Considering Dahua over Hikvision for home system

[bluestreak]

Hi.

I'm in the midst of building a new house and will be installing an IP security camera system in it. At first I figured I'd be using Hikvision. They've got a good reputation for quality/value and they're popular (lots of installers use them; even my workplace has Hikvision cameras installed) so it should be easier to find help if I need it. I'm an IP cam newbie and while I don't have any experience using Hikvision cams, I do (sorta) have experience with Dahua. Half a year ago I bought an indoor PTZ IP cam (its installed at my parents' house) from Amcrest, which turns out is rebranded Dahua. It seems to be such a superficial rebranding that I can even use the Dahua SmartPSS app with my Amcrest camera! So now I have basic knowledge configuring and using Amcrest and presumably Dahua cameras but that's not all that's making me consider Dahua.

As I did more research into Hikvision to pick out the models to eventually use in my home, I noticed a couple of things I didn't like about Hikvision: 1) No support for 1280x960... I'm thinking it would be a good inbetween resolution between 720 and 1080p. Plus, 16:9 aspect ratio video looks stretched to my eyes - 4:3 video just looks better to me. And 2) Hikvision encodes audio using ancient MPEG 1 Layer 2 (not even sure about the container format) while Dahua uses the modern AAC codec. I've done a tonne of transcoding of the videos from my Amcrest cameras for archival. My workflow consists of free video tools avidemux for video lossless joining & clipping and vidcoder for transcoding. There's an option in vidcoder to passthru the audio track without reencoding, so in the end I'm left with H264 video and (the original) AAC audio in an MP4 file, all the bits that make up the standard for video files these days.

So, for those little reasons, I'm starting to think I should go with Dahua for my home... Can someone that's more knowledgeable about both brands chime in? I'd like to know if there are an major pros / cons for either brand that I haven't considered.
Thanks

 

[mat200]

Welcome Bluestreak,

I would not look at cameras lower than 1080p resolution.

Right now the MOST important thing for you is to ensure the cabling gets done before the dry wall goes up and it gets harder to run lines.
I recommend you pickup a varifocal camera and start testing possible views ASAP. This will help you decide your needs and thus help determine what is most important.
A lot of people mount their cameras too high - and thus often get poor angles for good ID images.

I went Dahua since I needed low light cameras ASAP - and Dahua beat Hikvision to it. People here really like the Dahua starlight varifocal turret - and that would be a good model to use for a reference and compare others to.

Also It's easy to get swamped with information here, so I wanted to share some notes with you

Please check out @giomania 's notes:
Dahua Starlight Varifocal Turret (IPC-HDW5231R-Z)

I have also made notes which are a summary of a lot of the reading I've been doing here,:
Looking for some advice and direction!

Have fun joining us here.

 

[mat200]

BTW - here is a snippet of notes I've made in another site's wiki to

....
New Construction additional notes:

• Before the drywall goes up is the most affordable time to add wiring. Pull wires to all locations you may use - better to over do it now than under do it.
• Pull N+1+ cat5e/cat6 wires to each location, N=the number you plan to use, pull at least one extra line.
• Remember to add wiring for alarms, extra electrical sockets to support your security cameras, media center, data center ( that's where your switch, NVR, NAS will be ), as well as the front entrance.
• Pull electrical and several cat5e/cat6 lines to your front gate area. ( 2 sets of underground conduit is best - one for electrical the other data/cat5e/cat6 )
• Plan for the option to install video intercom / video doorbell by the front door and gate. ( example of such a product .. ) Plan for future upgrades as this tech is changing quickly.
• Have the electricians install METAL boxes - I have seen too many subcontractors and later tenants break plastic gang boxes.
• Inspect the job site regularly - even daily, Inspect for straightness and squares, many subcontractors measure only once...

 

[dyno]

Very good list above of things to do for new construction. I regret not knowing enough to have the front door cam positioned properly for face ID and microphone related stuff installed.

Dahua has worked well for me - I don't see a heck of a lot of difference between Dahua and Hikvision but I'm not a hardcore user. I'm in Burnaby so right beside you.

