SyconsciousAu

Shutter speed, also known as exposure, is in the configuration menu for your camera. Depending on camera type you may be able to set a single value or a range.

Quite the opposite. You want more IR. As much as you can get. Then you turn up your shutter speed until all you will see is the plate and the lights. The illuminator I am using at the moment cost less than $50. It is a 96 x 10mm led unit. Buellwinkel did it with only the onboard IR but he was only using 1/200 sec shutter speed which will give significant motion blur if the plates are moving at any speed. Mine is set for 1/1000 sec.

I meant give the lens a clean. If the image appears blurry there might just be dirt on the lens. Get up there with a soft cloth and some lens cleaner and see if that helps. If that doesn't help throw them away and go IP megapixel.

Done the simple things like check the camera lenses and connections are clean and tight?

Are your NSTC/Pal settings right?

How did you go with this setup?

They are talking about a security company monitoring centre.

Are you talking about FTP upload on alarm? What model DVR/NVR?

Have you retuned the TV? Remember you will be looking for an analogue signal. Alternatively if your DVR has VGA out get Y Cable and some VGA over cat 5 adaptors.

You can hook your alarm output up to a GSM Dialler with alarm inputs that will send you a text message on alarm. Something like this http://www.bvg.com.au/wp-content/uploads/890-399_GSM_manual_rev2.1-1.pdf Also make sure you have the latest stable firmware

I'll check it out. It should on the gigabit port, right? Yes and so should your PC. What sort of PC have you got? It could also be as simple as your PC is underpowered and asking it to move files, whilst at the same time writing files from 20 cams, is causing it to struggle.

Have you considered Ethernet over power for the cameras located in the vineyard or is that supply separate to the house? Are the cameras in the vineyard going to be co-located or separated from each other? Could you at least wire the camera's to a central point in the vineyard and link them back to the house with a dedicated wireless link using directional antennas? Why wireless on the house? Wired cameras will give less issues.

I would start with revisiting your budget and requirements to ensure your expectations match the reality of what you are going to get. One camera in your price range will give you an overview of an area that size but that is all it is going to do. Forget trying to identify anyone from the footage. If all you want is to know when someone is there and provide some deterrence that's fine, but if you actually want footage that can be used as evidence you will need to rethink your budget and layout. Again do you just want to be able to see if someone is near the shed or ID them if there is a break in? Will the camera be on the house or the shed? How far is the shed from the house? Again that's not impossible to do but assuming you are 18m (60 feet) from the road, and your angle is 45 degrees, which is about the most extreme angle you want for a licence plate capture shot, your distance from the camera to the near side of the road is 25.5m so in excess of 30m (100 feet) to the far side of your shot. Camera's in your price range come with up to a 12mm lens but for enough pixels per meter (200ppm is about the minimum) you will need at least a 25mm lens at that range, and forget using the on board ir to capture readable plates at night. In short a solution mounted on the house that is capable of capturing plates on moving cars passing the house day and night is beyond your budget. It is possible to do number plate capture on a budget for around $300 (cameras and illuminator only) but you need to get closer to the road. Also what are you recording this on? Does your budget include the cost of a stand alone NVR. Are you running separate power or going POE. If you get a POE NVR you are sorted but if you are going pc based you will need a poe switch as well. Have you included the cost of cables, conduit etc in the budget?

Your switch has a tool to work it out. http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/switches/lan/csbms/srw248g4p/administration/guide/SRW248G4P_ug.pdf look up Chapter 5 Statistics>Port utilisation. Have you got the NAS on a gigabit port or a 10/100 port?

I think you might mean it has trouble with 940nm IR. 940nm IR, whilst more covert than 850nm gives you significantly less range. Most IP cameras are sensitive to 850nm IR which is what most of the IR LED's used in most cams are. Your cam has no on board IR but if it can see the IR on another cam it isn't IR blind. More likely you dont have enough IR illumination. Have you got an external IR illuminator hooked up? If so what type? How far away from the camera and where is it positioned in relation to the camera. How far from the camera is the scene being illuminated?

A bit more detail about the camera would help. Have you tried setting it to night or black and white mode? Have you confirmed that the IR cut filter is withdrawing when set to night mode?

How much spare network bandwidth do you have? If you have a spare PCI or PCI-E slot you could install a new network interface card dedicated to the NAS connection. Also if the processor is going flat out writing files it will struggle to transfer files to the NAS. Perhaps you can schedule for say 3am when there is less camera activity.

Thanks for the good info. Are you recording on 7200RPM drives and if so how big and how many days of video are you able to keep with that kind of frame rate? I'm using a pair of WD Red SATA 3TB drives in a raid 1 array. They are not even stressed. I have 2 TB allocated to the cams and have never filled the disk with the storage set to 3 months.

