Watanuki

Thanks for the try! Sorry to say it, but you're SOL on the plates or the perps' faces. However, if you ever see that car again it should be easy to recognize. Your mailbox post is an ideal mounting location, at least from a visual perspective. Two cameras, one camera pointing in each direction, will give you clear shots of every vehicle's license plate. You'll need cameras that can be configured with a fixed shutter speed of 1/500th or 1/1000th of a second to capture passing plates without motion blur. And lots and lots of light; adding IR illuminators and "long-pass" filters that block visible light will help to capture plates at night, assuming the plates are retro-reflective. If you do mount some equipment in that location, one thing to be concerned about is damage due to vandalism or accident. You'll want to take steps to protect your cameras so that the perps can't run over your post with their car or knock it over with a baseball bat. Something along the lines of "decorative" boulders or maybe some concrete bollards. You might also want to take advantage of the shrubbery and use it to help conceal your cams; perps can't vandalize your equipment if they don't know it's there. Alternatively, you could mount cameras with longer lenses further back, perhaps even on your house itself. My own LP cam is mounted about 15' from the street with ~40 degree viewing angle, and most plates are clearly legible despite the skew. Thanks for the advice. I tried driving around the neighborhood to look for their car but no luck but now I know what to look for. I was thinking of having the cameras in the bushes to hide them. I've had problems in the past where I would get drive bys, damaging my mailbox. Only problem is powering them. I would rather not have to dig a trench under the circular driveway. Question, the 1/500th, 1/1000th of a second, would that be overkill for a residential road? From what I read, 1/500th is good for cars going around 30 mph? Here you go. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1095783/2014-01-09%20avi.zip

cant view video footage as saying file corrupted. Sorry about that. I have now linked a zip file for download. For some reason, dropbox doesn't like it. I assume it has to do with codecs. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1095783/2014-01-09.zip

So I have some guys egg my car and I caught it on video. I can see distinguishable features of the car such as its a toyota corolla, has a repaired door, and one of those breast cancer or autism magnets on their trunk but the video isn't sharp enough to catch their license plate. I am not that very good with photoshop and this might be a long shot but I wanted to ask if anyone could take a shot at being able to read the license plate or the guys faces? https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1095783/2014-01-09.zip Second, I'm currently using the costco swann nvr with 1080p 2 MP package. It takes decent video but from what I've seen, I can barely read the license plate. I might get an additional camera to put near the mailbox to help with license plate identification or purchase a better camera that is overlooking the street. What do you guys think? The road is two way. From the house to the road is 40 feet. The camera is mounted probably around 8 feet high right now. If you look at the two videos above, you can see the two cameras field of views. I've mounted the cameras on opposite sides of the house facing the road. To be able to read the license plate from either direction a car is going, I would assume I would have to replace both cameras facing the front, If I were to go with the option of changing the house cameras instead of adding a camera near the mail box? Any recommendations on how to go about increasing my chances being able to read license plates would help.

Hey guys, so I jumped on the Swann costco package and I just received them. It just came to me after planning the general positions where I would install them. Would the IR from the cameras interfere with the motion sensor on my flood lights? I currently have RAB lighting flood lights, these specifically http://www.rabweb.com/product.php?product=STL360H and in the manual it talks about "s infrared sensor “sees” temperature changes caused by the motion of people or cars within its protection zone and turns on lights automatically." The cameras would be installed mostly to the side of the flood lights.

Hey All!, Greetings from South Florida, I'm just an IT guy that came here to learn more about cctv systems in general and put that information to good use by creating a IP system for my home.