18 MP 8-camera 360°/180° Camera from Hikvision Worth 5 000$:
PanoVU DS-2CD1636-D Panoramic Fisheye Beast
This is a level of a huge enterprises like government and state organizations, like airports, stadiums, and the Entire Cities! All these objects can be described by 3 characteristics: a huge scale, a great flow of people coming through each and a high importance. This thing costs around 5 000 dollars, and the most interesting part is that it is a money saving already. So why have we decided to show you this one? Isn’t it interesting to examine this whole thing in and out?! And then you can acquire this beast and alike in our Pipl Systems Store.
Why and What Is It?
So why a 5 000 for a single camera is a money saving? Such a camera is equal to 8 common cameras, which here are located on the sides around the body, and there’s a one more on the bottom, pointed 90 degrees to the ground, and this is how they have achieved a horizontal field of view in 360 and 180 degrees vertically.
There are 8 cameras in here, and this is how a cost is allocated between all of them: every camera here has a 4 mm. focal length and a 4 mm. is around 60-70 FOV for each camera with greatly detailed view zone and a big range indicator due to 18 MP. resolution. Although, this big resolution is allocated in an interesting way here – It’s 2 times 2400×3840, meaning that we get 2 panoramic videos on an outcome, and in total you get 360 FOV horizontally and 180 vertically. It’s literally a half of a 3D sphere with a huge resolution, like if you were seeing it in a VR headset.
Video / Controls Demo
This is how a recording from this camera looks like:
Like, again, 3D spheres for VR Headsets or a familiar videos, taken on 180 degrees FOV Fisheye cameras, but here you get 360×180, and we are lacking 180 degrees of the upper part to make it a complete 3D sphere. However, these cameras are installed that high so that there is only the sky on the upper 180, and in 360 horizontally we are seeing a rooftops of the city, or the upper part of the object that we are watching. And it’s assumed that a watcher of the scene is going to have a similar large screen in front of him, similar to mine, but maybe even panoramic, and with a higher resolution, because it’s namely the way to make the best of it. Also, owing to the Dakfighter technology implemented in here… the cam makes quite a good nighttime shots with great lighting and Vast, resolution
Features / Demo
And all these “small” cameras in one big camera are fixed, which is more likely a flaw in this class of cameras in compare to PTZ cameras with the optical zoom, offering up to 20x or 50x times, which means the lens is moving out of the body physically, and we literally almost not losing any quality when zooming. But! This flaw is offsetted with a vast resolution in 18 MP. Thus, let’s zoom in and see how a video quality changes throughout the zoom-in and how does this affect the ability to identify smaller details and people’s faces.
Build / Hardware
Concerning the material and physical parts – IP66 protection level body to stand against dust and water – it’s a pity that there’s no any vandal resistance, but it feels solid and I’d say it will definitely stand any rocks thrown in it. It weights 4.5 kg, and requires 36V power supply, up to 110 Watt to operate. From the interfaces and ports: we have an input for a fiber-optic cable, which is nice, supporting a 1 gigabyte per second bandwidth, and the maximum transmission range in 20 kilometers! Common RJ-45 for a twisted pair, 7 alarm ins and 2 outs, with a ton of supported functions. RS-485 and the full-featured input for the SDHC memory cards with 128 GB. supported capacity maximum. Which, with such resolution, will stand for 20 minutes? Considering that the camera saves videos only in the old H.264 compression rate, and considering a huge FOV and expected high scene intensity – even H.265+ codec won’t do a thing here.
So what it gives? Of course, that’s a simultaneous surveillance over a large territory with high resolution and detailing, which is indeed required for important city structures, like those that are passed through by a tens of thousands people, driven through by thousands of vehicles, where big money and expensive equipment is carried through. And if you add to this setup an intelligent video recorder – well, you will get a monster. In a good sense though. But that will be over 10 grand.
