Dedicated License Plate Cam project

nbstl68 said:
Just curious, when you say, " just walked up and confronted "....Was this a coincidental run-in or did you see him taking the package off the porch from inside the house or phone app notification or something like that and go confront the situation?
Did you \ he say anything at all?

So many posts here about theory of how to properly set up cameras to catch someone on camera IF something happens. It's great to see examples now and then of a camera setup actually working for their intended purposes. Thanks for posting.
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I apologize for the delayed response. I just now saw your question. It was definitely a "Chance" encounter where I returned home to find him on my front door step leaving with the package. He walked from my left to my right. He said nothing. There are many reasons that we believe he was quite experienced with his theft routine. As the photo shows he had dark, wrap around sunglasses. He held his head down and pretended to be looking at his phone in his hand. I was sure his eyes were actually trained on me.

I have BlueIris set to send me a text alert, but the delay and inconsistancy in how long of a delay before my phone receives the alert make catching someone "in the act" almost impractical, unless they actually enter the house or property and stay for a bit of time.

I did add a driveway alert, which is nothing more than a sound that beeps inside the house if someone crosses the barrier, but the reason that is so we can know in Real-time if someone is headed our way AND we are inside the house. So far we have two of these, with the last one the guy, wearing rubber gloves, checked under our door mat for a key we assume. My wife was home during both of these, unaware of what was taking place. This type of crime appears to be increasing in our neighborhoods as an easy way to make a couple dollars for those drug addicted folks. (this is according to the local Police).
 
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SirAce135 said:
I too am starting to work on an LPR solution including Blue Iris and about 20 cams total.
Did you end up finding a way to integrate LPR and Blue Iris?
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I personally don't use a database to collect license plates. I found that my needs are just to be able to go through the files, find the dates and times I need, and capture those videos. We do have a lot of traffic on the road in front of our place and it has helped capture the license plates plus activities (you can see them drive back and forth, entering and leaving the crime). Police have been appreciative for the video/picture capture, the date/time stamps and the clarity of the photos.

The item I need to add is a camera to capture the actual driver better though. They seem to need to see a photo of who is behind the wheel to help with any actual prosecution.
 
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bigbadw said:
I personally don't use a database to collect license plates. I found that my needs are just to be able to go through the files, find the dates and times I need, and capture those videos. We do have a lot of traffic on the road in front of our place and it has helped capture the license plates plus activities (you can see them drive back and forth, entering and leaving the crime). Police have been appreciative for the video/picture capture, the date/time stamps and the clarity of the photos.

The item I need to add is a camera to capture the actual driver better though. They seem to need to see a photo of who is behind the wheel to help with any actual prosecution.
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Thanks for the reply :)

It seems some cams will actually do the LPR onboard which is great, and may even create snapshots of the plates with dates and times for future access. I would like to have it reference a whitelist so its easier to spot patterns of vehicles that should not be in the neighborhood, especially in response to a nearby crime.

I have not pulled the trigger on a ANPR camera, what did you end up going with and where did you get it? It seems Andy does not carry them.
 
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SirAce135 said:
Thanks for the reply :)

It seems some cams will actually do the LPR onboard which is great, and may even create snapshots of the plates with dates and times for future access. I would like to have it reference a whitelist so its easier to spot patterns of vehicles that should not be in the neighborhood, especially in response to a nearby crime.

I have not pulled the trigger on a ANPR camera, what did you end up going with and where did you get it? It seems Andy does not carry them.
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One camera that I use, works at the 940nm (invisible to humans) IR wavelength.
Hikvision DS-2CD6026FHWD-A3 2MP Network Box Camera
It took some tuning (thanks to the great support on this site!), but at this wavelength the license plates do not reflect. Still, most of the time I can get a readable license plate.

The camera pointed in the opposite direction is Hikvision DS-2CD2T32-i8. The addition of a narrow beam 850nm IR illuminator really makes those license plates reflect wonderful at night. VERY readable.

Again, it was only due to the help from nayr and fenderman that I was able to get these tuned and working. The tuning for night as well as the illuminator were the tricks.

As I said, my current approach is only to use BlueIris as a License Plate Capture device, vs. the more complex database/filtering a known "whitelist" of plates, and converting them to text in a database. Although I would love to do this if it were practical! Right now, I just manually grab all files at a specific date/time and it appears to work so far.
 
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Is there anywhere that shows different reflections / plates vs the light wavelength? Having issues reading certain plates due to over reflection of the IR light / dirty plates

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"The printing process for license plates allow for high contrast recognition for infrared (IR) and visible light illumination in daylight and nighttime conditions . The dye, ink, paint, or film used for the license plate number is opaque in both visible and IR spectrums, allowing for better and more accurate character capture ."
They meet the requirements for reflectivity of International Organization for Standardization ISO 7591, clause 3 .

All this means is that they are easily read at 75 feet away during daylight, as well as nighttime using 850nm IR. (This IR is the normal one you see a "slight red glow" when you look at the illuminator.

I believe I am answering this correctly.
 
achalmersman said:
Is there anywhere that shows different reflections / plates vs the light wavelength? Having issues reading certain plates due to over reflection of the IR light / dirty plates

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I was thinking about your question again, and thought of a less technical response.
I definitely see the same effect; some license plates do not reflect as well, due to age or being dirty (I am guessing). They recently came through and made us all turn in our old and buy new license plates. The reason was supposedly because they wanted to reduce the number of older plates that no longer reflect as well.

I've also run into vehicles that do not have plates on the front and have some sort of "distraction" on the rear of the vehicle. A trailer hitch, the way a truck bumper is sitting, a bent license plate.

I think this is all part of the game when it comes to license plate capture/reading. IMHO
 
"having issues reading certain plates due to over reflection of the IR light / dirty plates"

if your plate captures are 'blown out' (ie, too bright to read) you need to reduce your exposure (increase the number).
i run my LP cams at 1/1000, you might find 1/500 or 1/2000 to work better for you.
Then you can read plates and see headlights/tail-lights, but that's all you'll see at nigth with that cam...

the reduced exposure will also help with clarity (less motion blur on moving cars), but some plates are just
hard to get (maybe dirty or the angle they are on the car). That's why i run 2 plate cams, one in
each direction up/down the street...
 
Reduce the exposure and THE GAIN !
sometimes gain is too high and you have a white plate with the IR led.

BICK
 
My issue isn't camera settings. It's horrible DE plates. They are flat, blue, and gold. Low contrast between the letters and background. Older vs newer, clean vs dirty makes it absolutely impossible with these type of cameras to get 100% of the plates. I currently get a good majority but I feel like without lot of visible light and disabling IR I will never get 95% or higher. I'm currently probably getting 80-85%

I'll try to get some examples to show what I mean

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All states should be like Texas.

You can have any color plate you like, as long as its black letters on a white background ;)
 
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Neighboring state has white plates with black letters. Those plates are soooo easy to get reads it makes me jealous. We are close enough to the state line I get them.
bigredfish said:
All states should be like Texas.

You can have any color plate you like, as long as its black letters on a white background ;)
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I live near Joint Base MDL so we get plates from just about every state in the Union on a regular basis. Some of them look nice, but are hard to read in full daylight with your eyes, let alone at night with a camera.
 
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