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I looked at the specs - nice that it claims realtime at 720x480 (or thereabouts. Couldn't find a price anywhere though...

My current 9ch DVR has a max framerate of 25fps shared voer 9 channels. I hate this. What is the cheapest *good* DVR that can record 8 or 12 channels of video in realtime (30fps per channel) at full D1 / 4CIF? Residential application. By *good*, I mean the sort of DVR that you would install on a residential job and not worry about callbacks.

Anyone? Heck, even the $1k+ Geovision cards that advertise 480fps really mean CIF - so 640x480 would be 1/4 of that?

Yeah, without the video I would not have known. And it's not like it was a hidden camera or anything... While he was doing the deed there was my license plate camera just 3 feet directly above his head (with a zoom lens the size of a beer can)... He just didn't see it. What's worse is the last time he delivered to my house I thought he was taking a leak too, but I had no sound back then and the video was not good enough to prove anything. Which goes back to my point to the OP - make sure your video will convince an impartial person before you play your hand.

I talked to a few people about it and spent a few hours mulling it over. Then I went outside with a hose and scrubbing brush and bleach and cleaned the brick/cement and garage door at 10pm in the Ohio winter (about 20deg F that night) and that made my mind up to speak with the postmaster. My toddler plays right there... The postmaster took the video and ran with it, very proactive. They got me a new mailman the next day and fired the Peeing Postman after a Postal Inspector investigation upheld my video.

I get 'evidence' from my DVR by playing it into a TV tuner card (Any computer store has these) conencted to my computer, and then the resulting file can be burned to a DVD. I occasionally go through the motions of copying video from the DVR to a DVD just so that I know how to do it and am well practiced if I ever need to do it for real. My DVR only stores a few days of video and I can't afford to spend a day or two figuring it out. For right now I suggest you hook up a VCR or a camcorder to the DVR and save your evidence now before you lose it. Once you save it, post it so we can take a look. You'll often find that when an impartial person views a video they will have a different opinion about what it shows. You may know that the act was intentional based upon your knowledge of this man - but we don't know him and we may see the video and consider it to have been an accident. Or we may think that the evidence is not clear enough to convince an impartial person. A few months ago my video system caught our mailman urinating on my house. I showed the video to several people without giving my opinion fisrt. Only when the first 6 or 7 people who saw the video said; "He's taking a leak on your house!!" did I consider the video good enought o approch the postmaster with. I'm just saying - before you call in the police and the lawyers you have to make sure the video is good enough to do what you are trying to do - charge him with a crime, convince a judge to issue a TRO etc. If you kick up a big stink and then everyone else who sees the video says; "This isn't clear enough to prove anything" then not only will you not get what you want, but you'll also let him know you have cameras and where they are pointed and what quality the image is etc...

I've seen them online but they are expensive. On my home system I just used modular 6-way wallplates and F-type screw connectors instead.

Are his cameras hardwired or wireless? Can you pick up the signal and prove which way they are pointing? Him picking up your wireless signal is exactly the reason I don't do wireless.

I like the opaque tape idea, as long as it won't damage the dome. If you know which house it is then you might want to do the tape thing then pan the camera up towards their house to prove that the tape is screening their property. Then print out that image and have it ready to hand to the next official who comes asking about it. In fact you could have images from all of your cameras printed out and ready to hand to anyone who asks questions about where they are pointed. The neighbor may have declined to come and see the monitor as a way of avoiding confrontation - but if they were to get their hands on an image from the camera that proves their property if not visible then (if they are reasonable people) they should not have any problem. Dunno about your area, but around here if my neighbors had a problem then I'd just go talk to them. I told my next door neighbor when I installed my cameras because it one of the cameras caught the very end of his driveway (albeit 300' away) and he was fine with that.

