My Sunba analog camera cannot PTZ

1. Please first check the +/- polarity of RS485 twisted pair between the camera and DVR (or Joystick).

The package comes with a white RS485 adapter that you can connect it to the orange and blue end coming out of the camera.

In most cases, the blue end corresponds to +/A (positive) of the DVR’s RS485 port and the orange end corresponds to the -/B (negative) of the DVR’s RS485 port.

So the wiring would be as follows:

In the above diagram, the twisted pair (RS485 cable) has red/blue wire. The red wire was connected to the blue RS485 end out of the camera. We already know the blue end corresponds to +/A (positive side) of the DVR. Thus, on the DVR’s end, the red wire would be connected to polar A.

However, as we tested more and more DVR and back-end, we noticed that different DVR has different polarity orders.  For example, with Sunba DVR, the blue goes to A/+. But for other DVR, blue goes to negative, and we do have customers reporting that. What’s more, for different analog ptz cameras, the polarity may also be different on the same end-device (joystick/DVR). Switching the order of the pair on the DVR side may be helpful.

A simple fix is to switch the polar order on the DVR (joystick)’s side. See the red arrow below:

Try switching the order of the pair if it doesn’t work. This would generally solve most of the problem! 

2. Please make sure your white RS485 and greenish RS485 connector are both functional. It happened before that the greenish RS485 is defective. We suggest that you test the functionality of the connector using a reference camera.

3. Please make sure your twisted pair is functional. You can try switching to another twisted pair if it is defective. An ethernet cable has 4 different twisted pairs that you can switch. Parallel pairs without twisted part are not recommended for PTZ control because they are not protected against any forms of signal interference and will affect the PTZ capacity of the camera.

4. Please make sure you set the correct soft address of the camera in DVR. The default soft address of Sunba camera is “1”. It is very easy to check Sunba camera’s soft address; every time Sunba camera is powered up, the monitor will display its current soft address. Not, no different PTZ cameras can have the same address bit otherwise if you control one camera the other will move; in short, address bit must be UNIQUE for each unit. Also, if you have set the address bit of the camera, please go to PTZ Config menu of the camera to set the corresponding address that matches the camera’s soft address:

5.Make sure the RS485 twisted pair is not short, meaning the metallic part from each line of the pair are not overlapping. See picture below.

6. If your camera is running a long DC extension power cable and causes underpower, the camera is also unlikely to get PTZ functioning. Please connect the camera directly to its AC power adapter and have a try.