Pink picture

[zxcslo]

Few month ago one of the cameras started to show pink picture during the day (at night it black and white). Now few days ago second camera started to show pink. Can any body tell me why?

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All 6 cameras are 1.5 years old. All have the same settings. I tried reset them to factory settings, update to latest firmware, but nothing helps.
I'm using Sighthound software and I've been very satisfied with it.

[Semper Vaporo]

This is probably the loss of one of the 3 primary color processors (Green) in the camera. It could be temporary, or a permanent loss. Sometimes electronic circuitry just wears out and sometimes that is accelerated by temperature changes and sometimes temperature extremes (even mild ones) just cause the circuitry to act up and when temperatures return to normal the problem will go away.

What brand and model of cameras are they?

Where are they mounted (Indoors? Outdoors? Permanent shade? Direct sun? Sheltered? etc.)

Has there been a change in the weather recently (sudden drop in temperature)? They may have worked fine last year in worse weather extremes, but age can make them more susceptible to lessor temperature extremes.

I have some cheap web-cams in the house viewing the outdoors through a window but they are behind heavy curtains and in the winter they get really cold and will act up in various ways, usually losing the Blue color (so everything is shaded a weird green). Sometimes the color comes back after a while, (I think the camera's built-in color compensation circuitry will reset when a long term change in scene brightness occurs). Sometimes I lose patience and turn them off and back on and that seems to cure it for a while.

[zxcslo]

The cameras are Digitus OptiMax Pro DN-16040 (all 6 of them).
They are mounted outdoor, but none of them are on direct sunlight or rain. They are all under some kind of 'protection'. There were no temperature extremes here in Slovenia this winter. Yesterday and today is about 10°C. In technical documentation for cameras temperature range is -20°C ~ +60°C. This are no low price cameras. They costed around 200€ each.
This is from today:

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More then half a picture is now pink.

[Semper Vaporo]

Yes, those seem to be high-end cameras and should not have such problems, but I know of no other cause for this sort of problem than the camera itself.

Maybe someone else as some ideas or other experience.

[Devin]

Hi zxcslo,

In addition to the cases Semper mentioned it appears this can happen due to day/night IR issues: http://www.networkwebcams.com/ip-camera ... t-filters/

I'd recommend contacting Digitus to see if this is a known issue with their cameras.

Regards,

-Devin

[zxcslo]

@Devin
The moment I start reading the article it hit me: IR-cut filter! Mechanical! ...
All this IP cameras (from 150€ forward) have mechanical IR-cut filter, which covers the camera lens, when daylight sensor switches to day. Hence the sound of mechanical 'click', which you can hear, when the sensor switches to day at the morning and to night at the evenings.
On my cameras, it seems that IR-cut filter is 'stuck' somewhere in the middle over the camera lens, that why only half of the picture is pink. On the other camera, filter is not moving at all over the lens, that why whole picture is pink.
The cameras are outdoor for about 1.5 year. I believe that moisture and cold have done something on these two cameras to the mechanism for the IR-cut filter. Maybe they are not sealed so well or... I'll look on these, when I came home. Maybe I can open the camera and see what's going on.

Again, thank you for pointing me in the right direction.

PS: The answer from Digitus (after one month and few emails): Try factory reset the camera.

Like I didn't try everything before I contacted them...