Dahua NVR motion detection unreliability, is it worth fighting with this thing?

[AdySan]

Hello all,

Long time reader, but never posted anything. a couple of weeks ago I pulled the trigger on a Dahua NVR5216-4KS2 and a couple of 4MP Dahua bullet cameras. The IPCamTalk cliff notes were extremely helpful in making this decision, thanks!

I've set it up and the whole setup has been working ok so far as far as recording video goes. That part works out of the box. However, any kind of motion detection/alarm stuff is unbelievably unreliable. I'll try to list em out, hopefully someone can give me a hint on what I'm doing wrong here.

1. If I go to playback tab in smartPSS, I never see anything apart from general recording. There has never been any motion detection recording, despite me getting multiple motion alerts over the past three weeks. The event settings seem to indicate that it should record the respective channel with a delay of 10 sec (not sure what that means)

2. Some of the non Dahua IP cameras dont get the four regions, just a single region. No matter what region I set up with whatever sensitivity and threshold, I've never got a motion alert from these cameras.

3. Speaking of regions, what are they for? Should I paint the entire regioin of interest with one of the colors, i'e' red, green, yellow or blue? Or is the unpainted part being monitored for motion detection.

3. While setting up motion detection zones, the software repeatedly forgets my sensitivity, threshold and zone settings. I've tried all ways of configuring I know, i'e directly on NVR with mouse, Web and SmartPSS on PC and Mac.

4. Dahua cams get Sensitivity from 0-100 and also threshold setting + four regions. The HikVision cams only get sensitivity 1-6, no threshold setting.

5. The channel name and time overlay only works of Dahua cameras, is this expected behavior?

If all you need is recording, yes it does the job, but all the other fancy advertised features are unusable for me. God, I can only imagine, how good the software on something like a UniFi Video NVR would be. I've been having thoughts of ditching this NVR and going for a Windows box running BI, is it too soon to go that route?

 

[fenderman]

get the BI box and dont look back. Next time read the cliffnotes better....avoid bullets if you can - use turrets and go with 2mp starlight cameras if low light and night vision are important to you.

 

[tigerwillow1]

You can't count on anything other than video recording to work with non-Dahua cameras. For events to be recorded, recording needs to be enabled on more than one schedule page. At least one place on the camera and one place on the NVR. You just have to hunt around to find them. There's also at least one "enable" checkbox, and the "record channel" setting on the nvr.. For the camera settings, it's best to log on directly to the camera, at least for starters, because some of the options are available only there. After you make changes, look for a "save" button which in some cases must be clicked to keep the changes. If you get motion detection working, you should try the IVS functions as an alternative. In most situations, they are work much better and don't give as many false triggers. As far as the 4 regions go, I can only guess they're for situations where the region setup is changed often. I've never had the need for more than one.

 

[AdySan]

Dang, I just tried Blue Iris demo version. Could not have been easier! Seems rock solid!

 

[aristobrat]

Dang, I just tried Blue Iris demo version. Could not have been easier! Seems rock solid!

If you only had Dahua cameras on your Dahua NVR, if you got a chance to play around with the advanced motion detection features @tigerwillow1 was talking about ("IVS"), I think you might have been happy. But that would only apply for your Dahua cameras... your other cameras would be limited to basic motion detection, which as your found out.. usually sucks.

For folks with cameras from multiple manufacturers, I think Blue Iris is the best choice. Blue Iris itself does the motion detection (watching the video as it streams in from your different cameras) which gives you a consistent experience... the cameras manufacturer doesn't really matter.

 

[cuz]

You can't count on anything other than video recording to work with non-Dahua cameras. For events to be recorded, recording needs to be enabled on more than one schedule page. At least one place on the camera and one place on the NVR. You just have to hunt around to find them. There's also at least one "enable" checkbox, and the "record channel" setting on the nvr.. For the camera settings, it's best to log on directly to the camera, at least for starters, because some of the options are available only there. After you make changes, look for a "save" button which in some cases must be clicked to keep the changes. If you get motion detection working, you should try the IVS functions as an alternative. In most situations, they are work much better and don't give as many false triggers. As far as the 4 regions go, I can only guess they're for situations where the region setup is changed often. I've never had the need for more than one.

Tigerwillow,
When setting up IVS on Dahua NVR and IPCams, if you have to configure it in both places, do you gave to draw your lines and boxes in both places too? That seems like it would be problematic as you couldn't get them exactly the same in both places.

When I setup regular motion detection, I can select regions to detect motion at the camera config, but when I try the same at the NVR I can not select any of the region for the camera. The camera screen image appears, but none of the little boxes are selected, and I can't choose any. Is that normal?

Man, I wish there was a decent manual that explained all this...

 

[tigerwillow1]

The type of IVS (line crossing, intrusion, etc) and the lines and boxes are set up on the camera, and exist only on the camera. The GUI on the NVR is just a remote connection to the camera for this. Depending on the model and firmware versions of both the camera and NVR, it might work perfectly, partially, or not at all from the NVR. When the IVS setup is working correctly on the NVR it will show the same lines and boxes as the camera interface. The camera setup is primary, and if it works on the NVR, that's a bonus (it shouldn't be a bonus, but that's the reality). The items needed to be set up independently on both devices are enables and schedules. You tell the camera to enable an IVS function, and set the schedule. Then you tell the NVR to enable recording on an IVS event, and what the schedule is.

 

[cuz]

...Depending on the model and firmware versions of both the camera and NVR, it might work perfectly, partially, or not at all...

Damn, now doesn't that just sum it up perfectly?
Thanks, I have much research left to do, probably quite a few factory resets to conduct, and quite a bit more to learn before I get this stuff all figured out. Nothing is ever easy.