salesguy

Buellwinkle: I double checked my IPC-HFW3300C last night, and even in 24F weather it was using a max of about 5.5w. I mispoke earlier on the model number, but they should be similar. Dahua engineering did confirm that the 3300c uses more efficient LED's (though less bright) than the larger ones that are in the IPC-HDB3300. I don't one of those running in my home system so I can give a measurement. Your point about enterprise cisco switches running dahua cameras is an excellent one, I for one would love a $5k switch and $10k cameras but if you are using 5 to 10 dahua's then a zytel or linksys switch will do you well. I found excellent deals on ebay on used gear, so check there. Don't be afraid of switches w/out power supplies, you can buy a nice 150w 48VDC power supply for $35 or so. I have an extra one if anyone wants which Ill probably post shortly.

I will double check it again tonight!

HAHA - very true. Yes, I have the IPC-HFW3200C and it uses 5500 mw max, at least in my setup

In my experience I believe the numbers I saw from the Cisco/linksys Webview GUI that showed the Dahua 3MP bullet and Dome both used between 3500 and 5500mw max, including while using IR. In addition to the router which had very detailed readings for each port, my kill-a-watt confirmed the readings.

I can say that my Dahua cameras use between 2500 and 4500mw each. So that tells me just about any POE switch will be fine since they draw very little power.

1080 mini-bullet sold I also have a vivotek FD-8136 available, just listed on ebay below. If forum member wants to buy directly I will take $10 off (ie, not through ebay but direct): http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150941354371&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:US:1123

3MP bullet sold

3MP bullet now "un-spoken" for. So all are available at the moment. I'll cover shipping for 2+ cameras ordered

Yes

3MP Bullet is spoken for pending payment. All others available.

For my outdoor floodlights I started using the honeywell automatic timer that utilizes your longitude & latitude to adjust for sundown and turns the lights on based on that schedule (plus you can offset if you want). Great little timer and more reliable than photosensors in my opinion. http://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-Econoswitch-RPLS740B-Programmable-Switch/dp/B004AP92N2/ref=pd_sxp_grid_pt_0_0

I haven't looked at these yet (can't do it at work), but my 1.3MP Dahua bullet was very pixellated on the default MJPEG settings. When I turned the bit rate to max, it improved a lot, and looked much closer to the H.264, but with lots higher bandwidth (maybe 2x, if I remember correctly). I actually had it set at max, which was 10 or 15mbit, and it was still pixelated. The 3MP cameras pump out 24mbit max on mjpeg. while that isn't necessarily an issue for my network, the picture quality was not as good.

Hi all, first post here. I am relatively new to the security camera scene but have been reading the various forums & review sites and decided to dive in for both home security & to learn more about the technology first hand. I'm a software and network professional so the technology has come naturally. I am familiar with the overt shilling of various brands & services some here do, either directly or indirectly. I have no business interest in this endeavor and am only interested from a home security standpoint. I recently took delivery of the following models of Dahua cameras from a Chinese distributor: IPC-HFW3300C (3MP) IPC-HDBW3300 (3MP) IPC-HDB3200C (2MP - 2.8mm & 3.6mm) IPC-HFW2100 (1.3MP - 3.6 & 8mm) IPC-HD2100 (1.3MP 3.6 & 6mm) So far I have hooked up & turned on most of these models and confirmed video and normal function. I was able to access the UI and see video using firefox on ubuntu 12.04, which is contradictory to what I was expecting given that these use active-x controls, but hey, it worked fine using firefox. Live video was displayed in the UI windows and I could easily make changes to settings and see the changes. I also was able to setup each camera in zoneminder with no issues, the settings below are what you need if you are using zoneminder. I plan on writing up a detailed review of most of these cameras including comparisons to the Vivotek FD8136 and Axis M3202 cameras I have on hand today. My initial thoughts on the products: -Excellent build quality and fit/finish. Seals and materials feel good. All models have solid metal housings and put many $200+ camera builds to shame -UI is easy to navigate but has the expected chinglish -Wiring dongles are solid looking, and the 3MP models have the reset buttons on the dongle. The cheaper mini-bullet has reset on the case as was mentioned here previously. The only snapshot i have to include so far is the below (I hope it works) shot using the 2.8mm mini-bullet 1.3MP camera in my garage (99% dark). I haven't adjusted anything, just powered it up and set on the table. I'll get the 3MP side-by-side soon once I get a 2nd POE connection sorted out there. I would be interested in advice on how to compare these cameras and how to setup such a test -and what data people would be interested in. I'm not sure how to post video yet, but am happy to share both video & still shots as is feasible. At some point I would like to share a live stream as well. PM me if you have questions or post a reply. Zoneminder settings: (camera set on defaults) Source: FFMPEG Frame Rate: 30 Source Path: rtsp://admin:admin@192.168.1.108:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0?tcp Resolution: 1280x720

