Budget camera recommendations for night-time ANPR

[fitzy89 0]

Hi all

 

I'm familiar with normal everyday CCTV systems but this question is a bit more technical than I've dealt with before.

 

I've been tasked with setting up a budget CCTV system at a friends farm to help catch the culprits of many many thefts, to date nearly £400 worth of stock has been stolen.

 

We've got a basic system setup which is fine in the daylight but I'm now looking to expand this system with an ANPR system. The main issue being the budget. I'm looking for a suitable camera which works well at night to capture car license plates. Ideally my friend would be looking to spend no more than £50 on a camera for this. The rest of the hardware and recording devices I can provide myself it's just the camera that I need to source and not being too familiar with them I'm looking for some more knowledgeable input.

 

Either a USB camera or standard composite/coax will be fine.

 

The output of the current camera at night is abismal and doesn't show the license plate due to dazzling from the vehicle headlights, so we are looking for something smaller that can be mounted closer to the offenders but it still needs to remain small and easy to hide - the type of people we are dealing with will vandalize anything if they find it, despite the red IR glow from the existing cameras so far they are still intact (despite finding a paintball splattered on the front of one of them a week ago).

 

It would be mounted outdoors so would need to be weatherproof. I will be running it through the iSpy ANPR system most likely, either a USB camera directly to a laptop would be fine or a coax camera into our DVR would work too.

 

Can anyone recommend a suitable camera preferably on eBay UK? I would also like the IR illuminator on it to not be visible to the naked eye as well, our current cameras glow red at night which would be spotted straight away in the location we are planning to put this one.

 

Here's our current setup which works fine in the daytime but at night it is dazzled by the headlights. The offender arrives about 30 seconds into the clip.

ouEr5DMjWUk

[CYANiDE 0]

Hi all

 

I'm familiar with normal everyday CCTV systems but this question is a bit more technical than I've dealt with before.

 

I've been tasked with setting up a budget CCTV system at a friends farm to help catch the culprits of many many thefts, to date nearly £400 worth of stock has been stolen.

 

We've got a basic system setup which is fine in the daylight but I'm now looking to expand this system with an ANPR system. The main issue being the budget. I'm looking for a suitable camera which works well at night to capture car license plates. Ideally my friend would be looking to spend no more than £50 on a camera for this. The rest of the hardware and recording devices I can provide myself it's just the camera that I need to source and not being too familiar with them I'm looking for some more knowledgeable input.

 

Either a USB camera or standard composite/coax will be fine.

 

The output of the current camera at night is abismal and doesn't show the license plate due to dazzling from the vehicle headlights, so we are looking for something smaller that can be mounted closer to the offenders but it still needs to remain small and easy to hide - the type of people we are dealing with will vandalize anything if they find it, despite the red IR glow from the existing cameras so far they are still intact (despite finding a paintball splattered on the front of one of them a week ago).

 

It would be mounted outdoors so would need to be weatherproof. I will be running it through the iSpy ANPR system most likely, either a USB camera directly to a laptop would be fine or a coax camera into our DVR would work too.

 

Can anyone recommend a suitable camera preferably on eBay UK? I would also like the IR illuminator on it to not be visible to the naked eye as well, our current cameras glow red at night which would be spotted straight away in the location we are planning to put this one.

 

Here's our current setup which works fine in the daytime but at night it is dazzled by the headlights. The offender arrives about 30 seconds into the clip.

ouEr5DMjWUk

 

I would figure out a way to mount the camera low as close to license plate level as possible. Will make it much easier to grab plates that way. Also for the IR, use a 940nm illuminator. Are you looking to actually have a system record these plates or just the ability to be able to see them from recorded video?

[fitzy89 0]

Thanks for your response.

 

Yes we will be mounting one fairly low to hopefully get the rear license plate, thinking that the glare from the car lights will be significantly less. We will likely use a raspberry pi computer to run the license plate cam so we can power it from a battery and move it around as necessary without running loads of cables (the nearest building is about 40 meters away) and stream it over wifi to an old PC or laptop to process the ANPR functions using iSpy.

 

Being able to see plates is the minimum but it would be quite beneficial to log them somewhere to track repeat offenders easier so even logging the plate along with the date and time in a simple text file or spreadsheet would be ideal.

 

It's something we will likely build on in the future but those above are the basic requirements for now.

 

Thanks for the IR info, will look into those as well. Do they illuminate just as good as the visible ones? Wondering if it might be possible to replace the LEDs in the existing cameras with 940nm ones as well.