Scruit

I just added a camera that has a fixed lens and backlight compensation and the sun glare is still as bad. Worse, in fact, because the new lens is wider angle. I have a cheap Swann Microcam wireless that I put in my remote control plane and when it sees points at the sun it shows up as a black dot and I can still see everything else. What do I need to look for in camera specs to get a camera that will do the black dot thing over the sun. Attached is an example of what is happening with my current camera..

I have a CPCam 576W 9ch DVR with a 250GB hard drive. Right now I have it recording 24x7 and that gives me approx 3 days of video. The system is limited to 25fps, so with 9 channles thats about 3fps per channel. If I switch to motion sense video then I can get a lot more than 3 days, but I'm concerned about missing something that doesn't trigger the motion. How many days retention is 'enough' for a residential system? Would it be better to put in a bigger hard drive, or go to motion sensing? With motion sensing do you start off with it beign higly sensitive and turn it down over time? I use the motion sensing feature as an activity log, but still record 24x7. I'm also hoping that I'll get a better frame rate if only the motion cameras are recording. EDIT: Just switched all the cameras to event-based recording and tested it. Walked around and into shot of all the cameras one by one. When the motion detect is tripped, the camera ramps up to max FPS and the rest drop to 1fp. When two cameras are tripped, they share the max FPS. This is a great setup - much longer record time, all the cameras still record at a lower framerate so you still have the context provided by the rest of the cameras, and a good 15fps on the camera that has the action.

I have a cheap day/night camera (no mech filter) with IR leds built into the front. Now that I'm using motion sensing for recording I'm finding that when ti rain I get large raindrops falling past the camera that reflect the IR and are enough to trigger the motion sensing in the DVR. If I turn the sensitivity down to where it stops being triggered by rain, then I pretty much have to dance a jig in front of the camera to trigger the motion detect. How can I deal with the rain? All I can think of would be to use a seperate illuminator, or maybe move the camera to a location where rain doesn't fall so close to the lens...

Wow. I'm not going to complain abaout the rain any more. Now it's snowing and nearly all my cameras are seeing constant motion. Oh well. My smart idea if using an image downloaded from the beginning of every motion event is not going to work today, I already have 500 images from overmight. When it's not raining I'll get only 2 or 3, and they are usually stray cats.

I waterproofed all my outdoor connections with the same stuff I use to waterproof spark plug boots. Keeps everything watertight and you can still disconnect easily. Also make sure that the lowest point on your cable is not a connector or passthru a wall. Water on the cable will run downwards to the lowest point. When cables go through walls at my place I alway shave the cable going down a few inches before going up/left/right. I also put little loops in the cable if there is a connector at a low point so the lowest point it still the cable.

You are not recording the video onto the tape in the camcorder, correct? The video is instead going to be recorded on your GV800? I once used a Sony Handcam to keep an eye on an area of my garden where I suspected a groundhog was living. I aimed the handycam at that corner and hooked it up to a small tv that I put on my desk while I was working. The camera kept turning itself off after 3 minutes, just like yours. I read the manual and it said that it will not time out of it is running on the power supply and if there is NO tape in it. ie, if there is a tape in there it WILL timeout if you don't hit record. If you DON'T have a tape in there then it will NOT timeout. Take the tape out, plug it into the power supply, turn it to camera mode and plug the output cable into your recording device. It should not power off. That's what worked for me. Hopefully it will work for you also.

I can't set pre-motion, but post-motion is 20 seconds. Something else I found is that my little CCTV TV doesn't show the full width/height of the image. I can see the full image when I turn on the TV capture card software on the computer next to it (i use the capture card to make DVDs of the action). This helped reduce false alarms on the motion because there were some areas I should have excluded from motion sensing that weren't visible on the TV. It also has a built-in feature that will send an image via FTP and means I can set up an FTP server on my computer and create a thumbnail gallery of the motion events during the day. Once a day I can glance over a page full of images and be able to see which images contain useful footage. Then I can use the motion event from the log in the DVR and replay the event from that time - If someone comes by casing the house then I'll see them.

Take the tape out. That should stop the auto shutoff and no REC will display. Remember that nice resolution/framerate is going to limited by the resolution of the recording device.

At that distance (assuming it's not a zoom lens) there's not going to be enough detail to positively identify a person. He's just going to be an unidentified blob on the screen unless he approaches the camera in the same shot, there is some other positive identification such as multiple witnesses who say it was him, *or he admits that it was him*.

Understood. In this case, though, it was enough to convince the county engineer that his plow took down the mailbox. No courts involved, and the mailbox was only worth $5. You could see the mailbox go from vertical to horizontal as the plow passed. Another problem re: courts was the video did not download in real time. This was a cheap ebay dvr card and the software was bad.

I did have an event happen a couple years back (snow plow trashed my mailbox) that would not have been captured with motion detection only. The mailbox was 150' from the camera and was only about 4 or 5 pixels high, plus I mask off the road otherwise every passing car would trip it. 3fps is pretty bad. It's nice to see some smooth video being recorded. I'll start with the recording in super-sensitive mode and will back off the sensitivity over time as I see the kind of events that are getting captured.

My CPCam 576W 9ch is not particularly easy to use. I'm fine with it, but I'm an IT guy. The motion detect will log event times and you can view those events, but once you have viewed an event you have to exit back out and log in again to see the motion detect log again. PITA sometimes, especially if you are looking for something that happened and there are 10 different motion events. I also don't like how the motion detect log doesn't say WHICH channel the motion was detected on. No remote, also.

