PTZ only in focus at certain zoom level - Alibi analog camera

[pschumac 0]

I have an Alibi BLK-PTZ36XIR PTZ camera (https://www.supercircuits.com/media/docs/blk-ptz36xir-manual-br.pdf) which I believe is the same as the Hikvision DS-2AE7168N-A (https://us.hikvision.com/en/products/more-products/discontinued-products/analog-ptz-camera/ds-2ae7168n-ds-2ae7168n).  Everything on the camera seems to work, but the focus.  The picture is only in focus at a certain zoom level (around 10x).  Anything wider or more zoomed is completely blurry.  The fine tune zoom control changes the focus slightly and is only helpful if the camera is zoomed at ~10x already.  I've changed all the settings I can find, reset things to default, etc.  Manual focus, Auto-focu and Half-focus - nothing seems to work.

I can't find any updated firmware to try (and I'm not sure how to install it anyway since it's an analog camera).

Any ideas of things to try would be much appreciated.  At this point the camera is fairly useless.

Thanks in advance.

 

[pschumac 0]

Does anyone have suggestions? I'm thinking of taking the camera completely apart completely to see if it could be a hardware problem with the lens. Beyond that, I'm at a loss.

Thanks for any suggestion at all - even if it's to stop wasting my time and to throw the camera away. 

[tomcctv 187]

Hi. The problem is knowing who makes your camera Alibi could be anyone. 

How do you have camera connected and how are you controlling it 

on power down and back up again does it go into calibration mode ......... cam goes up down round and focuses on the floor .........you are best watching you monitor while it does this.

 

also have you removed the protective film from the front on the lens when you unpacked it

[pschumac 0]

On 12/29/2018 at 3:44 AM, tomcctv said:

Hi. The problem is knowing who makes your camera Alibi could be anyone. 

How do you have camera connected and how are you controlling it 

on power down and back up again does it go into calibration mode ......... cam goes up down round and focuses on the floor .........you are best watching you monitor while it does this.

 

also have you removed the protective film from the front on the lens when you unpacked it

Thanks for the reply.

I have the camera connected to a QSeee DVR and I'm controlling it through that.  I also tried a Swann DVR with the same result.

Yes, it goes into calibration mode after rebooting.  It spins around and seems to pass its checks.

The menu that comes up after reboot says the following:

BLK-PTZ36XIR

SN 488553802

ADDRESS 2

COM FORMAT 2400 .8.1

PROTOCOL AUTO

FIRMWARE 3.12

HARDWARE 1.20

BUILD DATE 14 06 27

TILT SUCCESS

PAN SUCCESS

 

There is no protective film or anything else on the lens.

[tomcctv 187]

Hi protocol auto ....... have you tried changing that to pelco d on camera and controller..... protocol is important for the right command to your ptz