So I bought the Empiretech 25X PTZ camera and for the first 4 to 5 hours, it was working great. Then all of a sudden, I get a notification from my NAS that the camera was no longer connected. Well as far as I can tell, its rebooting every 30 sec or so, not enough time for the web server to come up so there is literally nothing I can do. Hard resets do nothing and I can't see logs or anything because its constantly rebooting. So I have an $800 brick that I can't use after 4 hours. Awesome.
EmpireTech 25X PTZ - Rebooting
- Thread starter browncoat_28
- Start date
How are you powering it? Make and model of power and if a switch what else is on it?
This sounds like you are underpowering it and now that it is dark the IR kicks on and draws more power and it reboots.
This sounds like you are underpowering it and now that it is dark the IR kicks on and draws more power and it reboots.
Just get one of this injector to power the ptz. Looks like the power is not enogh, the booting will more frequency when the IR start/autotracking start.
Camera is not such easy bricked.
Camera is not such easy bricked.
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observant1
Getting comfortable
If it was a power issue, i'd be the happiest person on earth. Using 30W PoE. Even tried a 60W PoE inverter that I had from an old Ruckus install several years ago, same results. This is not a power issue.
Some background on me. I've been doing telecom installs for 25 years. Everything from wireless to fiber core, i've done it. If only it was as simple as power.....
Some background on me. I've been doing telecom installs for 25 years. Everything from wireless to fiber core, i've done it. If only it was as simple as power.....
Ok, so humor us for a moment.
Did it work fine during the day and once it started getting dark, that is when the rebooting began? If so, that is a power issue that could be a variety of things. Inadequate power supply is the normal cause, but other things can contribute.
Make and model of your power supply and is it 802.3at (PoE+) compliant? Not all POE is the same.
You may think that is a silly question and beneath you, but we see many people come here with ubiquity gear, that is expensive, but many of their products don't provide the POE standard 48v and many ubiquity products provides 24v passive POE, which will run their cameras but not other brands of cameras, especially once the IR kicks in.
What is the cabling - pure copper or CCA?
Premade or self terminated?
How long is the cable run?
Did it work fine during the day and once it started getting dark, that is when the rebooting began? If so, that is a power issue that could be a variety of things. Inadequate power supply is the normal cause, but other things can contribute.
Make and model of your power supply and is it 802.3at (PoE+) compliant? Not all POE is the same.
You may think that is a silly question and beneath you, but we see many people come here with ubiquity gear, that is expensive, but many of their products don't provide the POE standard 48v and many ubiquity products provides 24v passive POE, which will run their cameras but not other brands of cameras, especially once the IR kicks in.
What is the cabling - pure copper or CCA?
Premade or self terminated?
How long is the cable run?
Yeah no worries. I didnt mean for my last comment to come off as arrogant, my apologies. I've just been doing these kinds of things for a very long time so i just get to the meat of it and bypass the bs. If I had a crappy PoE 15.5W netgear running this thing, I'd be disappointed in myself. For my VPN, Router, and Switches, I have a Cisco 5525X, Catalyst 8200, and Catalyst 9200s that my company had left over so I can't speak to ubiquiti but their stuff doesnt reside in the networks i build. In any event, i have 30W PoE module that is running this thing so I'm 100% certain its not power. And it was not dark when this started happening, it was around 330 MT.... plenty of sun.
biggen
Known around here
- May 6, 2018
- 2,834
- 3,248
If you have verified power is fine by using two injectors/Poe switches and the same problem arises, then I agree, it’s not power. I’d check network cabling next. Can you run a temporary line? I know you said you tested it with a fluke, but I’d still run a secondary test line just to be sure.
FYI, I held a CCNA for a long time starting back 18 years ago so I know about cutting through the BS. Burns me up every time I have to call tech support and talk to Hanoi Jane in Vietnam for crap. Most tech support are useless and reading from a flow chart.
FYI, I held a CCNA for a long time starting back 18 years ago so I know about cutting through the BS. Burns me up every time I have to call tech support and talk to Hanoi Jane in Vietnam for crap. Most tech support are useless and reading from a flow chart.
I would just ask for a replacement. I assume you bought it from Andy's Amazon or directly. I had an OLD PTZ 25x that finally bit the dust and it does this same thing. I have tried everything to bring it back to life but threw it in the trash. Six years of service in harsh environment so I got my money's worth. Sorry about your bad luck, it sucks to get something new and its junk, but shit happens.
