Dahua

IPC-HFW1200S

This camera *does* work with Zoneminder. Can access the camera's web page, but there is no documentation as to how to get to the image stream. The "webplugin.tar.gz" does not exist. Telnet port is open, but the default admin:admin does not log you in. The camera seems to be operating fine if you go through the RTSP protocol, and the settings I've used in the ZM monitor setup are:

General Tab:

   Source Type: Ffmpeg

Source Tab:

   Source Path: rtsp://admin:admin@192.168.1.100:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0 (or subtype=1 for low res)
   Remote Method:  RTP/RTSP
   The capture width and height need to be appropriate for the url given above, and if they're not then you'll 
   get no image.  For subtype=0 use 1920x1080; and for subtype=1 use 352x240.  These both work for me.  There 
   may be other supported subtypes & resolutions.

IPC-HDB4300C

This camera works perfectly as long as you have Zoneminder set up with FFMPEG.

Capabilities

Stream 0 is 1920 x 1080 @ 25fps and stream 1 is 708 x 576 @ 25fps. Both streams are compressed using H264 MPEG-4 AVC. The FFMPEG decoder is the way to go.

Initial Configuration

The camera defaults to an IP address of 192.168.1.108 with a username/password of admin/admin. It has a built-in web browser that lets you set a number of functions. The camera comes with a manual on a mini-CD. The manual is marginally useful. It is best just to get on the web interface and play.

Once you have played around a bit, it might be best if you reset the camera back to factory defaults. Under the dome cover there is a reset button. Hold it for at least five seconds. If you expect the red light to flash off and on or do something else interesting, you are going to be disappointed. The light stays on, but the unit does reset.

Help and Documentation

On the web interface, if you click on the question mark icon in the upper right corner of any page, you will get help... in Chinese. If you are not fluent in Chinese, I have some help for you. Copy the URL in the help window to a new window, replace "SimpleChinese" with "English" and hit Enter. Viola! Help in English.

Some of these help menus have information that is not contained anywhere else, so it is worth the time to go to each help page, do the substitution and read what is there.

Here is an example for the help page:

http://192.168.1.108/help/English/help.htm?device=1

Note that changing the device number at the end of the URL seems to change the functions listed in the help menu. I suspect that is because different Dahua devices have different capabilities, but they all use the same Web management interface.

Confirming Camera is On Your Network

Before I try to get a camera to work on Zoneminder, I try to look at it using the Swiss Army Knife of video tools, the VLC Player. Just download the player and put the following url into the File/Open Network dialog box:

rtsp://admin:admin@192.168.1.108

You should see pictures coming out of your camera. If you don't, then I am not going to be able to help you much. The camera does respond to pings, so you might try pinging it. If you can't ping it, you are not going to get very far.

You will find information on the Internet saying you need something like the following in order for it to work:

rtsp://admin:admin@192.168.1.108:554/live

This does work, but it does not seem to be necessary. Going to the IP address directly gets you to Stream 0 - the HD stream. You can see the properties of the stream using VLC by going to Window/Media Information/Codec Details. If you want to specifically point to the HD stream, use:

rtsp://admin:admin@192.168.1.108:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0

To get to the SD or lower resolution feed, use: rtsp://admin:admin@192.168.1.108:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=1

Setting up Zoneminder with the HDB4300C

I tried to get this camera to work with an older version of Zoneminder and had a devil of a time. In fact, I downloaded and compiled a new version of Zoneminder from scratch, and somehow managed to get it compiled without FFMPEG. The drop-down box was there, but it did not work. Anyway, I finally went to http://github.com/zoneminder and followed the directions for making an installation using Ubuntu, my preferred Linux distro, and everything worked just fine. But I will warn you at the beginning of this that, if you are getting Zoneminder up and running for the first time, it is possible to build it in a way that it won't work with this camera, even thought it looks like everything is fine. But don't worry - you won't have these problems, I'm sure...

