New Dahua NVR4208 NVR working great!

3dogpottery

3dogpottery

Getting the hang of it
Jun 29, 2015
157
26
Ohio
I've got the new Dahua NVR4208 NVR up and recording my two Dahua IPC-HFW4300S
cameras! The trickiest part for me was adjusting the "Motion Detect" settings for each
camera. A nice feature of these Dahua cameras is that you can define four separate
areas with their own sensitivity and threshold settings. However, dialing all this in so
that blowing leaves and moving shadows don't set an event is an art form! I'm here to
tell you; Sitting there every morning deleting 200 email alerts from blowing leaves is
not my favorite pastime! My Asus router is embeaded with a DDNS service, so connecting via
the internet was easy. I purchased the iDMSS app for my iPhone found that it works quite well.
I only had to forward the NVR's local tcp port 37777 to a port that isn't blocked by my internet
provider. And lastly, since the NVR can send me email alerts, I've turned this feature off in
individual cameras.
 
Well, working great except the email. I am getting email alerts from the NVR, but no snapshots. Anybody have experience with these settings?
 
I'm pretty new to this and recently got a Q-see NVR QC8816. I think the software is about the same. I've gone through the motion detect set up but have not used email settings yet. I did notice that there is an option to enable snapshots. Main Menu / Settings / Camera / Recording Status / Snapshots enable.
Could you tell me how the threshold numbers work.
 
I did finally get the email alerts with snapshots to work. However, since I was getting so many emails, I turned that function off. If "nuisance events", i.e., not legitimate ones, aren't enough, the NVR sends three emails for every event: Alarm Detect, Alarm Event, and Alarm Off.

As for the Video Detect settings, I had to learn how those worked by just experimenting. Within a tab labeled "Motion Detect", there is a button next to "Area" called "Setup". When selected, a window pops up with your camera view, two sliders labeled "Sensitivity" and "Threshold", four colored "Region" selections, and a rectangular box with reticule lines. The rectangular box with reticule lines acts like an oscilloscope. So...the first "Region", i.e., the red box, is preselected. What I do is drag my mouse across the whole camera image to select the entire area. You will notice that the selected area is now filled with red crosshatching. I next raise the sensitivity until I see some activity on the "oscilloscope". The "activity" is small green spikes that appear at the bottom right of the "oscilloscope" and march to the left with time. The amplitude of the spikes correspond to the intensity of the detected motion. For example, the leaves moving on the trees will cause small spikes. You can change the magnitude of the spikes with the sensitivity slider. I next walk around in front of the camera and then observe the spikes that result. I then lower the "Threshold" slider so that only the "spikes" from my activity in front of the camera appear above the threshold bar. Anything that appears above the threshold for a time longer than the "Anti-Dither" setting will cause an event. Finally, I deselect the area of the camera image that I don't want motion detected. That is, I run my mouse over the areas I want deselected, and thereby remove the red crosshatching. You can repeat this whole process for the other three regions with their own unique areas, sensitivities, and thresholds. One important note: I make all these settings in the camera, not the NVR. However, some can be made from the NVR, and are written to the camera.
 
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I think my software is a little different because I don't have that "setup" button. Just a button to "Set" the zones, sensitivity and threshold. It'd be nice to have the little activity spikes. You gave me an idea though. I've been doing this through the NVR. I have a laptop set up to access the cams so I'll try that when I get some more free time. Thanks for the explanation....!
 
You are welcome, JimandYen. I apologize if my explanation was a bit confusing. You initially referred to your NVR software, and I gave an explanation of the camera software. Incidentally, I am new at this myself. However, I followed the advice I found on this forum and purchased a Dahua NVR and Dahua cameras. Regarding the Dahua NVR, I found that I could program events of a particular camera from the NVR, but not all of the functions were available. For example, only one "region" is available. I found that when I logged onto the camera and programmed the event there, it was also copied to the NVR.
 
I haven't got that far yet. :) I've been busy taking one of the cameras apart to see if I can change the lens from a 3.6mm to a 12mm. I found a place where these lenses are available ( http://www.m12lenses.com ) Yesterday our mailbox got injured by a hit and run. :( Got good clear video of the vehicle in the act but not a legible plate. If I can't change this one I might just buy a cam with 12mm or a vari-focal lens I think it's called.
 
There's a lot of good posts on this forum regarding video of license plates. It seems that if it happens at night, you can forget it since the headlamp glare overwhelms the video. Regarding the hit and run, perhaps you can identify the car, and look for this vehicle in your neighborhood with appropriate damage.
 
I've gotten some good info on this forum as far as what lens to use. :) The cam is a QCN8026b and would be aprox. 50ft. from the street center. So maybe a 12mm would work. It looks like everything inside is glued up so I probably can't change the lens.
This actually happened at 6:00pm full daylight so if I had the right cam setup I could have seen the plate. :( Anyways we filed a police report for insurance purposes.
 
I just wanted to clarify something that I wrote regarding my Dahua NVR and Dahua cameras. I didn't mean to imply that this forum suggested this particular brand of equipment, but that it was suggested that if you buy a particular brand of NVR, things work out much better if you stick with the same brand of camera. I believe this was very good advice in that I have not had some of the problems that I have read on this forum. However, the NVR is just something that I wanted to experiment with first. Next, I am going to purchase Blue Iris and see what it does. This seems like a fabulous piece of software for a super fabulous price.

Regarding my Dahua NVR, and probably other brands of NVRs, the software has to be compatible with all of their cameras. Therefore, some of the functions programmable from the camera web interface are not available from the NVR interface. Only the elements common to all of their cameras are available in NVR interface. It reminds me of object oriented programming in that the NVR has all of the functionality of the class, and the various cameras inherit this functionality, and add some of their own functions. So, it is much better to program events by logging onto each camera with your web browser and programming the various features. So...anyway, I am just a beginner in this security camera arena, and only offer what I have learned in an effort to give back to this great community.
 
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3dogpottery said:
You are welcome, JimandYen. I apologize if my explanation was a bit confusing. You initially referred to your NVR software, and I gave an explanation of the camera software. Incidentally, I am new at this myself. However, I followed the advice I found on this forum and purchased a Dahua NVR and Dahua cameras. Regarding the Dahua NVR, I found that I could program events of a particular camera from the NVR, but not all of the functions were available. For example, only one "region" is available. I found that when I logged onto the camera and programmed the event there, it was also copied to the NVR.
Click to expand...

I was able to get into the camera software and set up the motion detection using the "spikes". Made it a lot easier to see what was going on. :)
 
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