One of my T5442T-ZEs started misbehaving

[simby]

One of my T5442T-ZEs (the other one on older FW is fine) started behaving in a really weird way the last couple of days (worked fine for around 2 weeks) and would be thankful for any input.

First the FW version:


MD and SMD settings:





When it happened the first time I thought it was a fluke. Now it happened again and it's obviously either a FW bug or something else.
I use SMD exclusively on this IPC, IVS is off. What started happening is an event would trigger recording but there is no end event in the logs even when motion stops completely. So it just keeps recording on SD card. First time it happened I noticed it after around 2h mark. Reboot didn't help. I had to disable and reenable MD and SMD. Second time it happened it stopped recording by itself after around 2 and a half hour mark and then started behaving normally again.
The first time it happened was night time in color mode the trigger event was a cat recognized as SMD Human. The second time it happened was daytime and the trigger was a guy on a motorbike recognized as both SMD Human and SMD Vehicle (the SMD Human is what initially started the recording). Reviewing the SD footage shows nothing out of the ordinary. There is a green rectangle around a target on event start as you would expect. Nothing indicating any movement after.

Now before I try rolling back to an older FW has anything like this happened to anyone else?!

 

[IAmATeaf]

Do you have no IVS rules setup?

I personally don’t use motion detection and have it disabled but have IVS with intrusion/tripwire rules which works very well.

 

[simby]

No I don’t have any IVS rules setup and IVS is not enabled. The reason I don’t use IVS is lack of anti dither which means notification spam (DMSS push) every couple of seconds. Also since I forgot to mention, I don’t have NVR. I only record internally on SD.

 

[wittaj]

You haven't set it up correctly then.

Turning off SMD and MD and using smart plan as IVS and then an IVS intrusion box rule drawn with AI selected for human and/or vehicle depending on which you want and keeping min object size as 0,0 will result in zero false triggers...

You should not run MD and IVS and you probably were running both.

Most here use IVS with this camera (or any other Dahua with AI) and we are not bothered with false triggers...

Who uses Dahua AI capable cameras? Reliable AI for triggering events? Pro's/con's?

It has come to my attention that certain Dahua cameras come with built in AI that distinguishes between human & cars. I was unaware of this. Well, always saw the AI word used in the reviews but never really thought about it because I thought it was a Dahua NVR integration only. I am currently...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[genelit]

+1 to what Wittaj said!
My general advice is to also schedule a reboot, personally I reboot every night as this solves a lot of mysterious behaviours.

 

[simby]

You haven't set it up correctly then.

Turning off SMD and MD and using smart plan as IVS and then an IVS intrusion box rule drawn with AI selected for human and/or vehicle depending on which you want and keeping min object size as 0,0 will result in zero false triggers...

You should not run MD and IVS and you probably were running both.

Most here use IVS with this camera (or any other Dahua with AI) and we are not bothered with false triggers...

Who uses Dahua AI capable cameras? Reliable AI for triggering events? Pro's/con's?

It has come to my attention that certain Dahua cameras come with built in AI that distinguishes between human & cars. I was unaware of this. Well, always saw the AI word used in the reviews but never really thought about it because I thought it was a Dahua NVR integration only. I am currently...

ipcamtalk.com

I probably didn’t explain things very well. So like I said in my OP, I use SMD exclusively and it works great for me on other cams. It worked fine on this one too. It does exactly what I want with almost 0 false triggers. The only exception is an occasional cat but that’s a problem with IVS too and doesn’t bother me at all.

My main issue when I was testing IVS (and I turned off MD and SMD) was no ability to anti dither events. If I setup an intrusion box or tripwire I get a (DMSS) notification almost every couple of seconds. I don’t want that! I need a single notification at the event start and then anti dither everything for at least 100 seconds. SMD has that option. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to do that with IVS. Also sorry again if I’m not explaining things very well, tends to happen when english is not your native language.

 

[bigredfish]

Sensitivity 0 and Threshold 100?
And that works? On the few cams I have without IVS my MD settings are just about opposite. Typically 80 sensitivity and 10-20 threshold.

I've been using Dahua cameras since 2016? And quit using MD ( or the newer SMD) almost completely. IVS provides far fewer false alerts, particularly with AI enabled. No reason at all to get an alert every few seconds unless something is not setup correctly.

 

[IAmATeaf]

I think the issue for the OP is that he doesn’t use an NVR, records to SD and presumably gets the cam to send him an alert, whereas most of us use an NVR of some type.

 

[simby]

Sensitivity 0 and Threshold 100?
And that works? On the few cams I have without IVS my MD settings are just about opposite. Typically 80 sensitivity and 10-20 threshold.

I've been using Dahua cameras since 2016? And quit using MD ( or the newer SMD) almost completely. IVS provides far fewer false alerts, particularly with AI enabled. No reason at all to get an alert every few seconds unless something is not setup correctly.

MD sensitivity settings are irrelevant if you enable SMD. SMD completely ignores those. As for alerts. Here's an example: you have IVS intrusion box setup at main house entrance. You have kids playing or someone working in front of the house. You get IVS intrusion push alerts from DMSS literally every few seconds. Every time the target box blinks red you get another push alert. That's completely unusable to me. I need 1 single alert at the start of the event and then nothing else until at least 100 seconds passed from last detected motion (100 sec anti dither). From my pretty extensive testing this is not possible with IVS since IVS doesn't have anti dither option in camera settings.

