Seek Camera Recommendation For Moving Vehicle License Plate

[PeteCress 0]

The detail on this clip (

) is basically useless.

 

OTOH the cam that took it is about the lowest-end useful cam available (around a hundred bucks).

 

The cam in question is one of six cams at a windsurfing shop located on a hotel's property. (http://ExtremeSurfCam.DynDNS.org)

 

Mostly the cams are to allow customers to see for themselves how conditions are without calling the shop owner every five minutes on a windy day. I run them all at 1280x720, which seems to be a nice compromise between detail, bandwidth, and CPU usage.

 

Historically, however, this particular cam has served the interests of the hotel owner. Once to disprove a bogus injury claim, a couple of times to resolve fender-bender disputes, and (recently but not very well) to add to what was known about an attempted robbery in the hotel lobby.

 

Having suggested to the hotel's owner that it might be in his interest to help fund a better camera, I am seeking recommendations for a cam that would have had a decent chance of capturing the vehicle's license plate number.

 

Since I blurted out the numbers $400-$500, it would be nice of something workable could be had in that price range.... but I am not above going back and begging for more....

[MaxIcon 0]

What you need for this is a longer lens that will catch cars going down the middle of the lot and fill the field of view.

 

You can do this with M12 lens bullet and dome cams by changing the lens, but you'll hit a limit of how long a lens can be physically and still fit in the case. I've got a 25mm lens on a Hik 2032, and it barely fit, requiring longer screws for the sensor board.

 

Box cams are easier to do this with, but the lenses (typically CS mount) are more expensive, and they require an enclosure to be weather proof, making the overall cost a fair bit higher.

 

If you want night shots, you'll need external IR; a bullet cam's IR will be OK at short distances (35', at a guess), but not much further, and box cams don't typically have built in IR.

 

To keep it simple, a good compromise might be the Hik DS-2CD2T32, which is offered with an optional 16mm lens (about as long as you get in a factory M12 bullet cam), and up to 3 IR LEDs (i8 version). If the 16mm lens is zoomed enough for that location, this would do the trick pretty well.

http://www.hikvision.com/europe/products_show.asp?id=9889

 

Not many reviews on it so far.

[PeteCress 0]

What you need for this is a longer lens that will catch cars going down the middle of the lot and fill the field of view.

Thanks... it's coming back to me now.

 

Bottom Line: There is probably no camera that will get than kind of resolution/shutter speed at a 4mm focal length and zooming in is the way to do it.

 

That being the case, I need to forget about this because license plate recognition (especially in just one part of the lot) is only part of the requirement. The main requirement being to see what is going on in general at the given (4mm) field of view.

 

Sounds like somebody serious about this would have two cameras:

 

- Fixed 4mm for the big picture

 

- Auto PTZ with software to acquire, track, and zoom on moving objects.

 

Have I got it right?

[MaxIcon 0]

Yep, in a nutshell. Having a choke point is better than auto-tracking, but you don't always have a choice about that.

[Del Boy 0]

Agree with above. I'd rather spend $200 on 2 cameras, one 12mm and one 6mm, both pointing the same direction. 12mm just for the number plates and 6mm to capture the whole frame.

 

PTZ cameras can be good if they can autofocus quick enough, as you can see working well in this video:

acXks5JXvQY

 

Night-time, I think some BLC would help too:

y6ISLsFYHBE

 

I used a Dahua HFW-4300S 6mm and it was sharp enough to capture the field-of-view and the number plate but the cars were going slow coming through a gate. It was also out of the way of the headlights, when I tried the camera lower like the video above, it couldn't capture a number plate at all.

 

Cheers,

 

Del Boy

[PeteCress 0]

PTZ cameras can be good if they can autofocus quick enough, as you can see working well in this video:

acXks5JXvQY

Is the camera and/or server software automagically acquiring those vehicles and tracking/zooming on them?

 

Or were the PTZ changes done manually?

[Del Boy 0]

Sorry Pete, I have no idea!