Anyone has experiences with Panasonic BL-C1?

[CCTV76 0]

First things first!

 

Greetings to all and happy new year 2010

 

I am responsible to build a system for a shopping mall that is attached with a hotel and an entertainment area, my responsibility is about the 2 first areas.

 

On a side note, the whole place is attached to an airport... being the surroundings of the Terminal but not the Terminal itself (AKA I am by no means stuck with the airport security rules).

 

This project is based in Indonesia, here the cameras are usually 200% more expensive than in USA or Europe, and the budget is limited.

 

I was thinking about using this cameras (BL-C1 series), I am aware they are house-use cams but perhaps acceptable for this scenario?

 

The positions I am going to use these on are illuminated day and night in the hotel, and with auxiliary lighting in the shopping mall. For external use of course I already discarded this model.

 

The largest areas I'm going to use these for are around 40m (hotel corridors) length - I know of course I will not get a face recognition on that places but at least will I be able to distinguish the clothes, colours, etc. at a decent distance? I have the accesses covered so other units will catch the face if need, and by the way, do they do a good job with objects on motion with decent light? For the accesses I thought I could use them too.

 

Does anyone have previous experiences with this model or similar ones in a non-home environment use?

 

Thanks a lot in advance.

 

76

[bike_rider 0]

First things first!

 

Greetings to all and happy new year 2010

 

I am responsible to build a system for a shopping mall that is attached with a hotel and an entertainment area, my responsibility is about the 2 first areas.

 

On a side note, the whole place is attached to an airport... being the surroundings of the Terminal but not the Terminal itself (AKA I am by no means stuck with the airport security rules).

 

This project is based in Indonesia, here the cameras are usually 200% more expensive than in USA or Europe, and the budget is limited.

 

I was thinking about using this cameras (BL-C1 series), I am aware they are house-use cams but perhaps acceptable for this scenario?

 

The positions I am going to use these on are illuminated day and night in the hotel, and with auxiliary lighting in the shopping mall. For external use of course I already discarded this model.

 

The largest areas I'm going to use these for are around 40m (hotel corridors) length - I know of course I will not get a face recognition on that places but at least will I be able to distinguish the clothes, colours, etc. at a decent distance? I have the accesses covered so other units will catch the face if need, and by the way, do they do a good job with objects on motion with decent light? For the accesses I thought I could use them too.

 

Does anyone have previous experiences with this model or similar ones in a non-home environment use?

 

Thanks a lot in advance.

 

76

 

These are very limited cameras. The C1 is not the same as the C101. The C1 maxes at 7.5 fps. the C101 does 30 fps. I have a C121 (WiFi version of the C101 I think) pointed at my cats so I can watch them from work. Image quality is not bad IF there is enough light. Shutter speed is 1/30, 1/60 or 1/120 (I think), so fast motion will be blurry. At 1/60 the inside of a house with lights off, with the curtains closed, is too dark to be useful. C1 shows minimum illumination of 10 lux, C101 shows 5 lux. Fixed focus and fixed field of view. A person is barely recognizable if they are more than 3 meters away. Even then, it is mostly body shape and clothes color.

 

You will need some sort of central software to gather data streams from the cameras. They only record around 2 minutes internally. This sample is at a shutter speed of 1/30 second.