Out of respect for forum sponsors that sell these cameras I'm keeping this thread about the technology, not business. It's easy enough to get on alibaba and take a chance with who you find. Those who have done that and risked their business & money doing so would not appreciate reviews of individual chinese sellers - sorry. I will be posting the extra cameras I have in the classifieds or on ebay, in order to recoup what I have in them. One note - when you buy from China the price of the camera is only one consideration, shipping is either slow or very expensive, payment costs 5 to 8% of order total to get to the seller & in local currency, plus there is a very real and tangible risk of loss to the buyer with no recourse. So keep that in mind when evaluating what a US seller who is a known quantity is asking for a camera.

An update here including video samples uploaded to dropbox, hopefully they can be downloaded and viewed. They are quite large, I set BI to 100% quality & recorded as AVI with h.264 encoding. Assuming you have a fast connection I would download the whole file & then watch in VLC to get the best quality. What I have to show: 1. "livingroom" files are the mini-bullet 1.3MP camera, one with MJPEG and one with H.264. There is a clear difference in quality, especially on the kitchen wall. I'm not sure why this is the case, all settings remained the same, but MJPEG is worse for sure. https://www.dropbox.com/s/mgbxhhtcpcoi275/livingroom_mjpeg.avi https://www.dropbox.com/s/uuk5bqfhc5t1ri5/livingroom_h264.avi 2. 2MP mini-dome 2.8mm outside - this is one of my favorite cameras, the picture is great and the coverage is ideal for the front of our house. https://www.dropbox.com/s/l1d7epjaax2jcvz/driveway.20121015_160728.avi 3. Vivotek FD8136 as comparison, and I realized how out of focus it must be when looking at this video. Time to climb up there and adjust. https://www.dropbox.com/s/otb7w9d139k2m38/frontdoor_vivotek_fd8136.avi Lastly I have included a screen shot of the power draw in mw for these cameras, as you can see they are quite low. Cheers.

FYI - in case anyone has been wondering, viewing a 3MP+ camera's full resolution image on the new macbook pro retina display is downright amazing. I highly recommend this laptop, it is quite frankly an amazing computing experience and the display is something that makes you go "wow" all the time. Especially with high res imagery. cheers.

I'll setup a vimeo account and upload some videos for this thread. Check the file names - they have the exposure detail in the name (hopefully it shows up for you).

Zoneminder certainly does motion detection - and your suggestion was a great reminder, I meant to try that and forgot. It made a huge difference in load on the system. Thanks for the tip! It does take a few seconds to get back to full speed, but the savings in CPU cycles is worth it. Now i have it set to 5fps when idle. The only downside is if you want to record say 10 seconds prior to the trigger, you will only have 5fps during that period. You can also use any trigger you want if it can generate a TCP message, which zoneminder can listen for and then start recording. Very handy if you want to use PIR sensors or integrate into a home security system. Sorry for veering off topic.

