So I pulled the Trigger on this Camera Today
http://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/caQHA11m.
Got the Camera itself for US$320 which includes shipping by DHL. Also bought a Corner Bracket and Junction Box. Paid by Paypal and paid a 4% surcharge for the fees.
Dealt with Jack Chan at CCTV IP Camera on Ali Express.
The store generally, and the product specifically, have pretty good feedback.
The store also does the "Huisun" mini PTZ.
I know a lot of posters are looking for info on these cameras, and trustworthy stores to buy them from, so I thought I would start a buy log to document my experience with this seller, and ultimately with the camera.
Day 1 - 13 Jan 2016 - Paid with Pay Pal
Day 2 - 14 Jan 2016 - Receive email saying camera has been sent and a tracking number will be provided in three days.
Day 6 - 18 Jan 2016 - Still no tracking number. Coming tomorrow apparently.
Day 7 - 19 Jan 2016 - Tracking number provided late in the day.
Day 9 - 21 Jan 2016 - DHL tracking reports the parcel has been picked up, processed, and has left Hong Kong
Day 10 - 22 Jan 2016 - Delivered to my door but I missed the delivery guy. DOH!
10 Days from payment to delivery is pretty good.
The Packaging and Un-boxing.
The box the camera was packed in was wrapped in clear plastic and then copious amounts of tape were put over that. Small box is the additional corner bracket and junction box.
The box took a bit of a beating in transit.
The corner bracket and junction box were well packed in bubble wrap bags
Both the corner bracket and Junction box are of metal construction. Corner bracket looks like 3mm steel plate with bolts welded on for attaching your camera. Junction box is cast aluminium.
Bit of a word of warning in relation to the junction box. It comes with a pair of PVC cable glands which screw into threads in the bottom of the junction box. The glands are imperial, 3/4" by the look of them, which is great news if you happen to live in a metric country where your conduit is in mm. 20mm connectors are a little too big. 16mm go inside the threads but need to be held in with the locking rings.
They came with four copies of Dynabolts which look stainless steel, four allen head stainless steel bolts, four stainless steel flat washers and four stainless steel spring washers. My only gripe here is that you need four bolts to attach the camera to the junction box and another four to attach it to the bracket. I'm short four bolts.
Main box was well padded, contained a warning sticker, wall bracket, four amp 12V power supply, wall bracket and safety cable, and the dome itself.
All the bits went together fairly easily and I have mounted it on a stand I made up whilst I test it.
Click for night time testing videos
Update 26 January 2016 -
So it turns out that either this camera does not have an IR Cut Filter, or it is broken. Im leaning towards the former. the listing was pretty clear that it was supposed to.
I noticed that I could still the the IR when the camera was in day mode. I thought perhaps having the IR on forced it into night mode so to check I turned the IR off, put the camera in day mode and used an external illuminator to determine if the camera can still see IR. As you can see it can. I've contacted the seller "Jack" and his response wan't very helpful. (Update: Sorted. We came to an arrangement to compensate for the difference between stated and actual capability.)
That is a list of the major differences I have confirmed to date between the specifications listed, and what I can determine from the camera.
Blue Iris Setup
Blue Iris set up was easy. The camera auto detected. The PTZ didn't work until I changed the PTZ protcol to Hikvision. Haven't played with presets yet.
General thoughts.
It isn't a bad little camera. It was just dissapointing for it to arrive without many of the stated features.
What did surprise me was the IR performance. They claim 150m (500ft) and usually that means 150 feet. In one of my test shots I could distinguish people walking at 190m (633 feet) in poor lighting conditions. They were invisible to the naked eye. IR performance depends on zoom of course. Focus at longer ranges in poor light becomes a bit tough for the camera. The downside of such honking IR is that it is very easy to get an IR halo effect from the reflection off nearby objects. I would not buy this camera if the application required it to perform at 150m (500ft) all the time in poor light. At half that distance it performs well in very poor light so for most applications it will be very good, especially if there is better ambient light.
There are many happy reviews on Aliexpress in relation to this camera, and but for the fact that I was checking and comparing everything, I would probably be another blissfully ignorant and satisfied customer. Depending on the application I would consider buying another one but I would want to pay less for it. I don't know if I would buy it from Jack again for a few reasons. First is honesty. I dislike finding out that the camera is not to the stated specs in the listing, and the things I was told about the dates items were "shipped" clearly needed to be taken with a grain of salt. Second is the language barrier with Jack would be an issue in regards to after sales service. His english is better than my chinese but I don't think it would be good enough if you had a really curly problem. Finally I think Jack is just a reseller and his technical know how is limited.
Model numbers for Google
YC-HD785R-20X
IMP-HD785-FZ
http://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/caQHA11m.
Got the Camera itself for US$320 which includes shipping by DHL. Also bought a Corner Bracket and Junction Box. Paid by Paypal and paid a 4% surcharge for the fees.
Dealt with Jack Chan at CCTV IP Camera on Ali Express.
The store generally, and the product specifically, have pretty good feedback.
The store also does the "Huisun" mini PTZ.
I know a lot of posters are looking for info on these cameras, and trustworthy stores to buy them from, so I thought I would start a buy log to document my experience with this seller, and ultimately with the camera.