Got a replacement and all is well again. To be honest, thats a little worrisome given the criticality of this device and its purpose but I'm open to give it another shot.
Separate question: this new one is working fine at night as expected, but tracking at night is hit or miss. I really just want to capture vehicles and people coming near my home but I'm finding sometimes the camera just doesnt want to track humans at night. During the day, it seems perfect. Any suggestions from the brain trust here?
Separate question: this new one is working fine at night as expected, but tracking at night is hit or miss. I really just want to capture vehicles and people coming near my home but I'm finding sometimes the camera just doesnt want to track humans at night. During the day, it seems perfect. Any suggestions from the brain trust here?
EVERY manufacturer of any product has a few duds. Most here don't experience with Dahua OEM. You were one of the unlucky ones. In my experience, most electronics crap the bed quickly like yours did well within any return period.
As you will learn to find out, tracking PTZs are not plug-n-play.
Most of us have spent HOURS dialing it in to our scene.
Keeping the settings on auto/default settings is a recipe for poor tracking, especially at night.
You can't setting out every instance, but there are ways to minimize it.
Something as simple as having contrast 8 higher than brightness can make a big difference in whether the camera continues to follow the person or lock onto something else
I have a yard lamp post that more times than not autotrack would get stuck on it as someone was walking and the autotrack would only go so far as it decided to track the lamp post. Because my image has soo much contrast (bright white concrete a third, blacktop road a third, grass a third), knocking down the gamma made the lamp post not be so "trackable" lol, and along with that I turned of PFA and that gave it just enough time to retrack the person walking past the lamp post.
So you have to try the different settings and see which works best for you. PFA may need to be off, autofocus may need to be on semi, etc. Tracking size will be a big factor as well.
There really is no set guidelines that work in every situation.
In terms of getting the most out of the camera, here is my "standard" post that many use as a start for dialing in day and night that helps get the clean captures and help the camera recognize people and cars.
Start with:
H264
8192 bitrate
CBR
15FPS
15 iframes
Every field of view is different, but I have found you need contrast to usually be 6-8 higher than the brightness number at night.
We want the ability to freeze frame capture a clean image from the video at night, and that is only done with a shutter of 1/60 or faster. At night, default/auto may be on 1/12s shutter or worse to make the image bright.
In my opinion, shutter (exposure) and gain are the two most important parameters and then base the others off of it. Shutter is more important than FPS. It is the shutter speed that prevents motion blur, not FPS. 15 FPS is more than enough for surveillance cameras as we are not producing Hollywood movies. Match iframes to FPS. 15FPS is all that is usually needed.
Many people do not realize there is manual shutter that lets you adjust shutter and gain and a shutter priority that only lets you adjust shutter speed but not gain. The higher the gain, the bigger the noise and see-through ghosting start to appear because the noise is amplified. Most people select shutter priority and run a faster shutter than they should because it is likely being done at 100 gain, so it is actually defeating their purpose of a faster shutter.
Go into shutter settings and change to manual shutter and start with custom shutter as ms and change to 0-8.3ms and gain 0-50 (night) and 0-4ms exposure and 0-30 gain (day)for starters. Auto could have a shutter speed of 100ms or more with a gain at 100 and shutter priority could result in gain up at 100 which will contribute to significant ghosting and that blinding white you will get from the infrared or white light.
Now what you will notice immediately at night is that your image gets A LOT darker. That faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. But it is a balance. The nice bright night static image results in Casper blur and ghost during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?
In the daytime, if it is still too bright, then drop the 4ms down to 3ms then 2ms, etc. You have to play with it for your field of view.
Then at night, if it is too dark, then start adding ms to the time. Go to 10ms, 12ms, etc. until you find what you feel is acceptable as an image. Then have someone walk around and see if you can get a clean shot. Try not to go above 16.67ms (but certainly not above 30ms) as that tends to be the point where blur starts to occur. Conversely, if it is still bright, then drop down in time to get a faster shutter.
You can also adjust brightness and contrast to improve the image. But try not to go above 70 for anything and try to have contrast be at least 7-10 digits higher than brightness.
