I recently bought a Sricam on Amazon just to see what you can have nowadays for £30. After all, not so long ago the only (in)decent thing you could have for 8 times the price was the D-Link DCS-950G. Ewww what a disgusting piece of hardware... and software. Glad those days are over !
I set it up to look outside on my front yard. When the night comes, the camera switch in infrared mode and the 8 IR-LED will blast light as far as a couple of meters. The picture is then black and white. Honestly it works pretty well.
The problem is that the camera is behind a window and most of that IR light is reflected by the glass right in front of the sensor, making it completely blind. I've tried to put tape on the outer circle of the camera where the LED are located but then the light sensor used to detect night mode will be covered as well, telling the camera to switch to infrared mode anyway. the picture will then go black and white even if sun is shining
So I decided to open it and do something. I didn't really had a plan in mind, ripping off the IR LED could have been a good solution.
Luckily I found out a photodiode used as a light sensor, surrounded by a 8 IR and one red status LED. Covering the sensor opens the circuit and putting it in front of a bright light closes it.
By following the path on the board, we can see that pin 3 and 4 are connected to that diode.
So I've cut part of a leg of a resistor (5mm long) and shaped into a U-shape.
Put it on the connector itself between pin 3 and 4 et voilà:
I'm very happy with my camera now and even at night I get a clear color picture, thanks to the street lights !
Good article! It's a shame that even after 4 years SRICAM still doesn't have a button to activate/deactivate IR LED on it's app (I didn't find it)
ReplyDeleteif you connect via Onvif, you can disable the IR light choices are: Auto, On, Off
ReplyDelete