MaxIcon

These cams use M12 lenses, like most modern IP cams. They screw in and out to focus and run from pretty easy to a big pain to swap, depending on the cam. The main fit risk is that some lenses may hit the IR filter housing before they're focused, but you can't tell for sure without trying. Also, lenses with big barrels won't fit in the foam ring on a dome. Aside from that, look for MP rated, IR corrected, 1/3" M12 lenses. You can get cheap ones on ebay and dealextreme, but quality control is pretty uncertain on those and lint in the lens is common. Best bet I've found is m12lenses.com, who are not too expensive and have good quality. Focus is usually good out of the factory, but you can tweak it. Best to use a focus target like ISO 12233, which makes it easy to spot the best focus. The focus changes a lot with small adjustments, so it takes patience.

Per the specs: The Hik 2032 has a 1/3" sensor and a 4mm lens. The Dahua has a 1/2.8" sensor and a 3.3mm - 12mm varifocal, though other Dahua models, like the fixed lens 4300S also appear to do direct pixel sampling at the highest resolutions. Lens size doesn't matter, since the number of pixels is the same regardless, but it will affect field of view, which often doesn't match the vendor's spec. Sensor size doesn't really matter either, just pixel count. This is all a matter of how the camera's software handles the sensor's pixels.

It's really hard to go wrong with the 2032 if you're a new IP cam user on a budget. You'd have to spend a good bit more money to get better performance, and going below the Hik price range takes you into mostly lower quality or bad support turf. The main question in that price range is whether a mini-bullet will do the trick, or if you need the less conspicuous appearance of a dome, especially for indoor use or in public facing areas. Buying one or two Hiks would be a good start, you'd learn a lot about IP cams, support is very good for them, and you could figure out if you need to upgrade for the remaining cams.

The other thing to watch for beside aspect ratio is whether the pixels are directly sampled or scaled. Some cams, like Dahua, sample the pixels directly and show the same pixels per foot in either 3MP or 1080P mode, so you won't actually get more detail in pixels per foot, but will get a wider or narrower view. If the camera scales the 2 modes so that one axis or the other shows the same in both modes (it can't be both axes or it will look distorted, due to the different aspect ratios), then you will get better resolution in the 3MP mode. Then there's the Hik 2032, which scales the image such that the 1080P gives a wider FOV than the 3MP mode, so the 3MP will give more pixels per foot, even more so than one that scales both modes for the same FOV. Bottom line: It depends on the camera's firmware, and it's a good thing to verify before buying if this is important.

Dahuas have that IPC screen label as default, so there's a good chance of it. Other cams may use the same thing, though it seems a bit arbitrary.

Not a dumb question, just a Hik 2032 quirk. I don't know if their other 3MP cams do this. For some reason, the 2032 either upscales the 1080P or downscales the 3MP image; hard to know which without digging into their software. If the cam was using direct pixel viewing, you'd expect the 1080p image to be a subset of the 3MP image, since the 3MP has more pixels in both directions, but on the 2032, you get a wider image in 1080p than in 3MP. This isn't necessarily a problem unless you expect it to work the way many other cams, like Dahua, do. As long as you're aware of the limitation, it's fine. I chose the 3MP Hiks over the equivalent Dahua, despite this, because it's a better camera overall, IMO. Here's a post that shows the differences. viewtopic.php?p=235644#p235644

How it works out depends on your goals and your budget. My setup, which is similar to what a lot of people use, is like this: - Wide angle cams that monitor the area. Hik 2032 with 3.6mm lens is good for this, though you have to watch the FOV with this cam, since 2MP gives a wider view than 3MP. I use 2 of them to watch the front of the house, and they work well for that, but on the street, plates are unreadable and faces are recognizable if you know the person, but you wouldn't be able to convince a judge to convict someone with the footage. Likewise, if I wanted to read plates on the street, I'd need a couple more cams with long zooms that could see the street at plate level under a wide variety of lighting conditions. With my layout, they'd risk being blocked by cars parked on the street. Good plate reads in a residential single home setting is a challenge. - Cams that give a higher pixel per foot view of key areas - doors, gates, and other choke points. I've got one on the front door and one watching the driveway, giving less coverage than the wide view cams but lots more detail. Sometimes you can kill 2 birds with one stone. One of my back yard cams is mounted such that it gives a good hi-res close-up of the back door and still covers 1/3 of the back yard. It'll all depend on your layout and how many cams you want to run.

The main risk with replacing the lens is that the new lens won't screw in far enough to focus without hitting the IR filter housing. There's no way to know for sure if this will happen with a particular lens without trying. Any of the lenses from M12lenses.com should work, with the caveat above. Be sure you're looking at the 1/3" sensor page, as their board cam lens landing page has a mix of 1/3" and 1/2" lenses.