You can also add some gain to brighten the image - but the higher the gain, the more ghosting you get. Some cameras can go to 70 or so before it is an issue and some can't go over 50.
But adjusting those two settings will have the biggest impact. The next one is noise reduction. Want to keep that as low as possible. Depending on the amount of light you have, you might be able to get down to 40 or so at night (again camera dependent) and 20-30 during the day, but take it as low as you can before it gets too noisy. Again this one is a balance as well. Too smooth and no noise can result in soft images and contribute to blur.
Do not use backlight features until you have exhausted every other parameter setting. And if you do have to use backlight, take it down as low as possible.
After every setting adjustment, have someone walk around outside and see if you can freeze-frame to get a clean image. If not, keep changing until you do. Clean motion pictures are what we are after, not a clean static image.
As you will learn to find out, tracking PTZs are not plug-n-play.
Most of us have spent HOURS dialing it in to our scene.
Keeping the settings on auto/default settings is a recipe for poor tracking, especially at night.
You can't setting out every instance, but there are ways to minimize it.
Something as simple as having contrast 8 higher than brightness can make a big difference in whether the camera continues to follow the person or lock onto something else
I have a yard lamp post that more times than not autotrack would get stuck on it as someone was walking and the autotrack would only go so far as it decided to track the lamp post. Because my image has soo much contrast (bright white concrete a third, blacktop road a third, grass a third), knocking down the gamma made the lamp post not be so "trackable" lol, and along with that I turned of PFA and that gave it just enough time to retrack the person walking past the lamp post.
So you have to try the different settings and see which works best for you. PFA may need to be off, autofocus may need to be on semi, etc. Tracking size will be a big factor as well.
There really is no set guidelines that work in every situation.
In terms of getting the most out of the camera, here is my "standard" post that many use as a start for dialing in day and night that helps get the clean captures and help the camera recognize people and cars.
Start with:
H264
8192 bitrate
CBR
15FPS
15 iframes
Every field of view is different, but I have found you need contrast to usually be 6-8 higher than the brightness number at night.
We want the ability to freeze frame capture a clean image from the video at night, and that is only done with a shutter of 1/60 or faster. At night, default/auto may be on 1/12s shutter or worse to make the image bright.
In my opinion, shutter (exposure) and gain are the two most important parameters and then base the others off of it. Shutter is more important than FPS. It is the shutter speed that prevents motion blur, not FPS. 15 FPS is more than enough for surveillance cameras as we are not producing Hollywood movies. Match iframes to FPS. 15FPS is all that is usually needed.
Many people do not realize there is manual shutter that lets you adjust shutter and gain and a shutter priority that only lets you adjust shutter speed but not gain. The higher the gain, the bigger the noise and see-through ghosting start to appear because the noise is amplified. Most people select shutter priority and run a faster shutter than they should because it is likely being done at 100 gain, so it is actually defeating their purpose of a faster shutter.
Go into shutter settings and change to manual shutter and start with custom shutter as ms and change to 0-8.3ms and gain 0-50 (night) and 0-4ms exposure and 0-30 gain (day)for starters. Auto could have a shutter speed of 100ms or more with a gain at 100 and shutter priority could result in gain up at 100 which will contribute to significant ghosting and that blinding white you will get from the infrared or white light.
Now what you will notice immediately at night is that your image gets A LOT darker. That faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. But it is a balance. The nice bright night static image results in Casper blur and ghost during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?
In the daytime, if it is still too bright, then drop the 4ms down to 3ms then 2ms, etc. You have to play with it for your field of view.
Then at night, if it is too dark, then start adding ms to the time. Go to 10ms, 12ms, etc. until you find what you feel is acceptable as an image. Then have someone walk around and see if you can get a clean shot. Try not to go above 16.67ms (but certainly not above 30ms) as that tends to be the point where blur starts to occur. Conversely, if it is still bright, then drop down in time to get a faster shutter.
You can also adjust brightness and contrast to improve the image. But try not to go above 70 for anything and try to have contrast be at least 7-10 digits higher than brightness.
You can also add some gain to brighten the image - but the higher the gain, the more ghosting you get. Some cameras can go to 70 or so before it is an issue and some can't go over 50.
But adjusting those two settings will have the biggest impact. The next one is noise reduction. Want to keep that as low as possible. Depending on the amount of light you have, you might be able to get down to 40 or so at night (again camera dependent) and 20-30 during the day, but take it as low as you can before it gets too noisy. Again this one is a balance as well. Too smooth and no noise can result in soft images and contribute to blur.
