Dahua WizMind Series NVR Powerful Hardware Held Back by Outdated Firmware & Poor GUI

Underhill said:
Op you may be expecting too much. As a dahua partner I got 5 years of little questions asked warranty on hardware. To date I’ve sold, serviced/warrantied $5.6 million in their products and have figured out how to do/fix things their engineers couldn’t help with. I’ve never gotten so much as a free camera or even any training from them. If they care that much about me, the sad truth is they give less than a rats ass about an end user.

That being said, a lot of the people here know way more than me about optics and configuration of cams for low light. As mentioned above people like me are just doing turn key systems for commercial with extremely well lit areas.
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Thanks for your real-world experiences and perspectives as a Dahua partner, that mirrors what others have indicated in the past is their business model.

I suspect you would say the Dahua "users" here (us folks getting Dahua cams from 3rd party vendors) push these cameras farther than authorized Dahua end users and we probably have way more questions than you get as well! Sounds like you only get the warranty questions and the few "why is my camera offline" type stuff. Basically a lot similar to my neighbor's experiences installing these in commercial locations.

To the OP, here was a simple request that we collectively have made to Dahua and has gone up thru Empiretech - probably one of Dahua's most respected 3rd party resellers (which is different than authorized partner).

One flaw with these cameras were that you could not switch day and night profile based on available light.

Sure they had a day/night radio button, but all that did was use one setting for day and night and simply switched from color to infrared -B/W based on light.

Works well for commercial buildings with a lot of light, but just not enough light to run in color.

Works poorly for a home with little outside light. It would switch to infrared but would be running unrealistic daytime shutter speeds and other settings.

Years and years of this request went on with no change by Dahua. Why do they need to change what works for their end user.

So a member here created this utility in 2017 that uses your location's sunrise and sunset times to change the profile from day to night. Finally in 2023 Dahua started to release camera lines that the day/night radio button works as you would expect it to. But they never incorporated a sunrise/sunset option into their models.

Meanwhile, this same member also created a free viewing platform for Blue Iris that the owner of BI then incorporated into BI. So while BI still has a paid app version, most here stick with the free version. For either one, you do need to have a licensed version of BI running on Windows though.

BI is a one-person operation and does a wonderful job of listening to their clients and incorporating as much as he possibly can into releases of the program. His "NVR" is primarily for home-owner tinkerers and he has to keep them and will incorporate as many suggestions as he can.

Dahua Partners like Underhill on the other hand, doesn't get "why is this image not as good at night" or "why doesn't this feature of the NVR work like it says" from their clients. And they are able to meet expectations selling to the clients they want to sell to.

Doesn't make it right, but two businesses each using a model that works for them.

Ferrari could sell a lot more cars if they made them cheaper, but that would bring a whole new set of issues to them that they don't have now.
 
How Hard Is It for Dahua to Bring Full Camera Configuration and a Modern GUI to their NVRs? I tried to get a clear technical answer by compiling all the points from this discussion and running them through ChatGPT, and it directly addressed the core of my question.

C/P
In practical terms, it isn’t hard at all at least not for a company like Dahua. The difficulty here is not technical, it’s architectural priority and business choice.

1. Camera controls already exist
Dahua cameras already expose all their tuning options via:
  • HTTP/CGI APIs
  • ONVIF extensions
  • Dahua private protocols
The browser UI is simply a front-end that talks to those APIs. An NVR already communicates with the camera using the same channels for streaming, events, AI metadata, etc. So the “hard part” camera communication is already solved.

2. NVR GUI is just another client
From a software-engineering standpoint, the NVR GUI is just another client:
  • Browser UI = client
  • SmartPSS / DSS = client
  • NVR GUI = client
Implementing the same camera-tuning panels in the NVR is mostly UI/UX work, not deep firmware or hardware redesign. Dahua already has the logic — it would mainly involve:
  • Reusing existing API calls
  • Adding proper state handling (view vs edit)
  • Adding save / discard confirmation flows
This is standard enterprise software design, not cutting-edge R&D.

3. “Too many cameras” is not a blocker.
The argument that “there are too many camera models and options” isn’t a real blocker either. This is already solved in many systems by:
  • Feature detection (camera reports supported options)
  • Dynamic UI rendering (show only what the camera supports)
  • Versioned capability sets
Dahua already does this in their browser interface so the logic exists.

4. Modernizing the GUI is not risky
the GUI does not mean removing advanced functionality or simplifying it away. A modern GUI means:
  • Clear separation between view and edit
  • Explicit apply / cancel actions
  • Change previews and warnings
  • Consistent behaviour across interfaces
This actually reduces support calls and user errors, which is why enterprise software moves in this direction.