A digital still, especially from a megapixel IP camera, would be an excellent way of capturing the plate - it should even allow for the capture of a plate in the wide turn-around spot from the original picture - assuming all other things are correct such as lighting and the plate not being intentionally obscured. A regular analog camera is not going to reliably read a US license plate (after the image is compressed and the decompressed for viewing) unless the car takes up almost all the frame. You can't just point the camera at the car, look at a live image and expect that same quality on playback. Whenever I set up a camera, especially my license plate camera, I always check the playback quality. Megapixel IP cameras are in the $1k range to start with, and unless you have terabytes of hard drive space you can't run a megapixel image as a realtime video. You still have the other issues like lighting / dazzled by headlights etc. I have a driveway alarm that signals a computer attached to my CCTV system to email me a picture of any car that enters my driveway. If I had a megapixel IP camera then I'd have it take a picture with that instead, but only when triggered by the driveway alarm. I'd still have a regular camera showing the driveway overall and what is happening. I did try taking a picture of a car in my driveway using an old 2.1 megapixel digital camera (not CCTV camera, just consumer handheld) that produces a 1600x???? image - very nice. Of course my 8MP camera can take a picture of a car from 50' and I can zoom in to the image an read the make/model from the emblems on the back of it. For the big turnaround area in your first post I'd try to aim the camera at the tightest bottleneck (the road before the turnaround?) and use a zoom len and a VERY good hi-res camera. If you have the $$$, that big area screams out for a megapixel camera. Of course, you could have what happened to me recently - some guy came into my driveway to take a close look at the car parked near my house - and his license plate was covered with a piece of paper...

I'd need an NVR for that, right? at the moment my setup is all analog/RG6/BNC but starting now I'm going to install new cameras with CAT5/baluns so that I can upgrage to an NVR in the future. I saw a really nive DVR/NVR device the toher day - can take analog or IP cameras - and I'm sure as IP prices drop I could get much better quality from that. The other advantage of running cat5 is I can send the power downt he same wire and not rely on local power - meaning I can run the cameras off the same big UPS as the DVR. And I also have 2 or 4 wires left for running a motion sensor near the camera, or possiblly for remote-triggering a ligth near the camera. Using a true motion sensor would be more reliable than visual motion detection (that's always being triggered by rain/snow/insects etc) for the close detail cameras over the doors.

Especially when you buy cheap OEM drones from eBay.

Nah - I need a little RC car on autopilot that will chase him down the street. I joked with a friend of mine a while back; "What if your home security system had a remote controlled plane that was launched when the alarm goes off, then flies around following anyone who leaves your house." We laughed about that, right up until I saw the Isreali, British and US police are all running pilot programs (no pun intended) of autonomous helicopter drones that will launch themseves and hover at a couple throusand feet while an operator operates a PTZ to watch events from above - riots, disasters, missing persons etc. Missed my chance - should have developed it myself. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/6676809.stm

Agreed. If I had known how much time I'd be putting into tuning this camera I'd have gone with a true LPR from the start, or simply not tried for LPR functionality.

I'll get a picture tonight. I have older pictures, but what I did recently was move the aim point of the camera about 10' closer to the house, making everything appear bigger on the screen. The illuminator only lights up the license plate - but it lights it up very bright so reading it is very easy. EDIT: Wait, I found one of my test images from the most recent adjustment... This is staring directly into the hi-beams also - and the plate is still very clear.

Here's an example image from my home-built setup: This is using a $100 hi-res B&W camera, 50mm zoom lens, 850nm IR filter and a matching 850nm illuminator. The car is about 80' away from the camera when it's being captured. I'm still playing with the design - off and on for about 4 years - I have a auto-iris 50mm zoom lens on order and I'm hoping that will improve the night time recognition. I can capture plates at night, but when everything is dark the compression creates a bunch of colorful artifacts on the screen. I would advise purchasing a true LPR before hacking together a homebrew like mine. It's only just reached 90% capture rate in the last year or so and I usually spens a couple hours a month adjusting it in response to missed plates. This car approached my house and left a flyer. I was in the back garden and never heard them.

