Dahua 2231 - Need advice on camera settings

MickPB

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TIA! This camera has been an ongoing subject of my attention and after not getting any real improvement I am asking for help before writing it off as a tough location. I don't have the actual light fixture in the field of view but want the door there for daytime purposes.

Looking for major improvement but if you have tweaks - I will try those too. I'm thinking of another camera pointed away from porch on this same away for better night resolution

Day images are awesome

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Night images not so much. The moving objects typically appear 50% transparent and often the alert is not triggered. My thought is the porch light is the cause of the lack of real resolution.

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System Version2.800.0000000.3.R, Build Date: 2019-08-16
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wittaj

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Looks like you possibly need to up the bitrate.

You haven't shown the other settings, but usually transparent is a result of too much gain.

Post your other camera settings as that is where the issue lies.
 

sebastiantombs

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Common image issues
 

sebastiantombs

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Leaving things set to "auto" won't work out well unless you have lots of light at night. Minimal shutter speed to catch motion without blurring is 1/60 with 1/120 being a lot better still. it may be, with the conditions you have in terms of available light, that B&W would be a better idea.
 

MickPB

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That camera said it was in day mode when I just looked at it. But it was set to switch day/night. I thought it would do day/night automatically that way and will check later. I can geek it up and use sunset / sunrise with mqtt or REST but really don't want that complexity.

The IR light is an idea I am considering but I am also thinking for a little more $$ - I can get another camera put up where it that sees that area and has its back to the light on the porch light. That existing cam could be re-oriented to look away from the light and get a little better view of another area. Is it correct to think that the porch light is a problem and either might really fix the image quality issue?

Also, after looking into camera settings I am more confused than ever. Cameras are all the same model, bought together and on the same software vers but I see another odd thing - Looking at the res of all cameras one is different.
Then when I look in BI it's weird too. The 117 camera get a different res probably because of the camera but there is another one, 122, that is different than the other cameras to 704x480 (which seems like a good choice)/


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It seems like I've likely made mistakes - What do you suggest to get this cleaned up? I've got the cameras setup with the motion and really like it that way because I use the sensors from the cameras in home automation stuff. I've thinking the 117 camera needs to be reset and re-configured and then ALL of the cameras in BI need to be deleted and re setup? If I should take the second part of this to the BI group, I can do that too.

Thanks again for the help.
 

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sebastiantombs

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The settings in the camera are the key, for resolution, frame rate, iframe rate, exposure, day/night and so on. The biggest problem is that each location is different which makes the "Picture" and "Exposure" setting different from camera to camera. Those settings are in the web gui of the camera, not BI.

You don't need to obscure the network addresses. We're all using the same, basic, network scheme. Without your external IP the camera IPs are totally meaningless and even with it getting in to them is not likely.
 

MickPB

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Understand the up comment. I do it more as a matter of having good habits than safety. The camera settings are in a previous post
 

MickPB

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Yes, the bit rate and frame rates are in a previous post, but the critical ones "Picture" and "Exposure" are not.
I don’t see anything in the camera for exposure or picture. I have pixels and refresh rate. The only lense like options are focus and zoom. Camera is not zoomed at all
 

MickPB

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Wow- Appreciate you patience. If this was a snake..... Anyway, I can say that I don't recall using those settings but that when I went to get this screen shot, I saw the camera was still in "Day" mode. I manually switched it to night mode. Then a cat walked through to show that that the cat is semi transparent but only when it went into the shadow in front of the porch column.
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wittaj

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What are the other settings under exposure, backlight, etc. I suspect gain is still high to get the see through look.
 

MickPB

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Any suggestions? Also - will this be part of the day or night mode settings? I'm quite fond of the day time results so would like to keep the changes to night mode is possible. I can use Home assistant to set the mode to night with using its sum trigger and hoepfully a rest command or I've seen some scripts too.
 

looney2ns

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Any suggestions? Also - will this be part of the day or night mode settings? I'm quite fond of the day time results so would like to keep the changes to night mode is possible. I can use Home assistant to set the mode to night with using its sum trigger and hoepfully a rest command or I've seen some scripts too.
Read the link that was already shared above on common problems with settings.
 

Mike A.

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Night settings only. They'll be separate from day. Day is easy. Auto or pretty much any reasonable settings will be OK for basic uses.

As looney said, read that thread. Lots of good information.

To start, change to manual. Set shutter to 1/60 or 1/120 to better capture motion. Set gain 0-50. Set noise reduction to 35-40. Work from there. Then go to the picture tab and adjust brightness/contrast/gamma to get the image better. You might be able to use HLC under Backlight to mute the porch light a little. Save that for later.
 
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