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mroek

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Posts posted by mroek

  1. Posted

    as great as the aliexpress price is, i'm not sure i would give up easy returns and 90 days to find if anything is wrong, routinely costco will extend the return period as a courtesy as long as it is within a warranty period.
    Well, since I am living in Norway, I don't have many alternatives, and certainly no Costco. Returning stuff to China is of course more or less a no-go, so I am just taking a roll of the dice. Simple as that.

  2. Posted

    Someone recently posted that they tried to flash their Chinese day-of-the-week camera with firmware from the European site and got a "language mismatch" error. Don't know any details, though.

    I also received my Hiks today, from the same Aliexpress supplier. Mine are brand new, manufactured in July, and they all have the new style waterproof pigtail. They were delivered with the leaflet in Chinese, but that's irrelevant for me

     

    They also have the latest v5 firmware, but unfortunately the week/day display is in Chinese on mine also. It isn't very important, but it is a bit annoying, as everything else is English, like it should.

     

    I'm unsure if I should try flashing the European firmware or not. The version number is exactly the same as the one that is installed on the cameras.

  3. Posted

    I measured the actual FOV on the Hik in degrees, and plugged the number into the Theia FOV calculator:

     

    1080p: 68 degrees, 3.6mm equivalent

    3MP: 61 degrees, 4mm equivalent

     

    Other FOV calculators give different numbers, as low as 3.2mm, but what really counts is the actual FOV, of course. The manufacturers need to be doing a better job of specifying the actual numbers, not calculated ones, and for every resolution as well.

    Yep, it is clearly a jungle out there with the M12 lenses and their specs.

    Did you ever measure actual FOV of the Dahua 2100 with a 3.6 mm lens? If so, what is the calculated equivalent in the Theia calculator?

  6. Posted

    The Swann will be identical to the Hik if the flash takes correctly, unless they've changed something recently.

     

    When I first flashed a Swann to 5.0.0, it was missing items in the white balance area, as well as other stuff. At one point, after both the camera and PC had been turned off, it prompted me to reload the webcomponents file, and everything was OK after that.

     

    Try powering down the camera and restarting the PC. If that doesn't work, delete the webcomponents folder and it should reload.

     

    For the bricked issue, Hik has a procedure for this. Someone else tried it without much success, but if you're bricked, it's worth checking out.

     

    Here are the files and instructions:

    http://www.hikvisioneurope.com/portal/index.php?dir=Technical%20Materials/Special%20Tools/TFTP-Auto-Update/

    Kudos to Hikvision for actually putting the instructions for this in a public place.

    The procedure described should be pretty safe, as long as the firmware file is correct. These cameras will, on every boot, try to connect to a TFTP-server (this happens from within U-boot, the bootloader), and if it finds a server, it will download the new firmware. If it is bricked so badly that even U-boot has been corrupted, then there is nothing to do.

     

    Hikvision undoubtedly has a way more sane policy on all things related to firmware updates than some other manufacturers (Dahua being among the worst), and for me this is one of the main reasons I'm swapping my Dahuas for Hiks.

     

    One question for those that have Hiks:

    When you telnet to the camera, do you get root access rights? I guess not, but it sure would have been nice.

  9. Posted

    As I mentioned, VLC works, but I'd have to run one VLC instance for each stream/camera, which I don't want. I want all the streams to stay within one instance and one window.

     

    I think the author of LiveVue is way too busy to do anything (he doesn't reply in the LiveVue thread on his own forum), and he seems heavily invested in all things Dahua, so he'd probably not be interested in adding support for anything else.

  10. Posted

    Hi,

     

    I've been searching for a simple (the ideal is a portable app without any installation) camera viewer application for Windows.

     

    I am currently using an application called LiveVue by Rory Knowles (Bahamas Security), which does just that. It can show the video from multiple cameras, and it is small and portable. The problem is that it only supports Dahua cameras, and I am going to swap my Dahuas for Hikvision, so I will no longer be able to use LiveVue.

     

    I know there are lots of NVR applications out there, but I'm using a Synology for that, so all I want is to have a simple application to monitor my cameras live. I don't want a big, intrusive do-it-all software.

     

    Had there been a simple way to show multiple video streams in VLC then that would have been an option, but unfortunately I'd have to run multiple instances of the app, which is undesirable.

     

    I've come across a few apps that purports to do this, but they're all crap. So, the question is simple: Does anyone know if such an app exists?

