dmikester1

I bought my parents a "Amcrest ProHD Outdoor 4 Megapixel POE Bullet IP Security Camera". They have it hooked up right outside their garage monitoring their circlular driveway. The video quality looks great and so far no complaints with the camera. They want motion alerts when a car pulls into the driveway that makes an audible sound. I think it would be cool for an actual robotic voice to say "vehicle in driveway" or something like that. And also, I would love to get license plate identification going so it could identify specific vehicles and then the voice could say "John's car is in the driveway". I want it to only monitor a portion of the window, so grid detection zones are a requirement. So the software will be running on a Windows 10 PC, so Zoneminder is instantly out. I have looked into Amcrest's own Surveillance Pro software. I could not figure out how to do detection grid areas in the motion alerts section. I have looked into iSpy, iSpy Agent, Shinobi, iVideon, and YawCam. Of those I had the best luck with iSpy. It appears like you need to purchase the LPR plugin for iSpy. And I don't know if that can do a certain alert based on what the plate actually is? On that note, can any software do that? Have it say specific message based on the plate and for free? Also, I would like the ability to SMS or email alerts when a vehicle is detected. SMS to phone "John's car is in the driveway" would be so awesome! Shinobi software also looks promising but looks like a much more involved process to install and configure it than the rest of the software in that list. If we have to pay a small fee like up to $50 to get all this functionality, I would be OK with that. But I refuse to pay a monthly fee for this. I'd love to hear thoughts on this from people know know more about this stuff. Thanks! Mike