 

[giomania]

If your into sound and voice control, might want to run speaker wire and Cat to the ceiling for the below items

Dot's Amazing! Origin Acoustics’ Valet System Hides Amazon Alexa in Your Ceiling

Also ceiling runs for wireless AP's

Even if you don't use this stuff...you never know


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[bluestreak]

Thanks @mat200! My (first) post sat around with no replies for two days until you came along. Looks like you the the ball rolling! haha

Thanks for pointing me to that post by giomania. That's a huge info dump - someone (ie. a mod or admin) should copy that post and sticky it in this forum!

Cabling's pretty much all done and good at this point. Every room has at least one ethernet drop. Drywall should be up by the end of the month. For the IP cam system, the installer (and all-around low voltage guy) said that he prefers to run separate network and 12V cables for each IP cam so as to avoid any potential power loss with PoE. There's only one long IP cam run of about 80ft (with all other runs being around 30ft) but I just went with his preference as I didn't see any harm in it.

I've been lurking around this forum for a few weeks and it looks like those Dahua starlights are where its at. I'm going to go with the 2MP models as my security needs aren't much; Truthfully, this is mostly just for some geeky fun. My current plan is get varifocal domes* for the sofit locations and mini-domes for the front door and main floor interior area. I'm also considering swapping out the dome at the front of the house for that very nice looking starlight recessed PTZ dome... cause PTZ is just fun. lol..
(* I noticed the internet prefers turret style cams but it seems the standard around my area is for domes ...)

I noticed a weird thing with the IP cam cabling when I was looking at the house today: For each IP cam location the installer put a rectangular gang box. It looks to be the size of a typical indoor 1 gang size box. Hrm... I though they would be circular like recessed pot lights?? (See attached pic)

 

[mat200]

Thanks @mat200!..

I noticed a weird thing with the IP cam cabling when I was looking at the house today: For each IP cam location the installer put a rectangular gang box. It looks to be the size of a typical indoor 1 gang size box. Hrm... I though they would be circular like recessed pot lights?? (See attached pic)

HI Bluestreak,

Looks like they did a good job - those 1 gang "boxes" are typical for low voltage installation. Should work well, depending on camera you may need to use a cover plate with a hole in it.

Especially like that each room has a drop!

Definitely review your front door area view for your camera(s).

Also - review for various options on being able to capture license plates of cars which maybe used by package thieves. Seems to be that has become a very popular activity for those looking for illegal gains.

Check out the videos I have listed on the last part of the wiki here
Lorex / Dahua OEM 6x 4K / 8MP security camera system w/ 8 port POE IP NVR 2TB HDD kit at Costco B&M YMMV for $799.99

I've been reviewing videos which hopefully will be useful to help others determine better placement of cameras.

 

[bluestreak]

Very good list above of things to do for new construction. I regret not knowing enough to have the front door cam positioned properly for face ID and microphone related stuff installed.

Dahua has worked well for me - I don't see a heck of a lot of difference between Dahua and Hikvision but I'm not a hardcore user. I'm in Burnaby so right beside you.

I'm guessing the issue with the front door cam is that its placed way up high, so you're mostly seeing the tops of heads? Looking at the pics I've taken, it looks like the gang box for my front door IP cam is placed up high too. :| I guess its up so high because below it is a gang box for a front porch light. I believe there will be a front door bell with proprietary video intercom system so there's that for seeing faces. Hrrmm.. I going to ask if there's space between the front door bell and porch light to put that mini-dome... Thanks for making me take note of this!

I looked around for ONVIF compatible front door cams... I found DoorBird and Dbell live but both were expensive and seemed quirky in implementation...

 

[bluestreak]

If your into sound and voice control, might want to run speaker wire and Cat to the ceiling for the below items

Dot's Amazing! Origin Acoustics’ Valet System Hides Amazon Alexa in Your Ceiling

Also ceiling runs for wireless AP's

Even if you don't use this stuff...you never know

Cool product. Unfortunately, Amazon Echo's aren't sold here in Canada. We can buy them from the states and they'll still work - except that you'd have to set your home city to somewhere in the US, plus some a few other small quirks I've heard.

