First of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Marvin and for many years I was a lead game console tech programmer (Xbox, Xbox 360, PS2, PS3, Gamecube, and the Wii). I would love to get my hands on the source code to improve the software for this camera.
However, unfortunately, when I go to the D-Link GPL source code website, there is no download link for the DCS-5222L code. I see DCS-5211L and DCS-5230L... but no 5222L. Hopefully this would be remedied soon.
I do have a few issue with this camera. I set it up yesterday and went through the advanced configuration. It *almost* works.
I have the camera behind a glass window looking outside at my front yard. First thing I notice - there is no way to turn off the IR lights. At night time all I see is a reflection of the inside of my house on the glass due to the IR lights. I do not want the IR lights on, ever. I *DO* want the ICF to come on / off automatically - I could place IR lights outside of my home. But I do not want the built-in IR lights to come on. I am not sure if the ICF and IR lights are hard-wired together or if they can be turned on / off separately via software. I suppose I can always put black electrical tape over the IR lights. :-)
My next issues is that (no offense to anyone involved) the motion detection code is just bad. I've had people walk across the screen without triggering the motion detection. I've bumped it up to 98% sensitivity. It seems very flaky about when it decides to detect motion. I am absolutely sure I can improve this if I get my hands on the source code.
Also - it should trigger recording only if it has detected motion for X number of frames. Quite often when I have the sensitivity high (to try to compensate for poor motion detection) it will think there is motion when there is just noise in the image frames. I often end up with recordings that are only 15 seconds long (I have 5 seconds pre and 10 seconds post). This means motion was detected on only 1 or 2 frames. I'd like to control this by saying something like "record only if motion was detected for X number of frames". That would eliminate a lot of these false trigger recordings.
I am not sure if the processor in the camera is fast enough, but motion tracking (instead of just simple detection) would be a nice feature - pan / tilt the camera to follow the predicted motion path. Then it would return to home position after no more motion detected. This is something I would be interested in adding to the GPL code if possible.
Another issue is that it detects motion when the ICF turns on / off. Motion detection should be temporarily turned off during this transition.
Also the ICF turns off in the morning way too late. For a while the scene was already bright enough for where the normal mode is producing a much better image than the ICF mode. There should be some way to adjust when the ICF comes on / off using ambient light levels (meaning I want the ICF to turn off earlier).
I wonder if it is possible to add image privacy area? It would work similar to how you "draw" which areas of the image to detect motion in. You would "draw" which areas of the image to black out. This would be useful if you have the camera pointing at your yard and the image happens to capture part of the neighbors yard too. You would want to "black out" the neighbor's yard portion of the image.
There are a few other issues I have with this camera, but it is overall very good. The hardware is excellent and well built. When the software comes up in quality this will be the camera to beat.
Happy Holidays.
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Topic: Several Questions and Comments (Read 3959 times)