how the illuminators look, I have them turned off.
I have attached shots from midnight and noon so you can compare.

Out of curiosity, is it pretty dark at your place at midnight? Or is the camera just pulling that much out of the ambient lighting? It seems to have an incredible dynamic range -- the streetlights aren't blowing out the entire scene.

Something like this might be a good fit for my case. I'm going to be down-sampling the images to a pretty low resolution, and I don't have a need to actually identify the cars as much as just track their distinct shapes.

Thanks!
 
This is also the Dahua 180 degree bullet mounted on the side of the house. Lighting is from a street light in center of image on a silver post plus another street light on the left corner.

Lighting directly in front of the camera is from a 15 watt white LED 12 volt garden light at 4000K to match the color temperature of the street lights.

Image taken from BI.

180_Bullet_Night.jpg
 
My house is in a suburb just north of Chicago; there is a little ambient light around. I have two wall lights at the front door and two by the garage; also a couple of street lights marked in the second picture. The attached pictures: #2 illuminators off / sconces off, #3 illuminators off / sconces on, #4 illuminators on / sconces on, #5 illuminators on / sconces off. illuminators were set at 100%. As a side note, not a fan of the new GUI.
 

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This is where the camera is mounted and a picture of my street at 9pm to understand the darkness level.
 

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@Tygunn - these shutter speeds and gain that @HMC8403 provided shows how good this camera is with some street and ambient light.

A 13ms shutter means this camera slowed the shutter down to 1/76, whereas most will say you need at least 1/60 shutter to start to minimize blur.

By contrast, many cheap cameras will slow there shutter down to 1/12 or slower and crank up the gain in order to produce a bright static image, but motion is a blur.
 
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@Tygunn - these shutter speeds and gain that @HMC8403 provided shows how good this camera is with some street and ambient light.

A 13ms shutter means this camera slowed the shutter down to 1/76, whereas most will say you need at least 1/60 shutter to start to minimize blur.

By contrast, many cheap cameras will slow there shutter down to 1/12 or slower and crank up the gain in order to produce a bright static image, but motion is a blur.

Ultimately cameras like my Dahua starlight's would work well for my application as well since I can just use ir illuminators by the street. I'll have to see if I can mount something up on the roof and get a decent view of the road. The trees likely obscure things though.

This looks like a good compromise if I need to mount close to the road.
 
I run a Christmas light display synced to music, and I am looking to use AI to track how long individual cars stop to see the show. I tried a side view camera but the AI really gets tripped by cars occluding one another, so a more top-down view is desirable. This likely means being close to the road, and thus this 180 cam looks desirable.
I tried a 180 cam for my light display this year. I used a 4 lens 180 camera which helped a lot.
The camera is positioned above a footpath on the opposite of the road, then a (very old) Ubiquiti wireless bridge transmitting back.
I ended up turning off IR and forcing it into color while the display was running.
1673725244644.png

Having a larger 4-lens camera meant only the middle two cameras had issue with the bright lights, while the outer cameras do alright.


I tried AI to track the number of people/cars.....
It's alright when there is a few cars/people. But it starts double counting like crazy once there is a hundred people with flashing lights. People coming in/out of view behind cars did not help.
I ended up manually counting.

My goal would be to replace this 180 cam with a fish eye or Hubble 360 panoramic on the street lamp (I'll wait until council let me close the street off before asking that...).
 
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I tried a 180 cam for my light display this year. I used a 4 lens 180 camera which helped a lot.
The camera is positioned above a footpath on the opposite of the road, then a (very old) Ubiquiti wireless bridge transmitting back.
I ended up turning off IR and forcing it into color while the display was running.
View attachment 150957

Having a larger 4-lens camera meant only the middle two cameras had issue with the bright lights, while the outer cameras do alright.


I tried AI to track the number of people/cars.....
It's alright when there is a few cars/people. But it starts double counting like crazy once there is a hundred people with flashing lights. People coming in/out of view behind cars did not help.
I ended up manually counting.

My goal would be to replace this 180 cam with a fish eye or Hubble 360 panoramic on the street lamp (I'll wait until council let me close the street off before asking that...).

How come you turned off the IR and forced into color mode? I used a dedicated Hikvision camera last year and forced it into night mode and used IR illuminators for the road with decent success. My Dahua cameras kept going between night and day mode from the lights flashing though. :) I should probably force them one day or the other during the show.

Did you find the car counting somewhat reliable? I imagine the person counting would suffer a lot from occlusion like I found with the car counting.
I've used the number of "press for music" presses I see as a proxy for foot traffic; though it doesn't really tell me how many people are coming by.

A fisheye would work quite well for this application too I'm sure.