4231E-S problem

[sebastiantombs]

I bought a couple of 4231E-S cameras about two and a half years ago. They are solid little cameras without a doubt and perform well at low light levels to boot. During the recent deluge we had the one in my front yard became water logged, IE the lens fogged up so badly the video was just a white screen, day or night. I left it for a full day and it did come back a bit, but it's still obvious there's a moisture problem in there. So I pulled it and replaced it with a 3241T-ZAS but I would like to get the 4231 working well again.

Has anyone taken one of these apart? Looking at it the only way o do that appears to be to remove a portion of the front of the camera. There's a slot at the front of the camera, about 3/8" in from the front, that seems to be a joint but it is a very tight joint and I don't want to wreck things trying to get something in there to pry with. I checked the front plate and it seems to expend under that piece that I suspect comes off to gain access. I've thought about trying a heat gun to see if that ring/flange is glued on but I'm worried baout overheating things.

Anyone been there and done that with a 4231?

 

[looney2ns]

The plastic overlay around the lens and covering the LED's, peels off. carefully pry where that meets the metal case.
There are then screws behind that will be revealed.
Those cams seem to have a problem with moisture getting in around the cable at the back of the case.

 

[sebastiantombs]

Thanks @looney2ns I'll have a go at it tomorrow. That was a bad storm we had and this is the first problem I've had with any of the Dahua cameras I have. I like the quality of the video from it. Excellent overwatch camera, not a who did it at 3.6mm though.

If/when I get it apart, without destroying it, I'll see what I can do about improving that cable seal.

 

[looney2ns]

Just don't be overzealous when removing the black overlay, and it should come off without issue.
If if doesn't want to stick after the repair, a few dabs of RTV silicone will cure that.

 

[sebastiantombs]

I've got more silicon hanging around here than a Vegas strip club.

 

[sebastiantombs]

The big problem I had is that I painted that camera camo green since it was tree mounted. Finding the edge of that cover was a little tougher. I ended up using the "guitar pick" that came with a PFA-130.

Yup, actually a little water in there, maybe three or four drops. One lousy desiccant bag when there's enough room for four or six. Fresh desiccant bags on the way. Then, repaint again only this time back to white since it'll be going to a soffit mount this time.

Thanks again, @looney2ns

 

[sebastiantombs]

OK. I got it well dried out and put three desiccant bags in it. I think it leaked around the joint at the front, the gasket was wet when I took it apart, so i'm going to silicon that joint before repainting. Now the interesting part.

I use Opera for a browser most of the time. I tried logging in and all I got was a grey screen, no user/password box and prompts. WTF? Looked at IP scanner and it was there. Pinged it with no problems. I started thinking I had killed it taking it apart. Held he reset button down for 30 seconds or so and tried it at the default IP. It came right up! I went in, configured network, video to H265, yadda yadda. It went right back to grey screen again with the changes. WTF???

After fooling around for a while I tried it in Chrome with the IE plug-in. It came right up. For some reason it seems that Opera, on the BI machine only, is having a problem with H265 encoding. It does work with H264 but H265 just won't load at all. A real head scratcher since it works with all the other cameras in H265. I've factory defaulted and rebooted it multiple times and still can't get Opera, on that machine, to connect properly. Maybe it's time to do a fresh install of Win10, BI and the other utilities I use on that machine.