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You see this a lot - careless spec sheets with minor and sometimes major errors. My guess is there's no SD card, and it's the Dahua. If the vendor can give you the firmware version, that's usually a sure sign, since everyone has different naming conventions. SD cards often get left out of mini-bullets to help save size, and most mini-bullets are a pain to open up, so card access would be difficult. If you go with them, make sure you have good access to firmware updates, as Dahua has non-existent technical support outside of the company you buy from. If they go out of business, you get the Dahua trashcan warranty. It's not a bad camera, based on reports, but I recently chose the Hik 3MP DS-2CD2032 mini bullets (same as the Swann you mentioned) over the Dahua for a variety of reasons, including lower cost and better tech support. There's a lot of discussion on these recently if you search on hik bullet or hik 3mp. Hik has a better presence in Europe than the US, I believe, and you might be able to find them where you are if you google for the UK.

The Qvis and the Dahua sure look the same. The Qvis spec says it has a micro SD card, and I don't think the Dahua does. Qvis doesn't list this one on their web site, and doesn't appear to supply firmware, but that would be a clue - either the firmware revision, or a firmware download would tell if it's a Dahua or not. The vendor also has one that looks just like the 3200C, so there's a good chance it's a Dahua.

Yeah, it's a problem. I've got the HFW2100N, HFW3300C, and Hik 3MP bullet, and can post some comparisons of the 2100 and Hik. The 3300 has the same 1080p dimensions as the 3200S, I believe, but this one has a varifocal lens, so not as easy to compare. You might want to look back over the 3200S posts and see if you can tell more about the real FOV. FOV specs are a problem with these cams (and many M12 lens cams), as they're not very accurate overall. The vendors need to spec actual measured FOV, not calculated, and also need to give it for each resolution setting. I'll be posting more Hik images this weekend and will be taking down my 2100, so I can make a comparison post for those, at least. ETA: I've been working on FOV measurement techniques, and I believe I have a pretty reliable method down. Using this, I got the following FOVs: Hik 3MP mini bullet, 4mm lens, in 1080p mode (1920x1080): 68 degrees, spec is 75.8 degrees Hik 3MP mini bullet, 4mm lens, in 3MP mode (2048x1536): 62 degrees, spec is 75.8 degrees Dahua 2100, 3.6mm lens, in 1.3MP mode (1280x960): 63 degrees, spec is 70 degrees Note that the vendors don't spec FOV for different resolutions, even though they're clearly different.

Their specs show the lens size options, but actually getting them can be tricky, as it depends on what your vendor stocks or will order. It would be nice if they'd just sell the lenses separately, so you could buy known compatible ones without rolling the dice.

Yes, the HFOV is smaller at 3MP, for some strange reason, and the 3MP is scaled and zoomed in compared to the 1080p, despite claiming more pixels. Here are some screen caps and measurements on this: viewtopic.php?p=224748#p224748 You can't change the dynamic lettering colors, as far as I know. ETA: You can make them smaller, contrary to what I said before. I'm doing that now so they don't cover as much of my view. The lens is a standard M12 lens, but swapping M12 lenses is a lot trickier than C and CS lenses, due to a lack of standards. Traditional lens calculators don't work well for M12 lenses. The Hik bullet's a good example - the actual FOV is closer to what you'd get from a 3.2mm lens. The Dahua 3300C varifocal lens gives almost exactly the same FOV at its closest setting of 3.2mm. Two different 4mm lenses on the same camera may give two different FOVs, and some lenses won't fit on some cams at all, depending on the lens mount spacing and IR filter body size. It's a jungle, and vendors need to start offering lens options to the user that are characterized on their cameras.

Yeah, my limited benchmarking shows that NVR clients mostly care about 2D video performance, which makes sense. Most video card benchmarks weigh the 3D portion more heavily, since that's where most people are looking for performance. That's also what sucks down the most power, if you're looking for keeping power consumption down. If you use benchmarks to select video cards, it's important to focus on the 2D scores more than the 3D scores.