  11. Posted

    What brackets? Do you mean the mount on the bullet or the 2-axis mini dome installation?
    I meant the mount on the bullet, sorry for the confusion. What I really wanted to know, is if the Hik has approximately the same degrees of freedom in the mount as the Dahua 2100 (and probably most other Dahua bullets). I think the Dahua is pretty flexible, so I was hoping the Hik would be similar.

  15. Posted

    Did any of you play around with the noise reduction on the Hik?

     

    I am going to order some Hiks to replace my 2100s anyway, I think. There isn't many compelling arguments to buy the 3200S, I figure. It is slightly larger (and I like small), Dahua has this annoying firmware policy (although to be fair, I have gotten some firmwares directly from them, and they did fix the noise reduction issue I complained about), but most of all, it is only 16:9, and that is a disadvantage for me (except in one location, where it doesn't matter).

     

    And the Hiks also have a plugin that works in Firefox, from what I understand. The IE-only policy of Dahua is also a drawback.

  16. Posted

    How is the noise reduction on the Hik?

    From the screenshots of the config interface, there seems to be a slider to adjust it. Does it also degrade daytime images?

     

    And one more question: In the Hik user manual (which covers a lot of models) there seems to be a "Corridor mode", where you either mount the camera sideways, or rotate the lens and sensor board. I gather the latter is probably not possible on the Hik bullet, but is the corridor mode actually present in the config options for this camera?

  17. Posted

    Thank you very much for taking the trouble to do this!

     

    It seems the Hik has approximately the same coverage in the 3MP mode as the Dahua in 1.3MP mode, just as I was hoping. And it is actually a bit wider in the 720P mode than the Dahua, meaning that if I don't need as much VFOV, I can run it in that mode for better HFOV. I gather the Hik has the same FOV in 1080P mode (which you didn't post any shots from) as in 720P, right?

     

    Then a few comments to what you wrote:

    Why do you think the Dahua should have changed HFOV when switching between the 1.3MP mode and 720P? The horizontal resolution is exactly the same, the 720P-image is just cropped top and bottom. No extra interpolation, I think.

     

    And you also wrote that there is no WDR on the Dahua. That's not entirely correct, in one of the later firmwares, Dahua added WDR also to the 2100. Mine has it, it's one of the "BLC mode"-options.

  18. Posted

    On firmware 5.0.0, the Hik only has 720p, 1080p, and 3MP, so the only one that would match the 2100 directly is 720p. The 720p and 1080p are both the same FOV, so the 720p image is interpolated from the 1080p sensor capture.
    Ok, thanks. I've been in contact with a supplier on Aliexpress, and I think I will try the Hiks, just want to see your comparison shots before pulling the trigger on them. If the Hiks can provide more or less the same HFOV and VFOV as my 2100 in 1280x960 mode, then it is more or less a sure thing. It would seem the Hik is better in most areas, perhaps except noise in low light, but as Buellwinkle pointed out, a little noise but with preserved details can be just as good as less noise and less detail.

  20. Posted

    Comparison shots between the Hik and the 2100 would be great (looking forward to see them), even though your numbers seems to indicate that the Hik in 3MP mode (4mm lens) is pretty similar in HFOV (and thus also VFOV) to the 2100 in 1.3MP-mode (3.6mm lens), and should be a good candidate for replacing the 2100.

     

    I've been in contact with an Aliexpress merchant that sells the Hiks, but they're currently out of stock (sells very good, she said). The downside is that shipping is ridiculously expensive.

     

    The fact that Hik actually posts public firmware updates is a big pro for them.

  21. Posted

    I've been reading your investigation regarding sensor size and pixels with interest, but it is really difficult to figure out whether I'd get enough coverage with the different candidates to replace the HFW2100 that I have. The Dahua 3200S presumably takes the same lenses, but being widescreen, that means I'd lose quite a bit of image at the top and at the bottom. The Hik has a 3MP mode (which isn't really 3MP as you've discovered), but it crops the sides in the process, losing HFOV. In a different thread I saw someone write that going below 4 mm on the Hik would cause the top shield to come into the image.

     

    I really think in the majority of cases it is better with a 4:3-format for a security camera than 16:9, and if only the Hik had been providing the full width of the image in both modes, it would have been more or less perfect. The fact that they glue the lenses is a drawback, of course.

  23. Posted

    Dunno what you mean that 4mm is their widest lens option, I have one that came from Hikvision with a 2.8mm lens and have 2 with 12mm lenses on their way.

     

    Aks Rory to include a choice to mix Hikvision and Dahua in the same app.

    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.

  24. Posted

    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).

  25. Posted

    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?

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