I'd think that something on the IR board is malfunctioning at low temps. You could test this by swapping the boards between two cams. Since all the IR LED control is done on the board, this would make the most sense.

Definitely different, though that may be due to the different sensor or a different vendor for the 3.6mm lens. Is the bottom image the 4300S? It doesn't look that good compared to the top image, and part of it appears to be the lens quality... I'll measure the FOV when mine arrives - hopefully any day now. Here are the FOV measurements on the 4300S. 3MP, 1.3MP, D1 = 72 degrees HFOV, 53 VFOV 1080P, 720P = 67 degrees HFOV, 37 degrees VFOV SXGA = 67 degrees HFOV, 53 degrees VFOV The Dahua website lists 97.6 degrees HFOV for this lens. Hard to say how they could be that far off, but this is Dahua. The marketing people probably used an FOV calculator; hopefully the engineers didn't give them this data. I'll post more detail in another thread when I've got some time to check it out more, but it looks like it's not that big an improvement over the 3300 series. It still appears to have the over-soft shadow compression, but it's been cloudy for days, so no chance to check thoroughly. Likewise, day/night switching is still unreliable (though the IR is controlled by software now). Mine came with 2.210.0000.2.R, build : 2013-08-21, and there's a newer version - 20130911, so I'll update it first before doing any extensive testing.

Here's a comparison between the Dahua OEM 3.6mm lens and the Deal Extreme 3.6mm lens, which only cost a few dollars. Folks who deal with optics know that good optics cost money, and cheap optics are rarely high quality. You really can't expect a high performance lens for a few dollars, and this is especially apparent at the edges of the lens, where quality drops even on expensive lenses. Here are the views used to calculate the 1.3MP HFOV above, showing the difference between the Dahua lens and the DX lens. The full view has been reduced by half, while the snips from the edges are full resolution. Even taking into account the wider FOV for the DX lens, the DX quality is not good. The shots of the ruler show this clearly, as you compare the legibility of the numbers and where the lines on the ruler blur out. Dahua OEM 3.6mm lens: DX 3.6mm lens: One end of the ruler for the Dahua lens: Same view for the DX lens:

This question comes up now and again, so I thought I'd post this write-up. I recently pulled down my last VGA cam (which was the first IP cam I bought) and replaced it with my Dahua HFW2100N, a small 1.3MP bullet. Most of my cams are 2 and 3MP these days, so this was a good use for 1.3MP, since it's a tight shot in a controlled area. Once I got it up, I realized the original 3.6mm lens was too wide angle for this location, and it needed to be zoomed in a bit more. The Dahua's not the friendliest cam for changing lenses on, like many compact bullets, so here's the rundown on how I did it. I started by trying to find a decent lens. I have a set of DealExtreme lenses, but their quality control isn't the greatest (one lens in the set rattles, others have focus problems), so I decided to give m12lenses.com a try. Their prices are a good bit higher than DX, and hopefully that means the quality is higher. At m12lenses.com, going to their Mega Pixel Board Lens section starts you off with a mix of 1/2" and 1/3" sensor lenses, so the first thing to do is select the 1/3" sensor page. They list 2 6.0mm lenses; one is F1.4 and one is F1.8. The F1.4, which gives better low light performance, was out of stock, but the lighting's good in my location, so I went with the F1.8: http://www.m12lenses.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=PT-0618MP I ordered a 16mm lens for future license plate testing to help split the shipping cost, and the total cost was $36 shipped for 2 lenses. It only took a few days for them to get here. Here are the before and after shots, reduced by 50%. The new lens gives a good view of the door and porch, with lots of details on faces, and not as many wasted pixels as the old lens. Before - Dahua 3.6mm OEM lens After - M12Lenses 6.0mm lens The 2100 needs to be disassembled to change the lens, as there's no removable front lens cover like on larger cameras (or on the newer 4300S). Start by removing 3 2mm screws from the back of the camera. This allows the hood to slide forward, exposing the circuit boards. Here's what the cam looks like; the 3 screws are in the half that the mount is attached to. There's a black rubber gasket between the two halves that provides the weather seal, and you want to be careful with this, as it's not easy to get a replacement if it gets damaged. I'd like to see the manufacturers use standard o-rings for this kind of thing, but the trend is away from that these days. Here's the camera split in 2 halves. You can see the rubber gasket on the left hand side, which also has the sensor board, and the screws that hold the board in place. The sensor/lens board is mounted to the front half, and 3 tiny phillips head screws need to be removed to remove the sensor board so you can get to the lens. Once the sensor board is out, it's attached to the IR board in the front half and the control board in the back half, which makes it hard to handle. Since it needs to be powered up while disassembled to focus the lens, I disconnected the IR board and set the front body half aside to make it easier to handle without damaging anything or shorting the case against one of the boards. The 2100 works fine without the IR board connected, and some people disconnect it as the only way to disable the IR LEDs. Here's the sensor board removed from the front half, with the IR board connector still attached. The 2100 has a lens locking ring, which is an improvement over cams with setscrews for locking the lens, but is still a pain. M12 lenses usually don't fit very tightly into the threads on the sensor assembly, and the amount of lens wiggle is enough to mess up the focus, so you have to focus, then tighten the ring and hope it doesn't shift the focus, which it often does. To remove the lens, loosen the locking ring and unscrew the lens. Sometimes the locking ring is just finger tight, and other times it takes careful use of a pair of pliers to loosen up. Here's the sensor/lens assembly, with the knurled locking ring right below the lens label. To make focusing easier and more repeatable, I removed the locking ring and put a wrap of teflon tape (plumber's tape) on the threads of the new lens. This holds the lens firmly in place, allows for small adjustments with a minimum of force, and keeps the lens from shifting after the camera's together. With the new lens turned in a few turns, the camera needs to be powered up to adjust the focus. You want to focus at about the same distance as what you want to watch, which is about 10' in my case. If you're watching views further than that, you can focus pretty much anywhere that's not too close - 10' should be good out to infinity. I use a Siemens star for focusing, and it usually takes going back and forth a few times to get it dialed in. The lag times on IP cams can make this a bit frustrating, so a bit of patience is handy. Here's where you're most likely to run into trouble. M12 lens standards are loose, and it's common for a lens to run into the IR filter assembly before it's focused, which makes it useless. There's no easy way to know for sure without trying. Fortunately, this lens fit with no problem, though one other lens I tried while it was apart hit the IR filter. Here's a shot of my focus setup, taken as I was measuring the field of view for the new lens. Once focus is as good as you can get, you're ready to re-assemble the camera. The main things to watch for: - Remove power first! It's too easy to slip and fry something. - Be careful of the rubber gasket if this will be used outdoors. Once it's back together, fire it up again, make sure it's good, and mount it up! I'll run the numbers on the before and after field of views later, and update the post with them.

