Which focal length to go for? Went for 5442 3.6mm cams from Andy

IAmATeaf

IAmATeaf

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Jan 13, 2019
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Want to order a pair of 5442 fixed cams from Andy to upgrade a pair of 5231-ze cams but am really unsure of the focal length I need so am looking for help and advice. I know the obvious answer is to get the ze variant but am hoping to save some money by going fixed plus all of my ze I’ve set and then never re-adjusted.

So both of the cams are fully zoomed out, so for the ze that would be 2.7mm but I’ve seen snaps from the 5442 cams where the FOV on the 2.8mm is wider and a bit further zoomed out.

Current thinking is to go for a pair of 3.6mm cams to compensate for the wider FOV of the 5442 cams or maybe one of each?

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My vote would be a 6mm for "Drive 1" and a 3.6mm for "Drive 2".
 
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The 5442 in 6mm is a really decent combination.
 
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Use IPVM Camera Calculator V3 to help. You can change the address to your actual location and then overlay cameras until you find the right one for your needs. Just be sure to click the "blind spot" view and make sure the mounting height and scene height will reflect the mounting location you intend to use.

The dark blue area is the "sweet spot" for identification purposes. Anything in the light blue area will probably not be identifiable.
 
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The funny thing is that you can use the HDW5231R-ZE as a good approximation for 6mm on the T5442TM-AS 6mm fixed lens cam. I know they are on different sensors and are 2MP vs 4MP, but it seems to work out. See pic below.

FOV 6mm 5231 5442.JPG

They are not quite centered the same, but you can clearly see that the FOV is very close.

Now there is a problem trying to use a T5442T-ZE to approximate the FOV of the fixed lens versions of the T5442TM-AS. The fixed lens cam and the varifocal cam use different lens mounting such that the FOV in mm does not work out. See my thread below.

Comparison of a Fixed Lens and a Varifocal Lens Camera's FOV

I was testing out a new Dahua T5442T-ZE 2.7-12mm Varifocal camera (from @EMPIRETECANDY ) and was going to compare it's performance to the Dahua HDW5231R-ZE and the HDW5431R-ZE cameras, which are 2.7-13.5mm varifocals, along with the T5442TM-AS fixed lens at 6mm camera. The HDW5431R-ZE has been...
ipcamtalk.com ipcamtalk.com
 
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I've gone ahead and ordered the 5442 cams, both with 3.6mm focal lengths and also a 5442-ze, thank you Andy, so hopefully that should cover all my bases in that I can chop/change/swap to get the coverage I need.

I've also been trying to get my head around the difference in the field of view, did some drawings on piece of paper using a protractor etc but my simple mind couldn't figure it out so just decided to get the cams ordered. Have been meaning to order them for ages and wife finally asking why the delay spurred me into action :)
 
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Even though I was busy this weekend I just couldn’t wait to get a pair of the new cameras installed, need to adjust and configure them as I ran out of time but here are the before and afters.

Have to be honest my wife doesn’t like the narrower view as she can now no longer see the entire road, am hoping that when I adjust them a bit to straighten them out it might make her happier.

The before were 5231-ze zoomed all the way out, the afters are 5442 3.6mm turrets.

Before Drive1
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After Drive1
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Before Drive2
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After Drive2
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Yep, the general public (and wives LOL) enjoy the wide angle "I can see the whole neighborhood", but in most cases that results in not being able to ID a perp. But that is why the Arlos and Rings and Amcrest and Lorex and Night Owl type kits sell the 2.8mm lens because the wide view is what people want...and they do not realize the limitations as a result of that.

One of my neighbors just bought a 4 cam Night Owl system and installed them all up on his 2nd story soffit and is like wow I can see my whole property....and then when an aggressive solicitor got in his face in his driveway in the middle of the day, the footage was useless to make out the person.

Just keep the old cam as an overview camera to keep her happy LOL.

You can use this so that you do not need to run an additional cable:

Amazon.com : Loryta PoE Extender Mini Passive 2 Port POE Switch, IEEE 802.3af/at POE Extender, POE Repeater, Ethernet Splitter, Powering 2 POE Devices (IP Camera) Over One Cat5/6 Cable PFT1300

Amazon.com : Loryta PoE Extender Mini Passive 2 Port POE Switch, IEEE 802.3af/at POE Extender, POE Repeater, Ethernet Splitter, Powering 2 POE Devices (IP Camera) Over One Cat5/6 Cable PFT1300
www.amazon.com
 
As an Amazon Associate IPCamTalk earns from qualifying purchases.
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To say I’m impressed would be an understatement, the 5231’s would have gone into night mode some 3 hours ago, these are still in colour mode, if you are in the fence re these cams I’d suggest, wait no longer and get into our resident camera expert and supplier Andy and get your order in

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No running CBR at 8192 with everything else at default for the time being.

EDIT: I think the pics look soft as those are taken on my phone and posted using Tapatalk which also resizes the image, I think?
 
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Realigned one of cams and set WDR to 15 for the daytime as I read another thread, has really improved the picture and with the extra coverage should stop the wife from bleating. Need to do the other to see if the coverage can be tweaked.

Said it before and I’ll say it again these cams are the shiz

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First problem I’ve seen, in the night I get nothing being recorded, so my son went out last night and came back home at 1:22am, the clones of these I have setup using BI motion detection recorded him but the main masters which I use to generate alerts didn’t alert. The masters are set to use the ONVIF external triggers with IVS using a tripwire to detect person/car. Added a second intrusion rule again for person/car to see if that helps.

At this moment I’m not too sure how to work out if the issue is that the cams didn’t recognise a person in the night or if they did and it was BI that failed to alert.

Any ideas how I can work out where the issue might is so that I can work out how to resolve? I’ve also just updated the firmware on both to the December version with the adjust SmartIR to see if that might help.
 
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I've just gotten one of these cameras and I'm still trying to get everything working as expected.

One thing I noticed was that during the day, everything worked as expected (using built in AI to limit triggers to cars and people), but at night it was triggering on ever motion. I finally checked my BI settings last night (at night) only to find both the ONVIF trigger option selected and the generic BI motion defection option selected. I'm wondering if the camera doesn't send BI a command to change settings from day to night?
 
@IAmATeaf - try an intrusion box with appears and crosses. At night, the camera needs more light to first identify the subject and determine if it is a vehicle or person. Depending on where the tripwire is, the person or vehicle may be past it before the camera recognizes it and then it won't trigger.

@The Automation Guy - The camera does not change the settings in BI from day/night, nor does BI send a command to the cameras to change from day/night. For BI, that is done within BI profiles if you set it up that way in BI, and within the cameras that is either the generic day/night profile or set up a schedule or use the sunrise/sunset utility a member here created.
 
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