mroek

Regarding the lens options, I was just looking at the specs here: http://www.hikvision.com/en/Products_show.asp?id=7326&showid=1 Seems to indicate 4/6/12 mm as the options. Sure I could ask Rory to include Hikvision, but I believe he has created the app with Dahua's SDK, so it might not be easy. I think he's very busy also, because I have waited for a very long time for a new version with some bugs fixed. I'm not complaining though, after all he's provided the app for free.

Thanks for the tip, but unplugging the IR-board makes no difference. At this point, I am quite convinced that there is some hardware fault with the sensor board. The kernel itself is running fine, but it seems to be having issues talking to the sensor board. Regarding the Hiks, if there are publicly available firmware updates, then that's clearly an advantage. I'm curious about what you say about HFOV. Is the image actually wider in 1080p than in 3MP-mode? Is it possible to make the text overlay stay in one color? I actually don't like the feature where it changes color on individual letters in the overlay according to the background. Do you happen to know if the Hiks has the same lens mount as the Dahuas? It seems the Hiks has a 4 mm as the widest lens option, and I'd like to have some more. One of the reasons I like Dahua, is that I'm very fond of Rory's (on Bahamas Security) LiveVue-application. It is a simple desktop application that just shows the stream from multiple cameras (but only Dahua is supported, I think).

Just a quick update: It was possible to connect to the camera with Dahua's ConfigTool (but I had to use port 3800, not 37777), but the ConfigTool can't retrieve any info about the camera. However, it is possible to upload a new firmware to the camera, but it doesn't help. The camera just reboots every two minutes. I can see that the firmware is actually being updated, because if I try different firmwares, and then telnet into the camera, I can see that files change size and date. I have also disassembled the camera and gained access to the serial port. I can see the diagnostic output when it boots, and I can also see that U-boot tries to look for a file on a TFTP-server. I haven't been able to halt it in U-boot, it just proceeds with uncompressing the kernel and booting Linux. I then get a regular console. Here's what the output from the serial port looks like when it boots: Checking DDR......OK UBL Version: 1.43t(DM368 30/5/2012) Oscillator: 24MHZ ARM Rate: 270 MHZ DDR Rate: 216 MHZ BootMode: SPI Starting SPI Memory Copy... DONE U-Boot 1.3.6 (jerry) (May 30 2012 - 11:05:27) DRAM: 128 MB SF: Got idcode 01 20 18 SF: Detected S25FL128P with page size 256, total 16 MB In: serial Out: serial Err: serial Ethernet PHY: GENERIC @ 0x05,id:221513 total gio 2 gio[22]=1 gio[25]=1 Loading... TFTP from server 192.168.254.254; our IP address is 192.168.1.108; sending through gateway 192.168.1.1 Filename 'upgrade_info_7db780a713a4.txt'. Load address: 0x80100000 Loading: * Retry count exceeded. Failed to get info.txt ==>use default images ## Booting kernel from Legacy Image at 80800000 ... Image Name: Linux-2.6.18_pro500-davinci_evm- Image Type: ARM Linux Kernel Image (uncompressed) Data Size: 1938236 Bytes = 1.8 MB Load Address: 80008000 Entry Point: 80008000 Verifying Checksum ... OK Loading Kernel Image ... OK OK Starting kernel ... Uncompressing Linux............................................................................................................................... done, booting the kernel. [libdvr] libdvr.so Build on May 20 2013 at 15:45:44. [libdvr] SVN NUM: 4491. [libdvr] no new hwid scheme! claststate V1.0 for dm365times=0 @@@; usdate = 0x90160158 mode: normal Tue Jan 11 00:05:25 2000 0.000000 seconds ==============>PPPOE2.4.5:Complie time May 6 2013 14:11:09 SvnVersion = 2526<============= get username * password error! insmod for iSCSI ./usr/etc/app.sh: line 23: echo####application exit:139, system will reboot!: not found # It is of course possible that this is a hardware fault. I haven't reached a decision if I should go for 3200S or the Hikvison yet, I'd really like to play with a Hikvision first. Does anyone know if there is some publicly available demo of this camera?

