New Hikvision Hybrid Thermal Cams

FYI, the thermal camera still functions fine with the visible-light camera disconnected. Obviously you don't get any image blending functionality though.
 
As noted in my update two posts ago, the mechanical shutter stopped working again after a short time.

Further hammering on the camera (fully assembled) only got the shutter working for a few more cycles. Eventually, I couldn't get the shutter to work at all. When the shutter is in its failed state, it makes no noise at all even with my ear pressed up against the lens. The thermal camera module is sealed and I don't think I could take it apart any further with much hope of properly reassembling it afterward. It looks like glue was involved in its assembly. I'm way out of my depth with this anyway. It is highly unlikely I'd be able to fix it even if I could safely take it apart.

Plans for this camera's future are uncertain. If I can get the visible-light camera working again with a replacement cable, then I will see if a warranty replacement is still possible on the basis of the thermal camera failure. jmac.com was not very responsive to communication in the past.

It is a shame the camera doesn't have a mode that operates the thermal camera properly without the shutter. Based on Flir Lepton documentation, it should be possible.
 
Since I bought extra thermal cams at the discounted price, I have my next-widest model up in its place. I miss the wider field of view.

dtherm 2021-05-14 12.48.13.850 PM.jpg

It is also kind of annoying that they chose a 16:9 regular camera to go with the 4:3 thermal.
 
Problems Solved!

The ribbon cable I ordered from digi-key was an excellent match and has revived the visible-light camera.

In the unlikely event anyone breaks theirs and can't access the link above, it is an FFC cable with 36 pins, 0.5mm pitch, 3 inches long. Both ends terminated on the same side, backers on both sides. Specs pics in this spoiler block:

1621569997730.png
1621570037487.png

I also solved the issue with the thermal camera's shutter and got some pictures of the disassembly and the fix, which was easier than I expected

Here's the thermal camera module, removed from the casing but otherwise fully assembled:

l7MnWL2.jpg


vT8fLHx.jpg


Take care not to break that ribbon cable. I have no idea how one would replace it.

Here's the camera with the metal casing removed:

5AGjhjo.jpg


At this point we just have the sensor board (with [permanently?] attached ribbon cable) screwed on to the lens assembly.

Here's the inside of the lens assembly.

p4VKbxb.jpg


Close-ups of the sensor board and shutter mechanism.





The shutter is very much exposed and it didn't feel stuck or sticky or anything so I began fiddling with it. I found that pressing gently on this marked area would cause the shutter actuation to work when triggered.

0ZjKti8.jpg


So I rolled up a small bit of black electrical tape and taped it down on the top of the shutter box as seen here so that it protrudes slightly. The idea is that mounting the lens assembly would press on this small protrusion of electrical tape, exerting a small amount of pressure on the magic spot. It worked like a charm. This camera is restored to full functionality.



 
Turns out the shutter is still a bit flakey. I found it stuck again just a moment ago.

dtherm 2021-05-28 11.08.14.950 AM.jpg

Manually triggering the correction via this button

1622222017444.png

several times failed to actuate the shutter. So I assumed my fix had failed. But then a minute later the shutter began working again.

dtherm 2021-05-28 11.10.46.983 AM.jpg

Only time will tell if shutter failures will be a rare fluke or a persistent problem. I hope I don't have to take this down and fiddle with it again.
 
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My Hikvision DS-2TD1217-2/V1 started acting up. About once a week the visual light camera will go offline. I have it set at 15fps for both cameras. I go into BI and can see the fps fluctuating from 0 to 15 for a while, then totally drops out. The thermal cam used to remain solid at 15fps while the visual light camera was dropping out, so I was certain it was a camera issue since they both use the same cat6 cable, switch port, etc. Now, today, the thermal is doing the same thing. If I cycle power to it, it comes right back up.

I have this camera and a 5442 dahua going into a poe switch, then into a nano loco 5, but the 5442 never drops out. Throughput of the loco seems to be ok.

Probably a camera issue, right?

I'm going to get up into the barn soffit this weekend just to make sure I don't have a partially chewed cat cable or something like that.
 
It does sound like probably a hardware issue in the camera. Maybe these failures are why they discontinued the model. The shutter over the thermal sensor (for calibration) in mine has been non-functional for almost all of the last month now.

You could continuously monitor the camera with pings. Most badly performing networks will have significant packet loss and/or very inconsistent spiky ping response times.
 