Yep, I've got ceiling runs for Ubiquity APs on each of the three floors. Planning to hopefully get full coverage with just two APs installed (each floor is about 800 sqft) but its nice to have that third one just in case.

 

[mat200]

I'm guessing the issue with the front door cam is that its placed way up high, so you're mostly seeing the tops of heads? Looking at the pics I've taken, it looks like the gang box for my front door IP cam is placed up high too. :| I guess its up so high because below it is a gang box for a front porch light. I believe there will be a front door bell with proprietary video intercom system so there's that for seeing faces. Hrrmm.. I going to ask if there's space between the front door bell and porch light to put that mini-dome... Thanks for making me take note of this!

I looked around for ONVIF compatible front door cams... I found DoorBird and Dbell live but both were expensive and seemed quirky in implementation...

HI Bluestreak, Happy to help out.

Front doorbell options appear to be weak right now... I've read some of the Dahua Villa Station / Video intercom threads here, as well as some of the ring elite doorbell threads... looks like the best thing to do is wire the heck out of the doorbell area ( Cat6/5e AND power ) providing enough room for a better option in the future.

Definitely plan to have a camera by the front door, perhaps even 2 covering the approach.
Dahua minidome catches guy casing house

Also think about a camera inside your garage - as often we forget the garage door as an easy access point.

 

[dyno]

I'm guessing the issue with the front door cam is that its placed way up high, so you're mostly seeing the tops of heads? Looking at the pics I've taken, it looks like the gang box for my front door IP cam is placed up high too. :| I guess its up so high because below it is a gang box for a front porch light. I believe there will be a front door bell with proprietary video intercom system so there's that for seeing faces. Hrrmm.. I going to ask if there's space between the front door bell and porch light to put that mini-dome... Thanks for making me take note of this!

I looked around for ONVIF compatible front door cams... I found DoorBird and Dbell live but both were expensive and seemed quirky in implementation...

My front door area is quite small so yes, I see tops of heads. Being your home is new, likely your porch area is quite a bit larger but I guess your low voltage guy has his usual preference.

The 12v power wire parallel with network cable is a great idea. One of my Dahuas will not power up with POE so I'm using the 12v lead that was for the original analog cam. IR illuminators also run off 12V so you are covered there too now.

 

[bluestreak]

Looks like they did a good job - those 1 gang "boxes" are typical for low voltage installation. Should work well, depending on camera you may need to use a cover plate with a hole in it.

So where does the camera get installed? On top of / covering the gang box? I guess this would utilize one of those junction box I see listed under the accessories section of the dahua website. Until today I had though dome cameras were just flush mounted to the soffit directly. lol...

Check out the videos I have listed on the last part of the wiki here
Lorex / Dahua OEM 6x 4K / 8MP security camera system w/ 8 port POE IP NVR 2TB HDD kit at Costco B&M YMMV for $799.99
I've been reviewing videos which hopefully will be useful to help others determine better placement of cameras.

Wow, that's quite the impressive info dump you got going there! Good work sir!
Those sample videos you collected are really good at illustrating the need for good placement, WDR and high resolution... Damn you, I might have to upgrade one of my cams to 4MP.

Also think about a camera inside your garage - as often we forget the garage door as an easy access point.

Not inside, but I'll have one outside of it for mainly watching the garage door area.

 

[mat200]

So where does the camera get installed? On top of / covering the gang box? I guess this would utilize one of those junction box I see listed under the accessories section of the dahua website. Until today I had though dome cameras were just flush mounted to the soffit directly. lol...

Hi Bluestreak,

In your case the builder looks like they are doing a great job and you should have plenty of space within the soffit to push the wiring bundle back - so I would not worry about using junction boxes.

Wow, that's quite the impressive info dump you got going there! Good work sir!
Those sample videos you collected are really good at illustrating the need for good placement, WDR and high resolution... Damn you, I might have to upgrade one of my cams to 4MP.

Thanks, I've been thinking about getting one varifocal 4K / 8MP to better ID cars and edge of property by the street ...