Do not use backlight features until you have exhausted every other parameter setting. And if you do have to use backlight, take it down as low as possible.
After every setting adjustment, have someone walk around outside and see if you can freeze-frame to get a clean image. If not, keep changing until you do. Clean motion pictures are what we are after, not a clean static image.
You may need to cover your PTZ's trouble spot with a Static cam.
I learned from the forum and hands on experience, that my camera setup for a 75 unit Condo, was best served by static cams.
My first IP cam was a PTZ, eventually put out to pasture in the Back lot as a stationary camera.
I began with what they left me, 9 black white cameras that looked like the 1st pic below... with no view of the outside of the property.
Then I began by trying to upgrade the existing cams ( when i had time) but this still left the crappy experience of reviewing video on some locked down software called EYEMAX on a PC with a whopping 2GB of memory.
Hit the Google search and wound up here.
got just enough information to put together a rudimentary Ip cam setup, But I didn't really know what I was getting into.
1st cam was a PTZ, looking outside at the front parking lot. A pinch point where all the " car checkers" had to cruise by to go into the Back Lot.
I gave me data, but not enough data.
I soon realized " i need a lot more cameras".
then came the Cisco POE switch and a BI PC, and started pulling cable runs.
Then my underground garage shots changed from pic1 to Pic 2.
eventually wound up with about 17-18 Ip cams
and the PTZ was demoted to Static cam over watch of the rear parking lot.
the last pic was with 17 cams. ( and 9 more on analog CCTV system)
total was eventually 28.
I learned from the forum and hands on experience, that my camera setup for a 75 unit Condo, was best served by static cams.
My first IP cam was a PTZ, eventually put out to pasture in the Back lot as a stationary camera.
I began with what they left me, 9 black white cameras that looked like the 1st pic below... with no view of the outside of the property.
Then I began by trying to upgrade the existing cams ( when i had time) but this still left the crappy experience of reviewing video on some locked down software called EYEMAX on a PC with a whopping 2GB of memory.
Hit the Google search and wound up here.
got just enough information to put together a rudimentary Ip cam setup, But I didn't really know what I was getting into.
1st cam was a PTZ, looking outside at the front parking lot. A pinch point where all the " car checkers" had to cruise by to go into the Back Lot.
I gave me data, but not enough data.
I soon realized " i need a lot more cameras".
then came the Cisco POE switch and a BI PC, and started pulling cable runs.
Then my underground garage shots changed from pic1 to Pic 2.
eventually wound up with about 17-18 Ip cams
and the PTZ was demoted to Static cam over watch of the rear parking lot.
the last pic was with 17 cams. ( and 9 more on analog CCTV system)
total was eventually 28.
observant1
Getting comfortable
======================================================
I cut off some of the adjustments for triggering ptz or other cams.
I've got to say this is very good info. If you have issues with auto tracking it's time consuming but worth the effort.
If you are installing a bunch of cameras at a location you won the bid on....we;; OK.
But if you wasnt your cameras to function at their peak preformance level, you must adjust a few things. Just try it out and you'll see ....it's not easy but read, try and learn. It can be frustrating.
Thank you for all the info folx. I've playing with it all weekend and I just can't seem to get the tracking to trigger past the 75ft mark, which just happens to be right at the end of my driveway. I'll keep trying. It works perfectly during the day and its a wondeful day cam. I'm just hoping I can get some consistent auto tracking at night as that tends to be when i really need it.
Post some video as that can help us figure it out.
Also, if you haven't, put an SD card in the camera so that you can playback the video and see what happened. It will put a box around what it is tracking and that will help you/us know if it gets so far and then decides to jump from a person to the mailbox or a bush as an example. Then it is just a matter of target size and maybe some contrast.
And which PTZ is it? 75 feet at night without a lot of light can start to be problematic.
Also, if you haven't, put an SD card in the camera so that you can playback the video and see what happened. It will put a box around what it is tracking and that will help you/us know if it gets so far and then decides to jump from a person to the mailbox or a bush as an example. Then it is just a matter of target size and maybe some contrast.
And which PTZ is it? 75 feet at night without a lot of light can start to be problematic.