Cold-Lemonade
Pulling my weight
@bigredfish Your videos are super impressive. I'm on a one-way street so I will have one preset position. So I don't think I need a spotter cam to trigger the LPR function on the PTZ.
Exactly. My plan is to try to use Home Assistant to change those setting when take control manually and also when I return it to PTZ mode.His question is can he use it for plates but then also move it around for punks at night.
At the shutter speed needed to capture plates, the image will probably be too dark like in @bigredfish example to reliably do that.
So he would have to then go into the settings and slow down the shutter to be able to make out people and stuff and then return the settings to the settings for LPR and hope it gets something to focus on.
That would be the best solution, but it requires running additional cables to that location. At the moment, I can split the cat6 I have running out to one of my front cameras that monitors my ground floor windows and run a cable up the front side of my house to the location where I intend to put this PTZ/LPR camera. I should have run cat6 everywhere inside my house when I had it gutted. And now it would require a lot of work.Why not get a camera to use as LPR and a PTZ right next to it to track the delinquents as they go by?
I hear you.In general, we always state to use a cam for a specific purpose. Trying to get a cam to do more than one job usually ends up doing two (or more) jobs poorly.
Interesting. So daisy-chaining two of these devices would essentially split one cable into three. Good to know. I need to think about it. I would love to have the PTZ capability but after the drive-by shooting in front of my house (aimed at the bums who live across the street), I feel like I need the LPR as well.I have daisy chained these without an issue to split it more for when we short-sided the number of cable runs LOL
For some odd reason I am having trouble saving my screen shot.Yes but that is a big IF based on distance and speed of the vehicles.
If you are getting a PTZ anyway, then give it a try.
In my scenario with no street lights, if I set the PTZ up to get plates, if I move it around, then I need to slow down the shutter to be able to see things and then set it back to the LPR settings and hope the focus works LOL.
But you can see in @bigredfish example, that isn't going to be of much use to see people as he set it up for LPR at the bare minimum he could get away with.
@Parley what PTZs are you using? Dahua PTZ doesn't have the ability to set a focus number like the fixed cams, so without enough light, focus will be all over the place.
But if it is dark and you move it around it won't go back to that same focus? Mine doesn'tOk, I have a PTZ in storage exactly like the one he is going to purchase. I got it down and set it up. I can manually adjust the focus on it and set the shutter speed to as much as 1/10000. Why I can not do a screen shot is beyond me. Another problem to work out. Hahahaha The GUI looks like my current Dahua PTZ's. You adjust the gain and iris.
That is probably true. However, I think he is talking about a stationary unit. I wonder by using a preset for the "home" position it will return to all the settings he had before he moved it. Mine seem to do that, but I have not set them up for reading license plates. By the way, it does have IR lights for far and near. The question is, it that PTZ good enough to read plates at night.But if it is dark and you move it around it won't go back to that same focus? Mine doesn't
The is the one I just set up. PTZ1A225U-IRA-N_Datasheet_20171226.pdf (dahuasecurity.com)@Parley -- Is it the same exact one as the model I linked to above? If you can manually adjust the focus, then I should be able to use this model for my use case, right?
I would assume he would have just the one preset for the "home" position. He would use the other keys to move the PTZ around to focus in on what he wanted to see. However, you may be right. Now Bigredfish has his PTZ return to a home position after being called. Maybe he can chime in.Yeah but that is daytime and it can see to focus and can focus quickly during the day.
Try it at night with a 1/2000 shutter when the image is black and see if it focuses between the two presets when all it sees is a plate.