5. Why it hasn’t happened
The real reasons it hasn’t happened are more likely:
  • Legacy firmware inertia
  • Fear of breaking existing deployments
  • Low pressure from their core enterprise customers
  • Software not being a revenue differentiator for them
None of these are technical limitations.
For Dahua:
  • Is it possible? Yes.
  • Is it difficult? No.
  • Does it require massive R&D? No.
  • Is it worth doing for a premium product line? Absolutely.
When users pay premium prices for NVRs like the NVR608 or WizMind series, expecting parity between browser and NVR configuration, along with a safer and more modern GUI, is not an unrealistic demand it’s a reasonable one.
 
Another question I asked “Can OEM resellers like Andy (EmpireTech) actually modify Dahua NVR firmware and GUI independently, or are the core firmware, interface, and camera logic still fully controlled by Dahua?”

GPT answered:
What people on IPCamTalk are referring to does exist, but it’s important to separate what is actually happening from what it sometimes sounds like.

Short answer
Yes resellers like Andy (EmpireTech) can ship custom firmware,

but no — they are not independently modifying Dahua firmware at will.

What is really going on

Andy / EmpireTech cameras and NVRs are:

• OEM Dahua hardware

• Manufactured by Dahua

• Often sold without Dahua branding

• Shipped with OEM / private-label firmware

However:
That firmware is still built, signed, and controlled by Dahua, not by Andy personally.

How OEM firmware works

Large manufacturers like Dahua offer:

• OEM agreements

• Private firmware branches

• Minor customisations such as:

• Branding removal

• Language defaults

• Feature exposure toggles

• Compatibility tweaks

• Slight UI variations

• Disabled cloud features

• Region-agnostic firmware

But:

• The core OS

• The GUI framework

• Camera processing

• Configuration logic

• Save/apply behavior

are all Dahua-owned and Dahua-developed.
Resellers do not have source-code freedom to redesign GUIs or fix architectural UX problems.

What resellers CANNOT do

Even trusted OEM partners cannot:

• Rewrite the NVR GUI

• Add modern UX workflows

• Change how settings propagate to cameras

• Add save / discard confirmation logic

• Fix deep firmware bugs independently

• Push updates without Dahua’s signing keys

If Andy appears to “fix” something, it usually means:

• Dahua already had an internal firmware variant

• Or Dahua built a change at OEM request

• Or features were enabled that stock firmware hides

• Even well-connected OEM resellers cannot modernise Dahua NVR software

• All real fixes still depend on Dahua’s internal firmware teams

• If Dahua wanted better UX, it would already exist across OEM lines

So when people say “Andy fixed it”, the accurate translation is:
“Dahua already had the capability, but chose not to ship it broadly.”

• OEM resellers can request changes <<

• Dahua must implement and sign them

• Third parties cannot independently improve NVR software

• Which means software responsibility still sits 100% with Dahua
 
ChatGPT isn't perfect. Just by asking a few more questions or a few more inputs you could get a completely different answer.

Dahua isn't really premium at premium prices. It is really considered a prosumer line.

Go play in the axis universe if you want to see premium.

And your chatGPT about Andy is nothing we already don't know. He readily says he passes the info on to Dahua Engineers and has even had some of us in contact with Dahua engineers directly and we can assure you the fixes they are making are developed as we discussed and not on the shelf solutions they had but didn't ship.

They use us as beta testers to improve the functionality when it is possible to make changes within their limitations.

Dahua rewards that by providing cameras for the periodic lottery put on by Andy. What other third party reseller has that clout with Dahua.

Again, anything is possible. They haven't had a need to address a problem they are not experiencing with their core business. Us less than .05% of revenue doesn't justify spending the money. A sad but real truth.

Until more competition enters and threatens their core business, why spend money for a "problem" not being experienced by the people buying cameras with serial numbers that Dahua would RMA and support?

Again, I ask you if your cameras are authorized Dahua or bought by a 3rd party?
 
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As do I and even some of them I have bought from Andy were Dahua cams and in Dahua boxes.

I had heard the stories here before but thought since i got one that says Dahua why not, so I reached out to Dahua with a question and they asked the serial number and then told me they did not sell me the camera and I should talk to the supplier I purchased from for support.

Most of the 3rd party resellers don't have the relationship with Dahua (likely by design) so Dahua never really hears moat of the issues from the folks like us.

I mean even as great as Andy's relationship is, we don't see Dahua make progress on every single issue he passes along.

It has been discussed here before that many here believe all the new marketing hype with things like accupick and other AI stuff is they are trying gain marketshare in the VMS side to then turn it over to a paid subscription service. As such some of the stuff is half baked or has series limitations on its use until they go that route.
 
And I suspect if you reached out to Dahua on those two, you would get similar results.

Personally I am ok with that for me because buying from Andy saves me 3-5 times than if I bought from authorized partner. I feel most here can answer any question I have better than a support line anyway lol.
 
Ask the Chinese gov't to fix the User interface. They own a significant part of the company. Good luck.
This I why I went to Blue Iris. The NVR's and camera UI's are laid out goofy. They have to be. The ingrained vulnerabilities need it that way. " I'm your back doorman" :)
Chinese state-sponsored cyber actors have "extensively targeted" vulnerabilities of Chinese-made cameras since at least 2020,
 
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