Here are the settings I used for my Zoneminder setup. If I don't say anything about a setting, leave it alone - I started with a clean install of Zoneminder and I only changed the following things to get it to work with the camera:

General Tab

• Source type - FFMPEG

Source Tab

• Source Path - rtsp://admin:admin@192.168.1.108

That's it.

Advanced settings

As I mentioned before, this camera has at least two outputs (I believe it also has a snapshot output, but I have not discovered the path for it yet). You can get to the full resolution output using the Source Path above. If you use the web interface for the camera, and you go to 'Video", you will see that the main stream is H.264 1080P at 1920 x 1080, 25 frames per second. You will also see on the Sub-Stream tab that the lower resolution stream is also H.264 encoded at 352 x 288, 6 frames per second. This information is important if you want to get the full resolution from the camera in Zoneminder.

I use both outputs. The sub-stream is used for motion detection. When motion is detected on this feed, I then record the full resolution feed. Here are my settings. Again, if I don't mention a setting, leave it at the default value.

Full Resolution Stream

When I went with the default values in the camera and in Zoneminder, I ended up with vertical striping in the high resolution video stream. This appears to be a processing problem - I am guessing that Zoneminder cannot keep up. The feed looks normal when I view it using the web interface provided by the camera manufacturer, so that leaves out the camera and the network.

To fix the vertical striping, I reduced the frame rate for the main stream from 25 frames per second to 10 frames per second. Once I did that, I created a new monitor with the following settings:

General Tab

Source Type - Ffmpeg

Source Tab

Source Path- rtsp://admin:admin@YOURIPADDRESSHERE

Target Colorspace - 32 bit colour

Capture Width (pixels) - 1920

Capture Height (pixels) - 1080

Sub-Stream (lower resolution stream)

As mentioned above, this is a lower resolution stream so it consumes less network bandwidth and processing resources. Here are my settings for this stream:

General Tab

Source Type - Ffmpeg

Source Tab

Source Path - rtsp://admin:admin@YOURIPADDRESSHERE:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=1

Target Colourspace - 32 bit colour

Capture Width (pixels) - 352

Capture Height (pixels) - 288

Trigger at low resolution, capture at high resolution

Processing high resolution frames in order to detect motion can be costly from a computational standpoint. To lighten processor load, it is possible to set up two monitors - one for the sub-stream, and one for the primary high resolution stream.

On the General tab for the sub-stream monitor, set the Function to Modect. In this mode, Zoneminder will record events when motion is detected in this sub-stream feed.

On the General tab for the primary stream monitor, set the Function to Nodect. In this mode, Zoneminder will NOT record events based on motion detected in this feed. Put another way, your computer processor will not spend horsepower analyzing this high resolution feed (which takes more horsepower than analyzing the sub-stream feed).

Important: On the primary stream monitor, on the General tab, under Linked Monitors, click on the name of the sub-stream monitor (For example, if the sub-stream is Monitor-1, and the primary stream is Monitor-2, then click on Monitor-1). The name should turn blue. Save these settings.

Now, when motion is detected on the sub-stream feed, the sub-stream and the primary, high resolution stream will both be recorded. To unlink the primary montor from the sub-stream, Ctrl-click on the monitor name under Linked Monitors and save the settings.

IPC-HDB3200C

• Source Type: Remote
• Remote Protocol: RTSP
• Remote Method: RTP/RTSP
• Remote Host Name: user:password@ip.address
• Remote Host Port: 554
• Remote Host Path: /cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0&tcp
• Target Colorspace: 24 bit colour
• Capture Width (pixels): 1920
• Capture Height (pixels): 1080
• Preserve Aspect Ratio: Unselected
• Orientation: Normal
• Deinterlacing: Disabled

Note that this camera can occasionally go into an 'indeterminate' state if power is interrupted or browned-out. When in this state, it will respond to pings and telnet, but will not stream an image. There is an app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nz.co.trillium.dahuareboot that will reboot it out of this state.