Camera to mount in mailbox at street?

[lasher66 0]

Hi

Recently been having car break ins at my house quite often. Last time, they pulled up in a car out front of my house at 2:30am. I have purshased a qsee dvr with 700 tvl cameras from empire security cameras on there way for the house perimeter, but was wondering if there was a good camera that I could mount inside my mailbox at street that would catch license plates. I figured a small camera, but good enough to catch detail in low light at night time. I was going to drill a small hole inside mailbox or build a small box on back post of mailbox for camera. Just wondering what would be good for this application. Thanks

 

Jason

[Kawboy12R 0]

A diagram of where exactly your box is would help, as would the light level and if you expect them to pull in your driveway or stay on the street. Plates at night from two different angles will be tricky, especially if they leave the car lights on. You'll have a camera on your house mounted pointing at the entrance of your driveway with enough zoom and good wide dynamic range to pick out a plate in addition to the mailbox cam? If you want a mailbox cam to pick up plates on cars that don't leave the road, you might want two cams (one pointing each way). Easier to pick up a plate against taillights than headlights, plus some cars don't have front plates and you probably don't know which direction they'll be coming from.

[lasher66 0]

My driveway is only about 35 ft long and mailbox is at end of driveway. I forgot to mention I live on a dead end street, so any cars coming in will have to leave out the same entrance. So one camera should be fine. I do have a street light by mailbox, so it isnt that dark. Just wanted a camera thats a little more compact than a bullet camera. Didnt know if I mounted a dome camera on side of box if that would work. Plus I have neighbors down the street that have had trouble.Figured if I could get footage of all license plates coming and going it would help my hole street.

[Kawboy12R 0]

The best cheap night-time analog license plate cam I have experience with is a KT&C black and white cam (no IR) with the Sony ExView HAD .0003 lux chipset. Resolution isn't the best so proper zoom (lots) and aim is very important but it'll read plates in almost dark with ease. It helps to get a good lens with low F-stop rating though. I forget what I paid for the lens to go with mine but it was close to as much as the camera and might've been more. The lower the f-stop the faster the car can be traveling without blurring the digits. Still not so great reading plates against headlights though. Every cheap-ish IR cam I've owned turns plates to white at night under ANY condition. Hopefully someone else experienced with better LPR cams will chime in. Even Googling LPR cams and picking one that way would be better than trying a bunch of unspecialized cams in the hopes that they'll work where they don't claim to. I'd go for performance rather than one picked just because it's small.

 

If a real LPR cam is definitely out of your budget though, I'd stick a B&W cam there and hope to catch their rear plates as they leave. This one came up in another low-light thread on here but looks like it has better specs than my KT&C. Not waterproof though, but it looks like it'd fit sideways inside the back of a mailbox to look through a glass plate at traffic. I'd like to see the expression on your mailman's face the first time he sees a camera in your mailbox!