I was using PSS and switched to BI as well. I don't think you can beat it for functionality vs price for a residential system but 27 cameras is a BIG residential system. The conventional wisdom has been that BI was too power hungry for big systems without sacrificing frame rate, bit rate, or resolution. Perhaps that has all changed with BI4 and the new fourth generation Intel CPU's.

You learn something new every day. Is that on direct to disk?. What bit rate is that? I've been doing comparisons based on CPU passmark ratings but from what you tell me it appears that there may not be a direct correlation between increase in pass mark score and reduction in CPU usage. My experience seems to indicate that the big user of CPU on Blue Iris is having multiple mega pixels of cameras activated at once, rather than the number of mega pixels hooked up.

Worth a read for anyone designing a system https://www.anzpaa.org.au/upload/Corporate%20News%20and%20Publications/ANZPAA%20Publications/Police%20Recommendations%20for%20CCTV%20Systems.pdf

Admittedly I did make some assumptions about his frame rates, bit rates, resolutions and recording activity and was considering something that would be a zero/few compromises setup. At a maximum bandwidth of 80Mbs for a Hikvision 32 channel NVR there are going to be some bitrate compromises that need to be made somewhere. That may be acceptable to him. That also leaves no room for expansion without further compromise. I didn't think IVMS or PSS could do in camera motion detection. With the NVR doing all the motion detection on 27+ cams plus recording even a 4790K might be working hard depending on his needs. Admittedly I am extrapolating the performance of the latest Haswell Refresh processors vs my experience with Blue Iris on the Ivy Bridge processors and you could probably get away with it at 1080P but again what compromises need to be made? Will the NVR be pulling huge amounts of power constantly. Will heat be an issue? How is this going to effect processor life. The world is full of CCTV Systems that provide very little in the way of useful evidence. The world is also full of disappointed people that own these systems, have paid good money for them, and have discovered that their system can't do what they wanted it to do after the really needed it. I have a preference for systems that are under stressed, redundant, make no or very few compromises, and are guaranteed to provide video that can be used as evidence. I've answered his question based on what I would do given a need to run 27 cameras but as you have pointed out the OP hasn't told us in a great amount of detail what he wants/needs the system to do. We also know nothing about his property layout which is why I suggested getting a Security and CCTV pro in to discuss his needs in greater detail. Someone who knows the applicable standards. It might turn out he has no real need for 27 cameras and could better use his budget. His security needs may be better met by less cams and more physical measures. How many cams you have and what resolution they are make no difference if you haven't covered off on the other security basics. Old salt I would suggest sitting down with a pad and paper and writing down exactly what security you are looking to achieve. Write down exactly what each of those 27 cameras are going to do for you, and how it is going to do that. Do you have any specific threats or are you just looking to deter the neighbourhood low lives? Do you have specific assets, eg a garage full of vintage cars, that need special protection? Have you considered PTZ cameras? Are the home and gardens already established? If not can they be re-designed to maximise your security? Your need for so many camera's suggests the gardens can readily conceal an intruder from casual observation. If you just want to be able to identify that someone is there, a single 1080P camera can do that across a 50m field of view assuming the layout allows that. I have my personal system set up with overview cameras which allow me to detect people on the property. I have other cameras for identification. You should give consideration to how you are going to observe the cameras. Is this just to record or will you have a monitor in your lounge room or office or workshop or where you choose to spend your time when at home? Are you going to have all the camera's up on the screen at all times, or just a couple to give you an overview. I personally find it better to have fewer cams on the monitor and switch to other cams if/when required. Once you know exactly what you want to achieve the forums will be more than willing to throw in their two cents worth.

27 cams is going to need some serious hardware to record it. You are probably going to need to look at an enterprise grade dual processor server based NVR with an enterprise VMS solution. That's not a setup you do with Blue Iris. You will be looking at a setup which will need a rackmount chassis, a pair of 16 port POE rackmount switches, as well as the hardware in the NVR before you even get to the camera's. $8K wont go all that far. I would be talking to a CCTV professional rather than an electrician who has installed a few consumer grade DIY systems. What you are proposing is well beyond an off the shelf Swann system. Also why so many camera's? Are you trying to cover every square mm of the place?

u welcome by the way here is plate extracted from pix I would love to know how you did that. It's very impressive. Have you ever used that sort of enhancement as evidence? For everyone asking how to enhance the plates this is what can be done when you dedicate a camera to the role of Number Plate Capture. No Enhancement required Buellwinkel (RIP) was doing it with a sub US$100 Hikvision bullet. It doesn't have to be expensive. Following my experiments, and what I've seen others do, Ive reached the conclusion that less that $US300 is a very realistic budget for Number plate capture setup that captures video that can be used as evidence.

Can your camera and web account be set up for FTP? I should also point out that unless you have a some serious upstream speed on you internet connection you will not be able to upstream real time footage of any quality. Have you considered hiding / locking away your NVR.