I guess noise is a tradeoff you have to make for increased resolution. Smaller pixels on the same sensor size tend to be more noisy. The web interface on the Hiks looks a lot more polished than the Dahuas, though. Does it work without having to install annoying browser plugins, and with other browsers than IE? That's a serious shortcoming of the Dahuas, I think.

Where are you located? Is cost of sending just the board back to Shenzhen very high? I'm in Norway. I don't think it is worth the trouble, to be honest.

Sounds good, but I'm not in the U.S, so I'd probably better look for a different source. Thanks for the tip, anyway. There is one possible drawback compared to the 3200S, and that is the lens focal length. The 3200S goes down to 3.6 mm, while the Hikvision is 4 mm with the shortest lens option.

Well, I won't go bankrupt from this, so I might just have to take you up on that advice. I'm considering whether I should replace the camera with a 3200S instead. A bit more resolution, but still pretty small.

It is possible that there is a physical fault on the internal flash memory, if so there really isn't much to do. I could probably get a new copy of sonia onto the camera, but not in the location where it normally resides. The file system is read-only, so to do that you'd need to flash the entire filesystem to the correct address in the flash. That's easier said than done, but not impossible if you have the knowledge. There is a tftp-daemon running on the camera, but I'm not sure if it is meant to work on IP or serial/rs232. And even if I knew, I'd also need to know which file it would want.

Hi, When I ordered my IPC-HFW2100 cameras, I was a bit unsure which lenses I should order, so I ordered cameras both with 3.6 mm and with 6 mm (from factory). I also ordered some cheap 3rd-party lenses from Anykeeper just in case. I am generally happy with the cameras as-is, but one of the 3.6mm cameras was a bit blurry in the left edge of the image, so I decided that I'd test one of the 3.6 mm Anykeeper lenses that I had bought. I opened up the camera, and compared the lenses. They were of identical length, but the front glass looks different, and the markings are a bit different too. Here's a comparison: I mounted the Anykeeper-lens, and to my surprise it was quite a bit wider than the factory lens, even though they are both marked 3.6 mm. Anyway, I was happy with that, because I actually needed a slightly wider view anyway. The image quality is comparable, but I do think that the Anykeeper lens perhaps exhibits a bit more chromatic aberrations (pinkish shadows in highlights). Overall sharpness I'd say is pretty much the same, but I got rid of the left-side blurriness that I had with the factory lens. IR-cut filter works the same as with the factory lens, so I'll keep the Anykeeper lens on this camera. I am in no way affiliated with Anykeeper, I just thought it would be nice to inform the forum about it. The item I bought was the lens they call 3 megapixel.

I don't know, but I'd guess before summer.

The next firmware for the 2100 has quite a few improvements, including BLC/HLC/WDR like on some of it's siblings, and also customizable white balance, so that you can choose a specific area in the image you want it to use to calculate white balance. That's quite useful if you have some neutral area in the image. And the most important: They have fixed the noise reduction issue that caused a lot less detailed images.

Dahua has at least one gaping security hole in their firmware for a few of the cameras, so to stay secure, the cameras should not be available on any insecure network (and certainly not on the internet).

Hi, I am planning to buy a few Dahua bullet cameras (either HFW2100 or HFW3200S). I also own a Synology DS213+, and I am thinking of using this to store the video from the cameras. The best option seems to be the Surveillance Station package, at least if I want to easily browse the recorded events, and to access them remotely. The downside is that this software has quite a few shortcomings, and additional camera licenses are ridiculously expensive. I have a few questions: 1) Is it possible to set motion detection in the Dahua camera to save some network bandwidth to the NAS? If motion detection is to be done with Surveillance Station, it will need to continuously stream the video from the camera, but perhaps it is possible to avoid that if the camera itself does the motion detection? 2) If yes to question 1), how does that actually work? Is there some kind of push protocol in use? Another option is of course to use motion detection in the cameras, and have them upload event videos to the NAS by FTP, but then it is quite impractical to quickly get an overview of the events, as each file needs to be viewed in a Dahua player software (or converted to AVI by Dahua software). It would also be cumbersome to view recoreded events from remote (on my phone), although live view would be no problem, of course. I am well versed in networking/software/electronics (engineer), but I am quite new to CCTV/Video surveillance, so don't be afraid to throw technical details in my face.