My experience with the Hiks is that the WDR is very useful in the daytime for bringing out the details in the shadows, but it increases noise quite a lot at night. I was running my cams with WDR set at 50 during the day, but the night image was terrible, so I ended up dropping it down to about 20, decreasing the contrast (the traditional fix for this on non-WDR cams), and turning up the noise reduction to 100. This made for a decent compromise between night and day. I'd really like to see vendors include a setting to load a complete profile, either based on time or day/night mode. This would be fairly simple to do, and you could optimize the image for both day and night without trade-offs.

I haven't tried it on the 2100, but on the HFW3300C, you can unplug the IR board and everything works normally. The 2100 is pretty similar functionally, but it would take testing to be sure. I'll be doing this as soon as I uninstall my 2100, probably this weekend. All of my cams leak a bit of IR into the image when the filter is in. mroek, you might want to try it with the IR board disconnected, just in case it's causing a hardware fault. My 2100 has lost all but 6 IR LEDs, and Blue Iris logs a few dozen network dropouts a day on the camera. It was very reliable early on, and the network drops seem to have started about the same time my LEDs started dying. I recently bought 2 Hik 3MP bullets to run in 1080p, and specifically chose them over the 2MP Dahua for these main reasons: - Better daytime image, better night time image despite higher noise - Better tech support and readily available firmware - Better software overall, though some things like BLC are better on the Dahua - Lower price - Easier to find vendors Downsides to the Hik: - Noisier in low light than the Dahua, but with better image detail - Questionable 3MP spec, but 1080p does the job, so no major issue there. If the 3MP image was wider than the 1080p I'd run it there, but it's a smaller HFOV. I could use about 10 more degrees.

Interesting! I wonder if another setting was changed at some point, like contrast or WDR. Both of those can affect the night shots like that, though I'd expect contrast to wash out the day shot as well. On the Hik, I've found that WDR settings that look good in the daytime cause a lot of trouble at night. Anyway, looks much better!

On the Swanns, it shouldn't affect bandwidth, as they have a separate bandwidth setting that's independent of the i-frame or fps settings. What it will affect is quality, as more i-frames per second for a given bandwidth means more compression.

You can only turn the Hik IR off by setting it to day mode, which also puts the IR filter in. On the Dahua, you can't turn the IR off at all without unplugging the board - it stays on even in day mode. I'd like to see all these new cams set up like my Vivoteks, where you can control IR, IR filter, and color mode all independently. The Hik does use a plugin on PCs.

Lol! I'm guessing this is not the type of solution OP had in mind. I'll buy some when I win the lottery, though.

That does look like IR washout. You can tell for sure by removing the dome and seeing if it's better. You can also get this from IR reflection from local objects, but you'd expect to see that with the bullet as well. Can you just run the camera without the dome? In a small shop like that, there's not much need for concealing which way the lens is pointing. I do like the field of view of the bullet a lot better, though.

While the Hikvision bullet is compelling for the price, its low light performance isn't as good as the Dahua's, if that's important to you. If you use 1/60 sec max exposure to avoid motion blur, the night shots tend to be noisy. Turning on WDR to avoid overly dark daytime shadows makes it worse. The Dahua has a softness in shadows during the daytime that I find annoying, so it's a trade-off. I picked the Hiks for my latest project because of the terrible Dahua support and soft shadows.

Here are 35mm to C mount adapters: http://www.edmundoptics.com/microscopy/relay-lenses-couplers/c-mount-camera-lens-adapters/1459 You need a long adapter, as the lens back focal distance is quite a bit longer on 35mm cameras than the C or CS mount lenses. I don't see any CS mount adapters, for whatever reason. Since this essentially turns the 35mm lens into a C mount lens, you could add a C to CS adapter, and would be good to go, in theory. You might have better luck with a good brand lens for a larger sensor. That is, if you're using 1/3" lenses, look for 1/2" or 2/3" lenses, made by fujinon and other good quality manufacturers. Since the center of the lens is generally higher quality than the edges, you get better images, as the image circle is much bigger than the sensor. This also gives a different focal length equivalent. Since you only capture part of the lens image, your effective focal length is shorter than the focal length you'd get using it with the size sensor it's designed for. The same would be true of a 35mm lens, since the 35mm frame is much larger than your sensor.