Here are the FOV calculations for the Dahua 2100 with various lenses. I used the techniques described here: http://www.cam-it.org/index.php?topic=5424.0 I tried a few different lenses I had around for comparison, including a Deal Extreme 3.6mm, an M12Lenses 6.0mm, and an M12Lenses 16mm. The Dahua 2100 has same horizontal resolution in 1.3MP and 720p, so the HFOV will always be the same. Not all cams do this. I round the FOV off to the nearest degree, since these measurements aren't super precise, except on the 16mm lens, where the angles are a good bit smaller. Also, this shows that the D1 image is scaled, and isn't a pixel-by-pixel reduction. If it weren't scaled, the D1 VFOV would be half of the 1.3MP VFOV, or 26 degrees. They scale the image using almost the full sensor, giving a wider FOV at D1. Again, some cams do this, some don't. Dahua 2100 Resolutions: 1.3MP = 1280 x 960 720P = 1280 x 720 D1 = 704 x 480 Dahua HFW2100N Resolution, horizontal FOV, vertical FOV OEM 3.6mm lens - Dahua's original lens 1.3MP, 70 degrees, 52 degrees 720P, 70 degrees, 39 degrees D1, 58 degrees, 39 degrees DX 3.6mm lens, from this set (more on that later): http://dx.com/p/2-8mm-16mm-fixed-iris-lens-set-for-webcams-and-security-cctv-cameras-6-lens-pack-15774#.UvgOOGJLXTo 1.3MP, 78 degrees, 57 degrees 720P, 78 degrees, 42 degrees D1, 63 degrees, 42 degrees M12Lenses 6.0mm lens http://www.m12lenses.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=PT-0618MP 1.3MP, 47 degrees, 34 degrees 720P, 47 degrees, 26 degrees D1, 38 degrees, 26 degrees M12Lenses 16.0mm lens http://www.m12lenses.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=PT-1618MP 1.3MP, 15.8 degrees, 12.4 degrees 720P, 15.9 degrees, 9.4 degrees D1, 13.2 degrees, 9.4 degrees This shows a good example of the differences in M12 lenses with the same specs. The Dahua and DX lenses are both 3.6mm, but there's a 10% difference in FOV between them. The DX lens is also much lower quality, which is not unexpected, given the low price.

Great news - this has been one of Dahua's big weak points!