Day 1 - 13 Jan 2016 - Paid with Pay Pal
Day 2 - 14 Jan 2016 - Receive email saying camera has been sent and a tracking number will be provided in three days.
Day 6 - 18 Jan 2016 - Still no tracking number. Coming tomorrow apparently.
Day 7 - 19 Jan 2016 - Tracking number provided late in the day.
Day 9 - 21 Jan 2016 - DHL tracking reports the parcel has been picked up, processed, and has left Hong Kong
Day 10 - 22 Jan 2016 - Delivered to my door but I missed the delivery guy. DOH!
10 Days from payment to delivery is pretty good.
The Packaging and Un-boxing.
The box the camera was packed in was wrapped in clear plastic and then copious amounts of tape were put over that. Small box is the additional corner bracket and junction box.
The box took a bit of a beating in transit.
The corner bracket and junction box were well packed in bubble wrap bags
Both the corner bracket and Junction box are of metal construction. Corner bracket looks like 3mm steel plate with bolts welded on for attaching your camera. Junction box is cast aluminium.
Bit of a word of warning in relation to the junction box. It comes with a pair of PVC cable glands which screw into threads in the bottom of the junction box. The glands are imperial, 3/4" by the look of them, which is great news if you happen to live in a metric country where your conduit is in mm. 20mm connectors are a little too big. 16mm go inside the threads but need to be held in with the locking rings.
They came with four copies of Dynabolts which look stainless steel, four allen head stainless steel bolts, four stainless steel flat washers and four stainless steel spring washers. My only gripe here is that you need four bolts to attach the camera to the junction box and another four to attach it to the bracket. I'm short four bolts.
Main box was well padded, contained a warning sticker, wall bracket, four amp 12V power supply, wall bracket and safety cable, and the dome itself.
All the bits went together fairly easily and I have mounted it on a stand I made up whilst I test it.
Click for night time testing videos
Update 26 January 2016 -
So it turns out that either this camera does not have an IR Cut Filter, or it is broken. Im leaning towards the former. the listing was pretty clear that it was supposed to.
I noticed that I could still the the IR when the camera was in day mode. I thought perhaps having the IR on forced it into night mode so to check I turned the IR off, put the camera in day mode and used an external illuminator to determine if the camera can still see IR. As you can see it can. I've contacted the seller "Jack" and his response wan't very helpful. (Update: Sorted. We came to an arrangement to compensate for the difference between stated and actual capability.)
That is a list of the major differences I have confirmed to date between the specifications listed, and what I can determine from the camera.
| Specification | Claimed in Listing | Actual on Received Camera |
| Model | IMP-HD785-FZ | Unknown – Model number not present in firmware |
| White Balance | Auto / Manual / One Touch WB / ATW | Auto/MWB |
| White Balance | Auto/Manual/ATW/Indoor/Outdoor/Daylight lamp/Sodium lamp | Auto/MWB |
| Day & Night | IR Cut Filter | Electronic Day Night |
| Shutter Speed | 50Hz: 1~1/30,000s; 60Hz: 1~1/30,000s | 1/25~1/30000S |
| Enhancement | Smart Defog: on/off | No Smart Defog |
| Day& Night | ICR | Electronic Day Night |
| Streams | Three Streams | Two Streams (Main and Sub stream) |
| Tilt Range | -5° ~ 92° (auto flip ) | -10° ~ 90° (auto flip ) |
| Protocols | IPv4/IPv6, HTTP, HTTPS, 802.1x, Qos, FTP, SMTP, UPnP,SNMP, DNS, DDNS, NTP, RTSP, RTP, TCP/IP, UDP, IGMP, ICMP, DHCP, PPPoE | Does Not have 802.1X or HTTPS functionality. |
Blue Iris Setup
Blue Iris set up was easy. The camera auto detected. The PTZ didn't work until I changed the PTZ protcol to Hikvision. Haven't played with presets yet.
General thoughts.
It isn't a bad little camera. It was just dissapointing for it to arrive without many of the stated features.
What did surprise me was the IR performance. They claim 150m (500ft) and usually that means 150 feet. In one of my test shots I could distinguish people walking at 190m (633 feet) in poor lighting conditions. They were invisible to the naked eye. IR performance depends on zoom of course. Focus at longer ranges in poor light becomes a bit tough for the camera. The downside of such honking IR is that it is very easy to get an IR halo effect from the reflection off nearby objects. I would not buy this camera if the application required it to perform at 150m (500ft) all the time in poor light. At half that distance it performs well in very poor light so for most applications it will be very good, especially if there is better ambient light.
There are many happy reviews on Aliexpress in relation to this camera, and but for the fact that I was checking and comparing everything, I would probably be another blissfully ignorant and satisfied customer. Depending on the application I would consider buying another one but I would want to pay less for it. I don't know if I would buy it from Jack again for a few reasons. First is honesty. I dislike finding out that the camera is not to the stated specs in the listing, and the things I was told about the dates items were "shipped" clearly needed to be taken with a grain of salt. Second is the language barrier with Jack would be an issue in regards to after sales service. His english is better than my chinese but I don't think it would be good enough if you had a really curly problem. Finally I think Jack is just a reseller and his technical know how is limited.
Model numbers for Google
YC-HD785R-20X
IMP-HD785-FZ
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