So after 24 hours with this cam thanks to the Memorial Day sale with
@EMPIRETECANDY, there are a few things I really like, but a few other things leave me a little bit underwhelmed or really annoyed by. So here's a quick bit on the good, the bad, and the ugly of the SD4A425DB-HNY:
The good:
1) Image quality is excellent, as we've come to expect from these Dahua cams.
2) Auto-tracking works very well. It's amazing how the AI can see humans and vehicles through leaves and tree branches.
3) Setup was easy and I had no problems (factory reset on initial power-up for good measure).
4) LPR is definitely more than possible with this cam (see above post).
The bad:
1) Internet Explorer, a completely outdated and obsoleted browser, plus installing the ActiveX plugin for IE was the only browser that allowed me to configure IVS tripwire lines (and more generally, draw anything on the image in any other kind of IVS rule). I only have a Mac, so I had to jump through lots of hoops getting a VM to run to even be able to use IE. Pale Moon (Mac), Chrome, Firefox, and Safari didn't work. I understand that we are not the primary market for these cams and Andy does us a favor, but I don't see how this would even work in the business world. And I know we've discussed this a bunch already on the forum. But as a web developer by trade, I had to include this in "the bad", because this is just a huge no-no in my profession. At least I got it working, though. So it's just "bad", but not "ugly".
The ugly:
1) The HTTP API implemented by the latest firmware on this cam (General_SD-Gauss_MultiLang_PN_Stream3_V2.821.0000006.1.R.230316.bin) actually
removes functionality that exists in the API on other cameras. Of course the one we all know about is day/night mode. I understand that this camera is oriented more toward a business/power user who may not use it like us in residential settings, but the firmware implements 8 different profiles (Day, Night, General, Front Light, Back Light, Strong Light, Low Illuminance, Custom1, Custom2) and allows us to select the time they're enabled by month. Definitely helpful in the UI, but a huge oversight to not be able to change to a profile manually by the API.
2) The HTTP API also does not allow changing of any of the image settings for these profiles (brightness, contrast, etc). This is an unfortunate regression/oversight and makes the API much less useful.
3) The HTTP API doesn't allow setting a focus by passing a number. This makes it impossible to set a PTZ position for LPR and then to manually adjust the focus.
It feels like the API is just incomplete. Either that or it was purposeful/intentional to remove the functionality, which would be a huge disappointment.
I feel like many of us here are "power users", which is why we buy these cams in particular. Not only are they great quality and perform very well, they provide a wealth of features that allow geeks like us to dial in exactly how we want them to behave. As a software developer and a non-Windows guy, I'm not a BI user, but I use Frigate as an NVR and Home Assistant to automate everything. I have a few 5442's already and my experience with them all around (HTTP API included) has been stellar. So the lack of functionality in the HTTP API for this cam has given me a little bit of remorse for buying it.
With all that said, don't let my feelings prevent any of you from buying it. It's a great cam, but as it is, just not quite what I personally was expecting. Are there workarounds to my issues?
@EMPIRETECANDY, what's the likelihood of a new firmware version with these missing features returned to the HTTP API?
us.hikvision.com