Got mine from ebay. My lens is threaded for 52mm, so I did a search for "52mm 850nm" http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=52mm+850nm&category0=

I have seen cameras offered in may different configurations re: TV Lines and Effective Pixels... It would seem to me that 480 TVL would mean that the camera generates an inamge that consists of 480 distinct pixels in height... It would also seem to me that Effective Pixels would mean what the camera is capable of seeing, regardless of what it's able to send downt eh wire to the DVR. And putting these together, it would seem sensible to me that a camera that offers a TVL rating higher than it's effective pixels height would be 'stretching' the image, whereas a camera that offers lower TVL than it's effective pixels would be 'shrinking' the image. Of course, it can't be that simple. So, please explain to me which of the following two cameras will generate the best image detail, *all other factors being equal*... Camera A: Image Device 1/3" color CCD Picture Elements (H x V) 500 x 582 (doesn't sound right?) Horizontal Resolution 330 TV Lines Camera B: 480 TV lines & High Resolution Effective pixels 768(H) x 494(V)

I'm looking for a lens with the following characteristics: For 1/3" BW CCD CS mount Auto-Iris Varifocal (I need to use ~60mm) Threaded end for filter I have found loads of lenses on the net that have most of these specs, with prices ranging from $70 to $150. BUT nobody under 150 will commit to saying if the lens is threaded for a filter. The most common response to my question (Does it have a 46mm or 52mm thread for a filter?) is "No, it's threaded for CS mount."

I have a DVR in my car that uses a cheap ebay color bullet camera... During the winter months the low sun in the mornings will make the whole camera image go black if the camera sees the sun directly. When I point a regular sony camcorder into the sky the sun will appear as a white circle, but the rest of the image will still be fine. What is it about the sony camcorder that allows it to not be blinded by the sun like the cheap camera? If I wanted to buy a small camera for my mobile DVR that would not be blinded by the sun then what specifications do I need to look for? Is it a certain type of CCD sensor? Some kind of tint on the lens?

Tnx for the post, Rory. The plug on that lens appears to be a different shape and for 'Filter size' it just lists "--" I did finally find a seller on ebay who list isting a 6-60mm varifocal auto-iris lens with a filter size of 46mm, so I'll probably get that.

I know the police use them for those speed cameras that look at the driver... I would like to put up a camera right next to my driveway that would capture an image of the driver of any car that enters my driveway. Would need to work day and night. Would a standard IR bullet be able to see 'through' glass, or would it just see the reflection of it's own IR? Has anyone here done this before?

I set up the camcorder and pointed it at the car. Got the same result as last time, just a reflection of the sky. The pink paper taped to the outside ont he right edge of the pic proves the reflection is being captured. Now, I put my circular polarizing filter on the camera and adjusted it for best effect. Note that you cannot see the reflection of the sky or the pink paper, and you can just make out the pink paper taped to the headrest inside - not visible in the before pic. Interesting results...

Darnit, you had to go an say that... Ok, I have a circular polatizer filter, and I've found it's only really effective at 45deg from the glass, but when it's effective it's VERY effective. I'm going to set up an experiment with a camcorder/filter to see if a single setting of the polarizer will continue to work under varying light conditions. Stay tuned.

I have the CPCam CPD576W which is a 9ch standalone made byt he same company as avtech. The recording framerate is pretty bad. It may claim 120ips but that is total across all channels, and that is CIF resolution, not full D1/4CIF - ie full camera reoslution. Put another way you'll only get 7.5 frames per second per channel at maximum recording quality. My unit can be configured to give teh motion/alarm channels higher fps than the idle channels, but that still only translated to a max of less than 10fps if there are two channels with motion. Be very careful with IPS/FPS specs. Make sure you understand what the Frames per Second is at full resolution, not CIF - and also make sure that you know if they are quoting FPS as a total number for the unit, or per channel. The better H.264 units, especially the triplex ones, appear to quote realtime 30fps NTSC / 25fps PAL *per channel*. Others, like geovision, will quote fps up in the 480 range - you have to divide that by the total number of channels to get worst-case framerate. Or divide by number of channels that will liekly see motion at the same time... ie My 9ch 25fps unit will see motion on 4 cameras at the same time when someon approaches the house. Than means 5 cams drop to 1fps and the 4 that see motion will sahre the remaining 20 fps, ie 5fps each. Not the best, but it works.