I attached a 760nm filter to my new BW camera and it still sees a lot of light during the day, even with the illuminator off. I got the focus and everything set up during the day, knowing I'd have to adjust it at night one time. Well, night is here and the image is dead black. Can't see the any reflection back of plates from the 850nm illuminator or anything. I thought that an 760nm filter would allow 850 through? Maybe it does and I just need to play with the lens settings. But it seems that 760 allows through too much light during the day and causes a huge focus shift. Am I supposed to be able to see refelction off a reflective license plate using an 850nm illuminator and a 760nm filter? Or should I use an 850nm filter? And would the 850nm fix the focus shift issue between night an day? Lens is a>75mm zoom lens from computar and I have it set to about 30mm. The license plates I want it to see are 80' away from teh camera and illuminator. Illuminator is 'rated' for 120'. I'll probably find I can set it up fine at night but then by daytime it'll be messed up again... Think I'll take the sony camcorder in ightshot mode the the IR blocked to see if I can 'see' the illumintor working

Update: I switched out the 760nm IR Pass filter for an 850nm filter, and adjusted the apeture. It was almost closed before (f16). What I did was open it all the way until the image was washed out totally (gave it a couple seconds for the auto iris to adjust) and then started to close it until I got a good readable image on a license plate that I placed in the driveway at the bottleneck. Wound up at f5.6 - As Cilla used to say; "Surprise Surprise" I have marked the settings down as 'daytime', and will come back at night and check again. I hope the open apeture doesn't make the camera susceptible to headlight blinding as it was before - hopefully the 850nm filter will reduce the visible light enough to where the camera isn't blinded.

How much hard drive do you need to store all that data? I can't even imagine 9x 4mp cameras recording 16fps 24x7. You'd need like 5 terabytes per day.

Your date is set wrong in the video stream that show the truck.

Looks like one of those that is color during the day and BW at night, with IR ligthing. I'm no expert, but I have never seen a color IR image. It's always B&W. I would mount it outdoors, not pointing through a window.

How about a Pan/Tilt/Zoom. When you get home you can easily re-aim the camera to point at your car.

Checked the camera this morning, focus was fine. I'm now conducting a 24hr test of the platecam. I have a capture card in my computer that is taking an image every minute for 24 hours I should be able to produce a thumbnail gallery of the platecam in all light levels to ensure it's reliable 24x7. My main concern is twilight/dawn because the IR illuminator has a photocell to turn itself off during the day, and I worry that it will turn off while there is not enough ambient light to see the plate.

they are close, it's an entrance to a gated community. thats a 16mm fixed lens version. http://www.extremecctv.com/product_detail.php?producttype_id=6&page=1&product_id=72 Rory When you say 'fixed', what are you referring to? Fixed focus? I checked the lens again - it's actually a Fujinon H6 12.5Rx75mm. It has manual adjustments for iris, zoom and focus. All of these adjustments will affect the focus. Which order should I set these in? I have been adjusting the iris to the lowest light setting that gives me an usable image (ie if I go one click lower then the image goes dark). Then I adjust the zoom to get the field of view I want, then adjust the focus. I have to switch back and forth adjusting the zoom and focus to get a good crisp image in that shows the correct field of view. Adjusting the focus appears to adjus the zoom slightly. At first I set this up during the day so I got a good The I waited until night and repeated the steps above. I had to open the iris another couple of settings. Now that it is morning again I need to go out and see what the image is like during the day. I'll write down the night settings before I mess around with it. I got all this stuff from eBay.

Also, I noticed that the brake lights on my car are not all visible under IR. My car has 5 brake lights... One regular bulb per side, one LED bulb per side and a single hi-mounted brake light. When I drive away from the house you cannot see that the LED bulbs in the video.

What is the distance between the camera and the license plates in those pictures? It would be great if I could move the camera closer to the car, but the problem I have is the layout of the front driveway. For the first 50' it's about 50' wide so it's impossible to cover cars that drive to the garage doors to the front AND cars that drive around the back of the house instead. More than 50' from the house the driveway is one lane. So my options are (1) to use a zoom lens and film cars that are >50' away (about 80' is the thinnest part of the the driveway) or (2) to bury some wires in the ground and have a camera mounted 50' down the driveway.

Illuminator: Panvigor 120', new, $49.99 Camera: No-name BW CS mount 1/3" Sony CCD, used, $20 Lens: Computar 12.5 >75mm zoom, CS, used, $30 IR filter: non-name 760nm, new, $10 Total cost = $110 How much is a proper LPR camera? I thought they were $800+ The 850nm filter should filter out more of the visible light, and reduce the focus shift?

I adjusted the lens when it was pitch black. Here's what I get... For this test I parked my car in the drive where I want the camera to read the plates. Then I took two spare plates and mounted them at the furthest left and right that a plate would ever be (ie front of a older Pontiac Grand Prix = far right. Back of a UPS truck = far left) That's where there are 3 plates. The day shot: (would the 850nm lens recude the amount of light in this picture? I was expecting there to be almost zero visible light) The night shot (with hi-beams on to see if the camera is dazzled by the headlights like the old camera) Being a public forum I scrubbed out the actual license plate numbers, I left a few digits so you can see how much it picks up. I need to see how badly out of focus it is in the daylight tomorrow.

This is MY cctv at MY house TODAY (Dec 4th). Listen carefully when he disappears off the lower right corner. Video may be NWS for sound. Should I call it in to the postmaster?