Why I have cameras

ADCS

Young grasshopper
Aug 31, 2014
69
8
Toronto
Caught this sleaze ball testing the door handles on every car on the street last night. Actually there were two of them. Another slimeball was on the other side of the street but I don't have enough clarity for it to be of any use. The idiot is smart enough to not leave finger prints but blindly walks right into the field of view of 3 cameras and has his face exposed. Photos and video footage have been sent to the local PD. Unfortunately my phone battery was totally dead so I didn't see the email notification until 6 hours later. Lucky bastard.

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Yea those people are the scum of the earth. I checked raidsonline.com (fantastic website for crime stats by the way) and sure enough there were several reported car break and enters in my neighbourhood on that night. I hope the police nail the SOB.

The pic was from a 2332 hik turret recording at 3mp. I have ok exterior lighting so I leave it in day mode all night and it seems to do pretty good. I will be making a few tweaks though as a result of this incident. Laser pointer with a servo motor and a raspberry pi come to mind. :-)
 
Great, thanks. Thanks for the tip on raidsonline.com too.
 
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Good stuff...

Any news with regard to the police catching this guy? Most scum bags that do stuff like this are very well known to the police. The second I brought the video into the station, they all recognized the perp instantly.

With regard to e-mail notifications... What cameras/setup do you have so the false alarms are reduced to the point that it is actually of any use?

I get great image quality out of my Hikvisions, but the motion detection leaves a lot to be desired. Every single moth that flies by triggers recording for me. The poor motion detection is one of the only reasons that I'm still flirting with Mobotix.

I'm very interested to see how you have things set up. If I had e-mail notification active, I'd get about 200 per day.
 
I would be interested as well. I get lots of false positives as well.
E.g. switching from daylight to night mode is detected as motion ...
 
Good stuff...

Any news with regard to the police catching this guy? Most scum bags that do stuff like this are very well known to the police. The second I brought the video into the station, they all recognized the perp instantly.

With regard to e-mail notifications... What cameras/setup do you have so the false alarms are reduced to the point that it is actually of any use?

I get great image quality out of my Hikvisions, but the motion detection leaves a lot to be desired. Every single moth that flies by triggers recording for me. The poor motion detection is one of the only reasons that I'm still flirting with Mobotix.

I'm very interested to see how you have things set up. If I had e-mail notification active, I'd get about 200 per day.
You can install a PIR sensor on any camera with an alarm in. I believe you can set the camera to record 24/7 but still receive motion alerts, just set the threshold higher. If you use third party vms like blue iris you can set different thresholds for alerts and recording. Blue iris now also supports ethernet based dio boxes like these http://www.sealevel.com/store/i-o/digital-i-o/ethernet.html
 
I would be interested as well. I get lots of false positives as well.
E.g. switching from daylight to night mode is detected as motion ...

I use Sighthound and there aren't a lot of false positives. I can filter mine even down to humans vs. everything else that triggers motion. And it works pretty damn well. I do get a notification when the cameras switch to nightvision though, but I can live with that.
 
Thanks for the replies with regard to motion and false positives.

I considered PIR at one point, but it strikes me as cost prohibitive for larger installs.

The decent outdoor sensors appear to run $150+. Add in the cost and difficulty of running 12V power to everything, and I'd rather spend the extra money and go with one of the high end commercial products (Mobotix) that can do intelligent motion detection via video analysis. The addition of two way audio (plus built in PIR detectors on some models) makes it absolutely worth it.

That being said, I certainly have my issues with Mobotix. In addition to the insanely high prices, I actually find the video quality during the day to be inferior to the Hikvisions. At any decent resolution, framrate suffers badly.

In particular, the way in which they blow out in dealing with light colored objects is unacceptable, especially at that price. Carl (Network Camera Critic--RIP) nailed it when he stated fairly recently that Mobotix was incredibly impressive five years ago, but that it appears that they have stood still while the rest of the industry caught up and passed them by.

The Chinese cams have come a long way with regard to image quality over the past couple of years. As I have pointed out on other threads, what we need right now is not 4K, or any other increased resolution. Instead, the two biggest issues are:
1. Reliable motion detection; and
2. Night performance.

Instead, the manufacturers seem to be engaged in a pixel count race.
 
I use Sighthound and there aren't a lot of false positives. I can filter mine even down to humans vs. everything else that triggers motion. And it works pretty damn well. I do get a notification when the cameras switch to nightvision though, but I can live with that.

This product seems interesting. How many cameras are you running, and how fast is your PC? I haven't dealt with computer based products much, as they all appear to be CPU intensive.

My other issue with PC based stuff is that if the facility is breached, chances are, the perps will carry the evidence away with a PC. NVRs are a lot easier to hide (in a drop ceiling, etc). For my all out jobs, I will even pick up a non-working NVR that powers up and leave it out in a conspicuous place as a decoy.

ADCS, have the cops grabbed up the turd in the photo yet? You got a really high resolution shot--as I said before, I bet they know who he is.
 
This product seems interesting. How many cameras are you running, and how fast is your PC? I haven't dealt with computer based products much, as they all appear to be CPU intensive.

My other issue with PC based stuff is that if the facility is breached, chances are, the perps will carry the evidence away with a PC. NVRs are a lot easier to hide (in a drop ceiling, etc). For my all out jobs, I will even pick up a non-working NVR that powers up and leave it out in a conspicuous place as a decoy.

ADCS, have the cops grabbed up the turd in the photo yet? You got a really high resolution shot--as I said before, I bet they know who he is.
Most pc based vms allow recording to a NAS...some, like blue iris can be set to record to locally and NAS...a small pc is about the same size as a NVR..,it is actually very rare that an NVR is taken during a robbery.
 
Sorry for the lack of updates gents. The police have not told me if they caught anybody - I would be surprised if they pass along any info too me. Surprisingly they didn't even seem very interested in taking the footage at all. The whole process was actually quite a pain in the ass. They definitely aren't trying to make it easy to provide the footage which is a real shame. I guess that is the downside to living in a larger city. The police always have more important things to do. You know, like hiding behind garbage bins and bushes with a radar gun. :rolleyes: Apparently some cities near me have an online FTP style site that homeowners can upload footage too for the police but mine doesn't have this yet.

I am using Hik cameras with a Hik NVR set to record 24/7. For motion, I am using a combination of Intrusion Detection and Line Detection. I like these a lot more than the standard motion detection since you can alter the sensitivity and the threshold (for intrusion detection). I have the line detection set-up as a last resort in case the intrusion detection doesn't trigger. This helps cut down on false triggers a lot but I still do get them. Especially if there is a car parked in the driveway on a sun/cloudy day. The cloud reflections on the cars trigger alerts. The good thing is there are very few false triggers at night which is when the alerts are most important. In my case anyway.
 
I am using Hik cameras with a Hik NVR set to record 24/7. For motion, I am using a combination of Intrusion Detection and Line Detection. I like these a lot more than the standard motion detection since you can alter the sensitivity and the threshold (for intrusion detection). I have the line detection set-up as a last resort in case the intrusion detection doesn't trigger. This helps cut down on false triggers a lot but I still do get them. Especially if there is a car parked in the driveway on a sun/cloudy day. The cloud reflections on the cars trigger alerts. The good thing is there are very few false triggers at night which is when the alerts are most important. In my case anyway.

+1 this is a great idea