Help with ACTi E73 or replacement advise

[JohnAJohnson 0]

I've been adjusting an E73 for two weeks without success and believe this camera will not meet my expectations. I’ve tried it at two different outside locations; front and rear entrance doors to my home. The front door area is completely dark, and the rear is dimly lit by a security light 100’ away. In all cases, I am looking for motion detection that’ll provide facial recognition video or snapshots at 10-20’ day and night, and vehicle recognition at 30-40’ during the day only. I must have IP Cameras with the capability of storing photos or videos at a remote location (email or FTP). I’ve used NVR3 and while it is good, I need IP outdoor dome cameras that can take a snapshot or record on motion all by themselves.

 

I would very much appreciate any recommendations for cameras that will meet my needs. Or, by reading below, if you see where I’ve done something wrong, any advice is also greatly appreciated.

 

Specifically, here’s what the ACTi E73 and I have been up to:

 

I’ve tried the latest firmware and the previous firmware for the E73.

 

Using the Web Configurator, I can adjust motion settings to barely meet my criteria during the day (Runtime MD Profile) and I can adjust motion settings to barely meet my criteria during the night (Event MD Profile). I say “barely” because to detect a human size target 100% of the time, the Sensitivity or Trigger Threshold must be set low enough that clouds slowly passing over, or a trees shadow moving in the scene, or the camera’s own constant iris adjustment trips Motion Detect. Same problem with vehicles. It catches 75% of vehicles passing 40’ away that fill 75% of a motion box. To catch 100% of vehicles, I have to set Sensitivity to 75% and Trigger Threshold to 25% and it falsely alarms all day long at these settings. Night (human detection only) isn’t quite so bad, but sensitivity must still be low enough to stop false motion alarms.

 

The camera doesn't point into the sun or any artificial light at any time.

 

At the switchover between day and night, within 30 minutes either side of the switch, the iris will start adjusting, tripping the Motion Detect every couple of minutes. With no real motion detected, I can count on 100MB of video recordings simply because the programmer adjusting the iris didn’t tell the programmer writing the motion detect routine to ignore light changes for a second or two. I tried Switch from Day to Night Mode values of 20, 40, 50, 60, 80 and it didn’t seem to matter. Day/Night switches daily within 10 minutes, regardless of this setting.

 

It helps greatly to turn Slowest Auto Shutter Speed to 1/120, and to keep the AE Reference Target low (below 100). Of course I have to jack up brightness to >65 just to be able to get a satisfactory image. It also helps to keep WDR Low or Disabled, which kind of defeats the added cost of the WDR feature.

 

I find Snapshot timing (barn door is closed after the horse went thru) unreliable and am recording video to an internal SD card for 20 seconds. Since the video’s resolution is only adequate on higher (3MP) settings and at fast frame rates, each 20 second video is approximately 10MB. So on a day with no legitimate motion, I can expect at least 20 files of 10MB each. This might be acceptable if there was a good RAW video reader but the ArchivePlayer is [at best] poor, and the Demo Player wipes all camera settings, including the hard earned motion detect settings. This wouldn’t be so bad if the camera firmware had an option to back up its settings, but it doesn’t. One can FTP into the camera and copy RAW videos, but not delete them. This also wouldn’t be so bad but Web Configurator’s File Management won’t let you delete more than 10 or so at a time and this too turns into an effort because of so many false motion detects.

[buellwinkle 0]

Not a fan of this camera myself and would suggest the E72 instead, much better in low light and the E32, the bullet version is even better. But lets get to your goals first as throwing out camera suggestions is not going to help if I don't understand what your goals are.

 

> facial recognition video or snapshots at 10-20’ day and night

 

You can do this with this easily with a 1080P or 3MP camera. ACTi's 1080P cameras have the better low light performance followed by their 3MP. Anything higher like 4,5,10MP will not do well at night without a lot of help and the real resolution (not to be confused with the number of pixels) will be higher. I use a 1/30th second exposure but as low as 1/15th may work well at night for pedestrian traffic. Faces should be at least 80 pixels high to be identifiable but at night, with a noisy image, you need more. I've seen 1MP camera that can identify someone at night at 10-20' with about the same field of view as a 5MP camera.

 

> vehicle recognition at 30-40’ during the day only

 

Don't know what this means? License plate or just that a Chevy sedan drove by and it's blue? You need license plate letters to be about 15 pixels high to read them and clearly, you need to have a frontal or rear view of the car and not a side view. If it's just recognizing color and model, that goal can be easily reached with even a 1MP camera. If it's plate number, then you need to get a camera with a telephoto lens, for example, I use a 12mm lens to be able to read a plate during the day about 60' away, at night may require a 30mm lens.

[JohnAJohnson 0]

Not a fan of this camera myself and would suggest the E72 instead, much better in low light and the E32, the bullet version is even better. But lets get to your goals first as throwing out camera suggestions is not going to help if I don't understand what your goals are.

 

> facial recognition video or snapshots at 10-20’ day and night

 

You can do this with this easily with a 1080P or 3MP camera. ACTi's 1080P cameras have the better low light performance followed by their 3MP. Anything higher like 4,5,10MP will not do well at night without a lot of help and the real resolution (not to be confused with the number of pixels) will be higher. I use a 1/30th second exposure but as low as 1/15th may work well at night for pedestrian traffic. Faces should be at least 80 pixels high to be identifiable but at night, with a noisy image, you need more. I've seen 1MP camera that can identify someone at night at 10-20' with about the same field of view as a 5MP camera.

 

Good to know. I’ll stay away from too high of a resolution. Matter of fact, I’ll drop this one down to 1080 and see if it helps, although I don’t like the lost FOV.

 

> vehicle recognition at 30-40’ during the day only

 

Don't know what this means? License plate or just that a Chevy sedan drove by and it's blue? You need license plate letters to be about 15 pixels high to read them and clearly, you need to have a frontal or rear view of the car and not a side view. If it's just recognizing color and model, that goal can be easily reached with even a 1MP camera. If it's plate number, then you need to get a camera with a telephoto lens, for example, I use a 12mm lens to be able to read a plate during the day about 60' away, at night may require a 30mm lens.

 

Don’t need license plates. I’d be happy just knowing that a vehicle drove by. Currently, with Motion set as below (top picture), Region 3 will not pickup a Mercedes UPS Truck if he pulls up slowly and stops, even though his truck occupies over 50% of Region 3. If he drives right on through, it’ll pick him up. If I set the Sensitivity any higher or the Threshhold any lower, shadows from clouds, etc. will trip Motion Detect. I have tried a small Region 3 area in the center of the driveway, and small Region 2 and 3 areas on each side of the porch columns (where the vehicles would come into view initially) with vehicles filling over 100% of the Regions, still without reliable detection unless I settle for lots of false alarms.

 

Top is day (Runtime) settings, bottom (Event, with Region 3 off) is night settings.

 

By the way... Thanks for the great review site. I've been all over it the last couple of months during my research.

 

 

Here's the view from the other side. The camera is mounted above the front door, under the porch.

 

[JohnAJohnson 0]

Problem solved. E73 returned. Got a Hikvision DS-2CD2732F-I on order. Thanks Buell.