Hikvision and Dahua are the current champions in the value IP cam lines. Each has drawbacks (Hik seems to be preferred by many people), but it's hard to go wrong with them, in general. These are under $200, and can be had cheaper if you don't mind buying direct from China. Once you get below $150, it's harder to find reliable quality and support. There are many posts about these cams.

Note that some cams are designed to only work with that vendor's software, and don't work with the general-purpose NVRs and apps that many people run. Some mention this in their descriptions, but others wait for you to find out the hard way. Hard to say about your cams; it's not a brand I'm familiar with.

Dahua's tech support is probably the worst of the name-brand cams, unfortunately. Your seller is your primary support, and factory support is pretty close to non-existent.

Have you tried downgrading to an earlier version with TFTP? That may at least get the camera back online. It's possible you have a corrupt version of the 5.1 firmware. I'm not sure what, if any, checks Hik does, like verifying the checksums. Re-downloading 5.1 and doing a binary compare would tell you if that was a problem, and you could also try the version from a different Hik download site.

I think there's a Foscam forum where these things get discussed in detail. Best bet is to find someone with the same model Foscam who's changed the lens. However, changing an M12 lens can be easy, but there are potential problems. - You need to match your lens to your sensor size - 1/4", 1/3", whatever. Otherwise, you might get dark corners (1/4" lens on 1/3" sensor) and will get a different field of view than you expect. - You need to verify if the cam's got a movable IR filter, a fixed IR filter, or no IR filter. Movable IR filters are usually separate from the lens, but some daylight-only cams have the IR filter attached to the lens, and if you put a non-IR filter lens on, your daytime colors will be off. - If the lens says IR, it generally means IR corrected for focus, not with an IR filter attached. The former are common, the latter fairly rare. - If there's a moving IR filter, some lenses will hit it before they screw in far enough to focus. There's no easy way to tell if this will happen without trying it out. - It should be MP rated, though that's a fuzzy spec, and somewhat meaningless in cheap lenses. Good luck!

This is often caused by corrupt packets, not to be confused with dropped frames. These can be tricky to track down. I have a Messoa NCR870 that has corrupt packet problems, and will do this if the network parameters aren't set just right. Setting the bit rate too low is just as bad as too high. This is a camera bug, though, so yours is probabably different. Best bet is to run Wireshark and have it check the packets coming from your camera's IP address. It will show if there are any corrupt packets. There are lots of simple Wireshark get-started tutorials. To isolate it, start with simple stuff like changing cables, POE ports, disconnecting other equipment from the network, etc. If you have a 12Vdc PS, you can run it directly to a laptop or PC to see if it's something else on the network causing problems. This is assuming that settings tweaks don't fix it, such as matching the i-frame to the frame rate, reducing the bit rate, changing from CBR to VBR or vice versa, etc.

You should check your CPU usage while it's viewing to see if you're loading things down. You might want to compare the jerk timing to your i-frame setting, as well. I find many cameras show a small glitch at the i-frame timing, which would indicate it's slowing down when processing the i-frame and causing the jerk. So, if you're running 10 fps with an i-frame of 20, that would be an i-frame every 2 seconds. Likewise, an i-frame of 10 would be every second. If the jerk happens at a repeatable time (every second or whatever), it may be struggling with the i-frame decoding when it comes in, especially with multiple cams decoding at once. Your CPU utilization should show that. Do these jerks show in the recordings, or just in the live view?

Not all manufacturers do this. I get support from Vivotek on my cams, all bought used on ebay. Of course, they cost a good bit more than the equivalent Hik or Dahua.

As far as I know, nobody's figured out how to use the TFTP setup to unbrick a Dahua camera. Their tech support people can do it, but nobody's had much luck getting anything out of them either. Be sure to keep us posted on your progress!

Definitely different, though that may be due to the different sensor or a different vendor for the 3.6mm lens. Is the bottom image the 4300S? It doesn't look that good compared to the top image, and part of it appears to be the lens quality... I'll measure the FOV when mine arrives - hopefully any day now.

The HWF3300C software settings don't affect the IR LEDs. They're only controlled by the sensor on the board. Firmware day/night settings have no effect at all, at least on mine and my HFW2100N. On mine, they come on as soon as power is applied (and before the firmware boots) if you block the light sensor, which is a little tricky, since it's a tiny chip, not a can like older IR boards. Light comes in the sides of the chip as well, so you have to block it all the way around. I used electrical tape when I was testing mine. I'd check to see if the connector to the IR board is seated and has voltage. After that, check each of the LEDs for opens or shorts. Mine went out string by string, but if the light sensor chip has failed, it would kill all of them. Best bet if you have a working one is to compare voltages across the sensor and its resistor, as well as to the LEDs. I have that info in my notes somewhere...