Hikvision ColorVu 8MP Bullet Camera, Smart Hybrid Light, 2.8 mm DS-2CD2T87G2H-LI(2.8mm)(eF)

What this Hikvision ColorVu camera is for

Infrared night footage loses the colour that helps describe a car or a coat. This Hikvision ColorVu camera is built to keep that information whenever there is enough light.

It can suit a homeowner or small business covering a drive, yard or entrance, and an installer wiring a new network system. A bullet camera has a long, tube-shaped body on a bracket, so it is plainly visible from a distance.

How do ColorVu and Smart Hybrid Light work?

• ColorVu: Hikvision's name for its colour-at-night range. A wide F1.0 aperture lets in more light, so the camera can hold colour in dimmer scenes.
• Smart Hybrid Light: the camera carries two kinds of light. IR, at 850 nm, gives night vision without a bright visible beam, while white light lets the picture stay in colour.
• Day and night modes: an IR cut filter moves to suit the conditions. You can set day, night, auto or a schedule.
• Deep learning: software trained on examples sorts what it sees into people and vehicles. Alarms can then be limited to those targets.
• H.265+: a video compression method that needs less bandwidth and storage than older formats for a similar picture.

Where to use it

The metal body and -30 °C to 60 °C working range suit outdoor walls and soffits, as well as indoor spaces such as warehouses.

The 2.8 mm lens has a wide view, so it suits areas a few metres from the camera. Think about neighbours before relying on white light, because it is a visible beam.

What the figures mean in practice

• DORI distances: DORI stands for detect, observe, recognise and identify. Plan on 8 m where you need to identify a stranger, and treat 89 m only as seeing that something moved.
• Close limit: focus holds from 3.3 m outwards at 2.8 mm, so do not expect sharp faces right under the camera.
• WDR and lux: WDR balances the bright and dark parts of a picture, so a bright road and a dark porch can both stay readable. Lux measures light falling on a scene, and AGC is the camera's automatic gain.
• 512 GB card: at the top 16 Mbps rate this works out at about three days of constant recording, and far longer at lower rates or on event recording.

Installing it

• Power budget: a PoE switch port needs to supply Class 3, one of the PoE power levels. Allow max. 9.5 W for this camera when adding up the switch's load.
• 12 VDC adapter: the coaxial plug has reverse polarity protection, which guards the camera if the supply is wired the wrong way round.
• Fixings by code: as well as the pole and corner mounts, the options include the DS-1275ZJ-S-SUS vertical pole mount and the DS-1260ZJ and DS-1280ZJ-S junction boxes. Check each one's finish on its own page.
• Set-up: use plug-in free live view in Chrome 57.0+, Firefox 52.0+ or Edge 89+, or the iVMS-4200 client.

Planning your system

A recorder is optional for small jobs, because the camera can save to a microSD card or to a NAS (network attached storage) drive.

For longer retention, add a network video recorder that shares one of the profiles below, plus hard drives sized for how many days you want to keep.

Standards and ratings explained

• IP67: dust tight, and protected against temporary immersion in water.
• Profiles S, G and T: parts of the Open Network Video Interface standard. Profile S covers streaming, G covers on-device recording and T covers advanced video such as H.265.
• EN 50130-4: an immunity standard for alarm equipment, covering electrical interference.
• ISAPI, SDK and ISUP: Hikvision's own routes for connecting software and management platforms to the camera.