I have a web site I put pics on, but for big stuff, I use google drive. Other people like dropbox, and there's an assortment of similar free stuff.

Can you FTP a new copy of sonia onto the cam? I spent a bit of time with a different Dahua and was unable to get FTP running on it, but I'm no expert in these matters. If you think there's some corruption at the hardware level, you could rename the existing sonia and copy a new one so it goes into a new location. I don't know if there's a TFTP serial interface on the 2100 like there is on the 3300, but if there is, that might be helpful. If all else fails, there's the famous Dahua trash-can warranty.

What's the bright spot in the night shot from? Is that the Avigilon IR or the other IR? More flood would be useful there. If you can upload the 5MP shots somewhere, it would be great to see the details.

Vivotek makes a few: http://www.vivotek.com/web/product/ProductDetail.aspx?Model=IP8133 White light illumination and POE http://www.vivotek.com/web/product/ProductDetail.aspx?Model=IP8131 IR illumination, no POE I haven't bought any Vivoteks for a while, but I've got four of their 1MP models (IP8332 and FD8134), and they've been reliable and have decent performance.

Very few camera makers make their own lenses; they just rebrand them. I'm not an Avigilon expert, but I'd be really, really surprised if they made lens components and assembled them into lenses. This is a Korean lens, though the same Avigilon PN comes in both this lens and a Fujinon lens. Most Fujinon lenses are made in Japan, though you'd have to check the marking to be sure. The Fujinon is also not made by Avigilon. I have this lens, bought a fair bit cheaper than this listing, though this is a pretty great price for a lens with these specs, assuming they're true. I haven't tried it yet, but since it was a good price on a 1/2" IR corrected 5MP rated 4-12mm zoom lens, I like to buy stuff like this for the day I might need it. The Avigilon model number is LC41214SC, and TWG linked to the OEM data sheet above. Google it for more detail. I'm planning on jamming the auto-iris full open and using it on one of my fixed-iris 1/2" cams.

I just bought a pair from another vendor, and they not only came with the 5.0.0 firmware but with the new weather-proof network connection. It's a different model number from either the Swann or the Hik, but is the same camera. I like the idea of the new network connection, though it requires crimping the connector after passing it through the far end of the connector. Nice improvement by Hikvision - another notch in their belt! As was mentioned in the other thread, use their SADP software to set the IP addresses. If that can't find the cameras, they may be bad.

You could test that by isolating it, if you have the gear. Connect a decent laptop directly to the camera using a relatively short cable and an external 12Vdc supply, and that would give you a dedicated 100Mb connection without anything else running. It's starting to sound like you've got a bad camera...

You can download a demo copy that runs for 15 days, and can be reset to run another 15 if you want. BI is the best value software if you're running a lot of cameras on a budget, by a long shot. It'll support plenty of cameras, but if you want to run a lot of MP cams, it needs some pretty serious horsepower. It likes the new 4th gen i5 and i7 cpus, and that would be the way to go if you wanted to run 12 1080p cameras. If your resolution is lower, a less powerful PC works fine. Check out the BI community forum - lots of pc performance posts, and a good place to read up on its capabilities and get questions answered after you've done some reading: www.cam-it.org

Yes, this works very well, and is a lot easier for me than changing the IP address on the PC. I even tried it with 2 new Hik 3MP bullets plugged in at the same time, so both had the default 192.0.0.64 address, and it pulled up both of them at once and let me change the IP addresses with a few clicks.

After trying quite a few of them with mixed success, I found my favorite lens calculator so far: http://www.theiatech.com/calculator.php Like most, it's for CS and C mount lenses - M12 lenses are too unpredictable for most FOV calculators - but it gives good ballpark results. One plus over most lens calculators is that it covers 16:9 HD sensors as well as 4:3 sensors (which the lens calculator on Page 1 does as well). It also gives a nice simulated FOV and zoom window.