mike_va

I've been playing around with this the last few months. Best results was with fast shutter (depends how fast you are trying to capture), 87C filter on the lens from B&H ~$60, and IR. Obviously the more IR you have will give you the faster shutter speed, and helps overcome headlights. The beauty though is the plates are retro reflective which sends the light back to where it came from. I've had just a little IR and I can light up the stop sign, where other things are not that well lit. Also positioning helps so that it is above the headlights (10 ft worked well for me) so the camera is not looking directly into them. IP cams work good, but if you have tight area it's hard to beat the additional contrast of analog (Bosch day-night and CNB both work well). It can also help to back the AGC down sometimes. Hope this helps. Attached is a shot of a P1344 at 80 yards (with IR), about 1/8th of the FOV behind perspex (which does not block light as well as the filter I mentioned). You should be able to do better than this though.

I have a 2TB on ACS, don't remember the speed. I think Axis rec'd 12 cams max per HD, which is where it is at. Some day I may split this to 2 drives. Reason being is I think ACS is not as snappy as it could be. VitaminD running on the local hard drive, but thinking of setting up a RAID on windows, do you think this would improve things or have any suggestions? I know VitaminD is pretty write intensive, however it plays back the clips instantly. In fact I can just hold down the arrow key and it races through clips playing them back at 3x speed. Also that was running VNC. I just came down and got on the computer direct and it is at ~11.5%, so we could round and say 100Mbs.

of a gigabit. VitaminD does MJPEG. ACS is doing a combination, and some audio streams. 21% processor Dell XPS8300 i7. Usually flatter than this but we were just moving some cameras around.

It took me a while, but it can be done. I can't remember how I did it though. There are numerous screws you'll have to take out.

No, that was a while ago. Maybe a year. Felt cheap (and it is compared to some other cameras). For that matter even some cameras (e.g. CNB BBM-24F) feel cheap, but have some desirable attribute. These MP cams need to be right though, as the smaller companies may not fix the problem and instead move to a new model. Not getting a reliable stream is a deal breaker on a camera that had been out over a year at the time. Whatever nit there is on an analog I've never had an issue with getting a reliable signal from a reasonably priced analog cam. Same reason I'll never buy a Linksys router again, they shipped me a product that did not work until I upgraded the firmware. Hours wasted, life is too short.

+1 Look for Bosch 495's, just saw one sell NIB for $50. Would have bought it myself but we have enough cameras...

I had occasional artifacting with Acti, sent it back

I like the MPJEG better, mostly Axis cameras and encoders around the house. Have not played around extensively with Axis 264 settings, so don't know how good it could be. The Axis cameras are nice, in that they have adequate frame rate even with multiple streams, unlike the Panasonic 502. For our home, I really don't care about the bandwidth (~16% Gigabit switch). Have an i7 running analytics and Axis ACS with 12+ cams and still at ~20-25%. ACS live view you can set up to have smaller shots so with multiple cams still works well over wireless (large split settings). Especially at night mjpeg gives a better picture. However I use 264 (and mpeg4) to record with sound, don't know if there is a way to do that with mjpeg.

Some are comparisons to MP cams... viewtopic.php?f=5&t=27498 viewtopic.php?f=5&t=27374 viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23506 viewtopic.php?f=19&t=26461 viewtopic.php?f=19&t=25728 viewtopic.php?f=19&t=25196 viewtopic.php?f=5&t=24535 viewtopic.php?f=5&t=24524 viewtopic.php?f=5&t=24135

It has 6 fat IR leds in the top section. The older EX82 I replaced it for had a bunch of small LEDs. This definitely puts out a ton more IR. It also comes with 2 front glass covers, both look near identical to me although the misty area in front of the IRs is a little clearer on one. One is labeled 80 degree the other is 40 degree, the 40 is for the 50mm zoom. The older EX82 was max 30 degrees. Took apart my Bosch BDS IR, although 30deg it had a piece of plastic in there to diffuse I imagine the LED board which was labelled 10deg. Sounds like they might be doing something similar on that. Removed it as an experiment and man that thing goes out...

I thought I read once that one way mirrors would pass IR, so if you had incandescent lighting and a B&W camera you would not need a hole. Would be interesting to try, let us know if you do. I know it works fine with perspex, which appears black.

Yep, when I used to live in Chicago I used to joke that unless someone was shooting they didn't really care... And under 5 is calling the non-emergency line. Even when these guys come out to view footage (which they WANT to do) now we say "thanks". In fact they have said some very nice things about the system. I also tell the current board that they are doing a great job and not to cut their funding...

If B&W doubt if it has an IR filter. What camera and lens are you using? Lower F numbers help, as do IR corrected lenses. I can get over 75 yards with an old LTC0355 and proper illumination.

Should have a mic built in (although you can hook up external), have never looked to see if there is a speaker built in also. Sounds like you are out of wires though.

Went for a sleep study last week. Here is the setup that was in my room. Vitek had some LED's out, and spent a while clicking when the room lights were first out. Can't seem to escape the cameras They said this replaced a crappy bullet cam with built in IR.

Takes under 5 minutes here, for example if people are reported as trying to get into cars.

Was that with audio?

I agree somewhat with that, and in fact have posted a lot of pics on this forum for that reason. OTOH, do car manufacturers provide detail on their cars, besides what they are mandated to? E.g. how about stopping distance? On the other hand, IPVM is $10 a month I think. They auto bill me so I don't really pay attention. That seems a viable option to paying $1000's I think. Same reason I have a subscription to consumer reports. With the cameras you can get an idea of who is going to be around in a few years... Also I look forward to wireguys pics. Others have mentioned that Avigilon dropped off cameras to people who were serious. I don't think IPVM was around when I started playing with this. I've noticed others on this forum have memberships... They take NO advertising money, are not dealers, and understand the concept of shutter speed when providing pics. Problem is (uneducated) consumers are probably mostly a pain for camera manufacturers (which is why even low end box systems are regarded as providing no support), and a small part of the revenue stream. Some of the installers know what the good stuff is (whether or not that is what they sell), because they deal with it and use it. And there is a lot of crap out there, being pushed by (LARGE) companies that have no interest in people getting information or becoming educated - just the RMR. And there are people who don't want to learn about this, which is fine also.

Yep, the only option is a paying site...you would think they'd post pics if they were THAT much better... Hopefully once you get it decided and set up you can post some shots

Downloaded the ACC, the pixel search function is really nice. Also like the dynamic contrast. Still prefer my system (for the home) of running analytics (and Axis Camera Station) but I can see for a lot of applications how this would be nice.

Hmm, I posted few times before I found one daytime pic, any night shots? IPVM has some examples but most people probably do not subscribe to that.

Dunno yet. I think they said a week or two. I've been doing this a long time so I think I'll make it a few more days.

It's interesting apparently the Avigilon software adjusts the brightness. Axis in the latest ACS also has a thing called "image enhancement" which also can make it brighter. It does show up artifacts, but is useful in trying to pick something out of darkness.

Look at ipvm, they have some examples of 1MP, 2MP and 5MP but you'll need to do a one month subscription that would allow you to look at the pics etc. Either way realize these 5MP cameras are not "5MP" at night unless you have LOTS of light. So don't think you're going to zoom out and identify everything with one camera because it has a lot of pixels it does not work like that, unless you have LOTS of light...or a slow shutter speed which is also not that useful.

It would be nice someday to see pics of the Avigilon...