 

[bigredfish]

Gotcha

 

[ArnonZ]

The only exception is an occasional cat but that’s a problem with IVS too

NO
I'm using 8 X 5442 cams. I cannot explain why, but the IVS gives me close to 0 false positive and close to 0 false negatives.
For some reason, the SMD works different. I do not use the alerts cause EVERY DAY I get alerts from both my dog and cat. Some times also from a tree.....
In other words:
1. Though I do understand why you THINK they work the same, they're not. While the IVS is very reliable, the SMD is far from reliable.
2. using IVS would also solve your problem. especially with tripwire, you'd get a single alert when someone is crossing the line and that's it.
3. With IVS you would also get the ability to check for human movements in all of the area you want.... but you can skip triggering alerts at the rest of the field of view.

Again, your assumption that SMD on all of the field of view is practically SMD is WRONG.
My dog and cat NEVER triggered IVS (8 cams, 24/7, 13 months) but they do trigger SMD at least once a day.

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

Yes, SMD next month will have a V2, hope can increase the accuracy.
I will post on the forum soon when we get it.

 

[ArnonZ]

MD sensitivity settings are irrelevant if you enable SMD. SMD completely ignores those. As for alerts. Here's an example: you have IVS intrusion box setup at main house entrance. You have kids playing or someone working in front of the house. You get IVS intrusion push alerts from DMSS literally every few seconds. Every time the target box blinks red you get another push alert. That's completely unusable to me. I need 1 single alert at the start of the event and then nothing else until at least 100 seconds passed from last detected motion (100 sec anti dither). From my pretty extensive testing this is not possible with IVS since IVS doesn't have anti dither option in camera settings.

we do not have the same NVR plus, I'm not sure it would help, but you may also try to find: alarm>motion detection>more> anti-dither and there choose a longer time in seconds.
but please read my last post: we all advise you to use IVS. It works way better, you won't catch the cat and you're not likely to get alarms that often.

 

[simby]

NO
I'm using 8 X 5442 cams. I cannot explain why, but the IVS gives me close to 0 false positive and close to 0 false negatives.
For some reason, the SMD works different. I do not use the alerts cause EVERY DAY I get alerts from both my dog and cat. Some times also from a tree.....
In other words:
1. Though I do understand why you THINK they work the same, they're not. While the IVS is very reliable, the SMD is far from reliable.
2. using IVS would also solve your problem. especially with tripwire, you'd get a single alert when someone is crossing the line and that's it.
3. With IVS you would also get the ability to check for human movements in all of the area you want.... but you can skip triggering alerts at the rest of the field of view.

Again, your assumption that SMD on all of the field of view is practically SMD is WRONG.
My dog and cat NEVER triggered IVS (8 cams, 24/7, 13 months) but they do trigger SMD at least once a day.

Il’l try my best to explain what the issue is again. I have 3 IPCs (I don’t have NVR). All of them use SMD exclusively. They do exactly what I want and work exactly how I want. Occasional false alarm (cat) is not a problem AT ALL. One of this 3 cams started acting weird two weeks after deployment (it worked flawlessly up to that point). The cam that started acting out uses one of the newer FWs. What sometimes happens is, cam would start recording when SMD motion event happens but then doesn’t stop recording even after all motion stopped. Sometimes for hours. If I check the logs I can see there is an event start but no event end. Most of the times it starts working normally again by itself. There is no indication of any motion on recorded footage whatsoever (no green box around targets, real or false).

And now why I don’t use IVS. I don’t have NVR. There are no anti dither settings for IVS. If I use a tripwire or intrusion box I get a push notification every time someone either crosses the wire or enters intrusion box. Since there is a lot of traffic in front of my house that happens pretty much all the time. Especially when kids play outside. I have no clue why there is no anti dither option for IVS rules. If I had to guess it’s money grab from Dahua.

 

[Sphinxicus]

Hey Simby, you have had quite a few responses here now from guys with a lot of experience with these cams. If it were me, before downgrading F/W (because I'm not a fan of F/W changes unless it addresses a problem you are having), i would swap out one of the older firmware version cameras and see if the issue continues for that position with the older F/W cam. Could be that something in the environment has changed thats causing SMD to think there is still activity (sun higher in the sky causing reflections or something else random). Make sure your config is identical and see if the issue occurs on that cam. If it doesnt, and the newer F/W cam behaves in its new location then win win.

If the older F/W cam starts showing the same behaviour then you can assume its something within view of the cam thats causing it.

If the older F/W cam works fine in its new location and the newer F/W cam still plays up in its new location then maybe a F/W downgrade should be considered.

Have you done a factory reset of the cam first?

 

[simby]

Hey Simby, you have had quite a few responses here now from guys with a lot of experience with these cams. If it were me, before downgrading F/W (because I'm not a fan of F/W changes unless it addresses a problem you are having), i would swap out one of the older firmware version cameras and see if the issue continues for that position with the older F/W cam. Could be that something in the environment has changed thats causing SMD to think there is still activity (sun higher in the sky causing reflections or something else random). Make sure your config is identical and see if the issue occurs on that cam. If it doesnt, and the newer F/W cam behaves in its new location then win win.

If the older F/W cam starts showing the same behaviour then you can assume its something within view of the cam thats causing it.

If the older F/W cam works fine in its new location and the newer F/W cam still plays up in its new location then maybe a F/W downgrade should be considered.

Have you done a factory reset of the cam first?

I will definitely try a factory reset first before I mess with FW version. For now I’m still trying to figure out if these events that trigger continuous recording have anything in common. It happened 3 times now in both night and day. The first time it happened I stopped the recording myself. Second and third time cam stopped recording by itself after two hours or so and then continued to work flawlessly. When the recording finally stops I also get the event end in the logs.

Switching locations with one of the other two cams is something I thought about but since it’s quite a hassle I wanna do that as the last resort.

I switched SMD sensitivity to medium from high and we’ll see how it goes. Other two cams are both on high.