I will see what I can do - videos require a place to host them, I could do that from my home server and just link to them in the text here, if that works I'll do it plus add some high res images. Regarding your request - I don't have any equipment setup that will read license plates. It's to far from any of my cameras for that to be feasible. If that is a core requirement then you should be looking at a higher end class of camera, probably with a zoom lens. Facial recognition is possible though, at least in the sense that there are enough pixels to ID a person from many of the vantage points i have setup. I'll see what I can do on that. A note on software and zoneminder: Last night I had 4 dahua and 1 vivotek cameras running through zoneminder, all at full resolution & frame rate. It absoutely killed my server, it was running at a load average of 11.5/11.5/12.0 all night. I have an i7 quad core machine with 16gb ram and several SSD's and it was not able to handle the frames at that rate. Max load average should be 4 or less, higher than that and stuff stops working well. My network is setup with gigabit throughout, except the POE switch which is a linksys 8-port 15w/port switch with dual gigabit uplink ports. So from what I can tell there is zero network congestion. The server was seeing roughly 120 3MP images/sec (some were 2MP). From what I have seen of NVR specs, that would require a very high end dedicated server to handle. All of the dahua desktop & vertical series NVR's max out at 120fps at 1080P. I have used Blue Iris on the same server and it seemed more resource hungry than zoneminder, but it was hard to say. I'd be curious if anyone else is pushing 100+fps through blue iris at 1080P or 3MP. I'm not sure what the lesson is here, but sticking with 1080p as a max resolution and ensuring you have a solid network, good illumination, possibly additional PIR sensors (more on that later) and a dedicated NVR or high end server is the way to go. You certainly can't blow 90% of your budget on cameras and think you can figure out the rest, it just won't work.

here is one more of the dome indoors - I don't see any halo but I'm curious if anyone else does. One other bonus shot, my front door vivotek FD8136, a tiny little camera, no IR and it's pretty cheap too. I'll write more about it later if anyone is interested. thanks!

3 more pictures - man we need a forum with some features like image & video posting that are a bit more useful. I just realized it's possible there is some halo effect there, I'm taking some more shots in a second...

Thanks - It is tricky to get the focus just right without a handheld screen or more experience. I'd love to have remote focus but that is a whole 'nother class of cameras. I just took the following shots just after dusk. The 3MP dome & bullet perform about the same, both show much more of the backyard with the shutter opened up to 1/4 exposure, and I fiddled with the "low-noise" and "low-blur" settings vs automatic. The automatic looked the worst to me, but of course there was no motion in these shots which would have been a blur for sure. I did also notice i get a decent amount of white light from the house next door which has flood lights directed in the general area. Not a ton but 200w of light. I also took one indoor dark shot with the dome, and the halo effect is gone as far as I can see, which means you simply have to make sure the rubber grommet thing is seated properly and touching the dome. Hopefully some of these shots help folks here make decisions between models & manufacturers, and I will follow up with the mini-dome info and then (eventually) with what I decided to go with and where. A few folks have asked me who I got these from and what I paid - I haven't responded because I don't want this to be about what deal you can get. You can get on alibaba and find out pricing easily, so for now I'm not going to talk about the deal in this context. cheers.

Updated back yard shot - 3MP dome with the seal pressed up against the dome to hopefully minimize the halo effect. Right not it's not dark, but I set it up so I thought I'd post what it looks like now. Will update later with a night shot. It will be truly night, there is barely any light back there. When I originally got into IP cameras, I thought it would be awesome to see all the wildlife and stuff going on at night, see who was walking or driving back there on that road. now I know it will take a $10k camera AND a $10k illuminator do light up the entire area with that level of detail. I'll settle for seeing what is on my patio. I do have no doubt the 3MP dome would work wonders inside, say to cover our livingroom/kitchen at night, but no way the wife would want this big sucker (it's really not that big) so noticeable. I might get away with a mini dome or mini-bullet at best in our main living areas. Question - what do folks think about the 3MP format being 2040x1536? I think the image size looks odd since all my monitors and such are widescreen. I wonder if there is a benefit to staying with resolutions that are in that format.

That looks like a public IP - are you 100% sure zoneminder can get throught any firewalls or routers to get to the camera? If it is - get that password changed! Have you been able to open any other camera types using FFMPEG? Is FFMPEG checked under options - images - checked and correct path? I installed zoneminder 1.25.0 on ubuntu which included FFMPEG, I was never able to get it to compile on ubuntu no matter what I tried, so I went the easy route. Double check that FFMPEG stuff and report back.

These questions are probably outside the scope of a particular camera review - the most basic way to view the web interface of the camera itself, you can see the live stream, take snapshots & record video.