The next version (coming soon, hopefully) of Dahua HFW2100 firmware is supposed to fix at least some of the issues with the noise reduction, so we can only hope. It is a really annoying issue, and makes the image quality a lot worse than it has to be.

You don't have to do anything with the "ball part". There are three recessed screws that hold the housing together, and after opening that, you have to remove the tree philips screws that attach the lens board to the front part of the housing. You can see some pictures in this thread: http://www.cam-it.org/index.php?topic=3882.0

Well, it wasn't exactly priceless for the casino...

Hi, Take a look at the attached image. It is a 100% crop from one of my HFW2100 cameras, and the snapshots are just a few minutes apart (early morning). The top part is taken prior to the bottom. As you can see, the top image is blurry and has a little less saturation than the bottom image, even though both are clearly color images. What could have happened here? At first I thought the blurry image was with the IR-filter active, and that the camera for some reason had switched to color mode without moving the IR-filter out of the way. However, when I manually switch the camera to B/W (and I can hear the IR-filter moving), the image is still not nearly as blurry as the top image. This was yesterday morning, and this morning I noticed the same thing, that the camera had a blurry image. I then tried manually switching it to B/W and back to color, but the image was still blurry. Then I rebooted the camera, after which the image was normal again.

What's not so great is that there seems to be no easy way of fixing the builtin security vulnerability that admin/admin seems to be hardcoded for login via Onvif. In the current latest release, Onvif sits at port 9988, so you can at least avoid exposing that port to the internet even if you want to set up access to the web interface (at port 80). Unfortunately, it may seem as if Dahua has moved Onvif to port 80 in later test versions, and if admin/admin still works for Onvif, then anyone can actually reboot your camera or reset the config (in addition to other stuff) if you have set up internet access to your camera on port 80. What they need to do, is to allow the user to decide which port Onvif should work with, and they also really, really, really need to link the Onvif account info to the actual accounts defined in the camera, not a hardcoded value.

Of course. Not sure that needed to be said. Ok, great!

First, do you actually have an FTP-server in your network? If yes, then you must run this command to get the file onto that server: ftpput -u -p Account1 Account1 You must of course substitute user/password and server-ip with the appropriate values for your server. It is possible that you also need to supply a target directory on your server, but since you should be in control of that server, you'd be the one to know that. If I'm going to be brutally honest with you, it does not sound like you have enough knowledge to be doing these things. That's precisely why I did not supply any detailed instructions, because anyone with the required knowledge would immediately understand what to do. In any case I will not be responsible if you brick your camera.

FWIW: I agree 100% with you, MaxIcon.

That sounds dubious. I would most definitely NOT want to have ANY firmware updated by anyone else over the internet. Firmware updates should most definitely be performed locally. I still think that Dahua's firmware policy is unwise. I can't really see any problems in them posting the official firmwares on their own site. If they are worried about cross-updating with branded products (like Q-See) it is no problem for them to add functionality in their firmware to make sure that's impossible (at least by normal updating from the web interface). Firmwares will always leak, so why not maintain a reliable source instead?

I've looked a bit at this lately, and you are (of course) correct that Dahua packs most of their system in a single binary. What I found amusing, is that they seemingly named that binary after the DM365 (DaVinci SoC) product line manager at Texas Instruments. The binary application is called sonia, and the name of the lady at Texas Instruments is... drumroll... Sonia Ghelani. Here she is in a too. Could of course be coincidental, but I am quite convinced that it isn't, so I'm declaring this to be a Fun Fact. I've also looked a bit at Dahuas firmware images, and while it is possible to extract the different image files from the binary, Dahua seems to have added an additional (and probably proprietary) header to those images, making it more difficult to manipulate. Your standard open source tools (like Firmware Mod Kit) can't work on them out of the box. The names are also confusing, they all include "Cramfs" in the names, but not all of them are actually Cramfs-images.

Yes, it is a real shame that they don't just post new firmware versions on their own site, instead of forcing everyone to go to their distributors to get firmwares. There are no valid reasons to do it this way, as far as I can tell. Virtually every other manufacturer of devices that can be updated with new firmware will allow users to download the relevant files from their own site.

You can't FTP into the cameras. You must login to a shell with telnet, and then use the builtin commands ftpget and ftpput to move files to and from an FTP server in your network.