Use cases for AI NVRs in a home setting?

[foghat]

Hey all,

Most likely going to pull the trigger on a Dahua NVR and a number of cameras come spring (too cold to install right now). I am looking at the AI Lite series (NVR4216-16P-I). While the real time facial recognition sounds neat, I'm really not sure that there would be much value in my home setting. Trying to figure out if it is worth the premium over a NVR5216-16P-4KS2E

Wondering if anyone here is using an AI NVR at home and, if so, how they are using it.

Thanks.

 

[pb11186]

Hey. I have been tbinking about that AI nvr as well, just havent found any reviews on it here.

Sent from my SM-A520W using Tapatalk

 

[pb11186]

Hey all,

Most likely going to pull the trigger on a Dahua NVR and a number of cameras come spring (too cold to install right now). I am looking at the AI Lite series (NVR4216-16P-I). While the real time facial recognition sounds neat, I'm really not sure that there would be much value in my home setting. Trying to figure out if it is worth the premium over a NVR5216-16P-4KS2E

Wondering if anyone here is using an AI NVR at home and, if so, how they are using it.

Thanks.

Actually i stumbled across this review..

Review-AI NVR 4216-I

Dahua NVR 4216-I from EMPIRETECANDY Review unit courtesy of Andy (@EMPIRETECANDY) in exchange for a fair and honest review. Andy's ipcamtalk vendor forum: link Andy's AliExpress store: link Andy's Amazon store: link Andy's Email: kingsecurity2014 (at) 163 (dot) com Price Approximately US $270...

ipcamtalk.com

Sent from my SM-A520W using Tapatalk

 

[Arjun]

The review is not at all in favor of this NVR. AI feature is gimmicky at its best and is not at reliable. There has to be a firmware update that addresses the issues that were experienced on that AI NVR model. You're better off going for NVR5216-16P-4KS2E if you're setting up a system for the first time. Or perhaps even consider Blue Iris if you intend to an excess number of cameras to your setup.

 

[foghat]

The review is not at all in favor of this NVR. AI feature is gimmicky at its best and is not at reliable. There has to be a firmware update that addresses the issues that were experienced on that AI NVR model. You're better off going for NVR5216-16P-4KS2E if you're setting up a system for the first time. Or perhaps even consider Blue Iris if you intend to an excess number of cameras to your setup.

Ya, I just took delivery of a NVR5232-16P-4KS2E . Andy was out of the 5216, so he gave me the 5232 at the same price. I'm not sure how you hook-up cameras 17-32 to though. Not that I will ever need more than 16.

 

[Arjun]

Are there only 16 ports behind the NVR? If so Channels 17-32 are to be used with an external PoE switch

Ya, I just took delivery of a NVR5232-16P-4KS2E . Andy was out of the 5216, so he gave me the 5232 at the same price. I'm not sure how you hook-up cameras 17-32 to though. Not that I will ever need more than 16.

 

[JFire]

I just received my 4216 ai and am playing with it as we speak. I was looking for help in how the recognition end works. I have a camera capturing faces but I'd like to be able to name that face and it recognize etc. Anyone have any experience with recognition?

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

 

[Trax95008]

To the OP, I’m using AI simply to avoid false alarms with motion detection. I have a particular camera that was set to trigger a security light, And I kept getting false alarms. I tried changing to line crossing and that helped to reduce the alarms, but didn’t eliminate it. I changed out the camera to one that had some AI features and set it to human recognition. That did the trick. No more false alarms. Now the light is only triggered when a human enters the picture

 

[m00st]

Until recently I relied on the Surveillance Station software that comes with Synology NAS devices. It's nice, but pretty basic compared to what today's NVRs can do with their own brand of cameras. Since my proper cameras are all Dahua it makes sense to look at Dahua for an NVR. I've not done extensive research but if I look at decent NVR options for 8+ cameras, the recent 42xx-AI series are very affordable. I didn't need PoE and/or direct wiring into the NVR as I already have network gear providing this, so I chose the 4216-AI that just has one single non-PoE port to plug into an existing network.

I got the 4216 AI despite Looney2ns' review. My collection of cameras varies from some cheap ones to some more advanced Dahua cams. All but one of my cams lack the recent SMD capability that Dahua has to offer, so motion detection is pretty useless for alerting if I use my cams standalone or with a Synology NAS for example. This is where the 4216 AI shines. It adds the SMD capability to discriminate humans and vehicles to any camera you can get to work with the NVR. In my case that is all camera, provided I had to tinker for some non-Dahua cams. The 4216 AI will support SMD enabled IVS for 4 cameras that don't have this feature themselves.

It works very well, only very recently I had some odd cases of false positives which I still need to understand. False negatives (not detecting humans or vehicles on a tripwire or intrusion box) are pretty rare. I won't suggest it's 100% but detection of motion by humans or vehicles is certainly usable for alerting (e.g. push messages via iDMSS or emails).

That's not to say for the face recognition. I find it annoying that it can either detect/alert on strangers OR on known people in the database. I would like to be able to detect both and send e-mails or trigger alarms accordingly. I've only played with face recognition on non-ideal camera positions/configurations and so far I have to come to the conclusion that it's flaky at best. Fortunately, I have not seen false recognitions of faces in the database, but I've seen quite a few cases where known faces in the database were wrongly detected as strangers. My educated guess is that if you use a better camera setup that get's the face properly framed (not too small, well lit) that my success rate will increase. Will probably play with it later, considering to integrate positive detection of known folks into my 'smart home'.

So long story short, my use cases/arguments for an AI NVR at home:

1. General purpose 24/7 (or motion detected) recording in a central place at an affordable price compares to other comparable NVRs without AI features. This includes triggering a PTZ preset from another camera (e.g. a wide angle camera to control a PTZ cam for detailing interesting events) and other proprietary features (e.g. fisheye de-warp).
2. Ability to use 4 'cheap' non SMD or other AI capable cameras while still enjoying the possibility to filter humans and vehicles from noise. If you have older cams (SMD is a pretty recent feature from Dahua), this extend the lifetime of your cameras.