I am running your tracer program (very cool by the way) and am not seeing anything abnormal yet other than a couple of ping timeouts from the suspect camera, but its only been running for a couple of hours. I am monitoring 3 total cameras on my network so I can compare. One of the other cameras is also on my barn. This way I can see if I get any packet loss or timeouts from that camera at the same time the HiK starts cutting out, in order to positively confirm or rule out a problem with the wireless bridge they are both on. Hopefully I am on the right track.
 
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Yeah, there is definitely an issue with this camera. It's the only one that intermittently does not respond to pings, and the other hardware (switches), cabling appears to be ok.

Today I'm going to make another cable from the barn switch to that camera, plug it into another switch port, and see if the timeouts go away.

(6/26/2021 1:00:17 PM): Initializing pings to 192.168.1.8, 192.168.1.9, 192.168.1.11, 192.168.1.5
Now beginning pings
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Ok this has got me stumped. Just when I thought it could be the camera, I am now second guessing myself. I got an alert from Blue Iris watchdog that this camera lost signal again just now while I am home, so I quickly got on and started the ping tracer and logged all 3 ip addresses associated with my barn.

192.168.1.8 is this HiK camera
192.168.1.9 is a Dahua 5442 I have in the barn
192.168.1.101 is the Ubiquity Loco 5 at the barn

All are connected to an unmanaged poe switch, a BV Tech 10 port.

@bp2008 take a look at my exported graph. Am I crazy to think I might have a bad switch?

Both cameras were suffering from high ping at the same time, and looking at the graph it almost looks like the same pattern. Ping to the Loco stayed solid, so that rules out everything before the switch.

I cycled the breaker to the barn from my house. That's the solid red block you see. Right after I did this, I realized I should have gone out to the barn and just pulled the power from the switch only. Actually, that would have killed power to the cameras anyway.

Maybe I just need a new switch. Or maybe I have 2 problems. Switch and camera.

PingTracer 192.168.1.8 2021-06-29 19-11-24.png
 
Its also possible that the camera is freaking out and screwing up the switch which in turn affects the other camera to a lesser extent.

If I had to guess I would say maybe the radio is sometimes losing its 100/1000 Mbps link and downgrading temporarily to 10 Mbps on the WIRED interface. You should be able to verify if this is the case via the radio's web interface.
 
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You were right. The radio showed 10Mbps when the problem started. I tried playing with power outputs, but nothing changed. My trees have just fully leafed out in since I put up the Nanos last fall. I'm thinking it might just have been tree interference from them, since it hasn't gone offline since I trimmed them back a week ago. They had good LOS before, but there were some leaves close by. Here is what it looked like before trimming.

20210702_190349.jpg
 
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If it showed 10 Mbps on the wired interface, that is unrelated to the radio link quality. This means something is wrong with the wired link. It could be your switch, cables, UBNT PoE injector, or the wired interface on the radio itself.
 
The problem I've been having with the thermal image sensor keeps happening.

The physical shutter that helps with calibration keeps going bad every few months, and either not moving fully into place, or not moving at all. Normally I was able to fix it just by applying pressure somewhere on the mechanism, but the last time it broke, that wasn't good enough.

So I disassembled it a little further to figure out what is going on.

There is a coil of red wire around the hinge of the shutter:





It works by having each end of the wire attached to terminals on the PCB, and when the shutter is supposed to move, 3.3 volts DC power gets put through the wire (I measured with a meter). This causes electromagnetic actuation of the shutter to cover the thermal sensor while it calibrates.

Unfortunately the wire is very thin and delicate, and it must have been defective from the factory. Over time the tiny vibration of the shutter must have weakened the electrical connection. When I would disassemble the camera and put a small amount of physical pressure on this mechanism, it would resolve the issue for a few months.



I was easily able to pull the entire shutter assembly off the PCB -- it is not soldered down. One end of the wire was broken up inside the assembly, clearly the defective part. The other wire was still attached. Due to the small size of the parts and my lack of tools and experience, I was unable to fix this.

Luckily I bought 3 of these thermal cameras (one of each lens size) and have only been using the one with the widest angle lenses. I was able to harvest the thermal sensor board with its working shutter out of one of the other cameras. It was a different hardware revision but it was still compatible. I was a bit worried the lens focus might be a bit out of whack, but it turned out to be fine too.
 
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Hey,

Has anyone got a working firmware for the DS-1217-3/V1?, I tried to upgrade one recently and now the thermal seems to be trashed, optical still working fine though.
I am not sure if I did something wrong here, but everything was fine before the upgrade.

Currently I'm on iptcs_h3_en_std_5.5.22_210702
But the thermal is toast :banghead:

here is the output of the thermal now.
thermal fail.JPG