Assistance with camera positioning & selection

[breakthestatic]

I'm looking to add a dedicated camera for LPR (eventually automated recognition, but primarily in the short-term looking for any way to capture plates at night). I live in a cul de sac and am pretty much centered on the entrance, with the approaching roadway sloping roughly 5-7 degrees downward away from me. The area where the cul de sac opens up to a circle is roughly 100ft away and the entrance from the cross street is around 250ft. There is a dirt utility road that someone could possibly access from right around the 100ft mark, so I thought that area would be the sweet spot to get any approaching/leaving vehicles. Couple primary questions about placement:

1. Is it better for the camera to be horizontally head-on with the car or should it be slightly off-center? Since I'm primarily concerned with night capture, I wasn't sure how headlight glare impacts plate visibility relative to horizontal angle.
2. From what I've read, lower vertical placement is usually better, and depending on the answer to the above question, I have some easy mounting places right above my garage (approx 10ft), however getting ethernet to that location would be rather difficult. I was thinking of just running power (have moderately easy access to a circuit) and using a wifi bridge for the network connection (really good signal but I guess susceptible to interference/jamming - however unlikely). Alternatively, I could mount it on the second story with easy access to PoE from my attic. However that would put its height around ~25ft and I'm not sure how acceptable that is for capturing the plates.

With the above in mind, do you have any specific recommendations for cameras? I don't have any preference on style, was looking at the IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E, but if other cameras in a similar price range $250-300 US would be better suited for my setup, I'm open to any suggestions!

Edit - attached a quick shot from my cell camera in a room on the second story, probably two feet below where it could be mounted (sorry for the window screen being in the way).

 

[samplenhold]

As long as your cam is above the headlight height, you should be OK. Direct on is preferred, but a slight angle is just fine. See my two threads below.

New to LPR? Considerations Before You Begin

Thought I would throw together a post on my experiences so far with LPR in an effort to help others that are considering running down that rabbit hole. There are some practical considerations you should know about LPR. I am approaching this from the position of using Blue Iris and Plate...

ipcamtalk.com

LPR Case Study: Scoping, Planning, Proof of Concept, Installation, & Results

Introduction This thread is about my journey into LPR (License Plate Recognition) after having about 18 months of experience with IP cams and having quite a bit of my system finished. I am not an expert on LPR, or IP cameras either. But I have spent a lot of time working with my system and...

ipcamtalk.com

That 5241 Z12E is what most folks here use for LPR. It has a good zoom for reaching out far down the street. Every true LPR cam that has been talked about here does not have that much zoom so, while they have neat processing capabilities for LPR, they can't get that far reach.

 

[Timokreon]

Are you using Blue Iris, or a NVR?

I would grab the 5241 and once in hand, run a temporary cable to see how things look from each position. From the looks of it, that 2nd story placement would perfect.

 

[wittaj]

Mounting on a 2nd story is fine due to the distance you are "flattening" the angle. Mine is on the 2nd story and the 1st floor is about 10 feet above the road, so I am about 35 feet up and catch them fine.

That is a wide entrance to the cul-de-sac. Ideally you like to optically zoom in to have the field of view be just about the size of a car. You could fit 4 cars side-by-side in that entrance LOL.

So it will be some experimentation on how wide can you go and still get plates. Certainly you wouldn't want to be seeing much grass on either side.

 

[breakthestatic]

Glad to hear the 2nd story placement seems fine, as I can easily run a new cat6 line directly from my server closet to the eaves in the front (right above the window I took the photo from). It'd be much preferred over having to cut into a bunch of walls & ceilings or do the wifi bridge.

As far as the cul de sac's entrance width goes, at night there are almost always parked cars on both sides down the entire length. I know it's not a 100% guarantee, but in the 7 years I've lived here, I've never seen one (or both) sides free of cars after 6pm. During the day I'm not really concerned, since I have a few other cameras that can already see plates pretty well; maybe not OCR-level, but good enough for me to review the footage. Once I get the camera, I'll play around with the zoom framing & hopefully can get away with roughly 2 car widths.

As for recording, I'm currently using Frigate, but started looking into additional software (primarily for the lpr stuff). I haven't played around with Blue Iris yet, but have read many great things both here and on other forums. I actually don't have any dedicated Windows machines anymore (work computer is a Mac & the kids have cheap Chromebooks that I don't have to worry about them breaking ). My server is running linux and frankly is already a bit tight on resources, to the point where I wouldn't want to spin up a Windows VM in it. Somewhat soon (was waiting for component prices to settle down after the supply crunch), I plan on getting a dedicated machine for the VMS, but in the very short-term it will likely just be Frigate & maybe some lpr software (if there's anything that runs on linux). I do have a Win 10 VM on my MacBook that I could run the trial on, but I wouldn't want to keep it on 24/7.

Thanks again for the great advice so far!

 

[wittaj]

In the meantime, you could toss an SD card in the camera and record on motion and review it that way as well if the Frigate option doesn't work.

 

[samplenhold]

As far as the cul de sac's entrance width goes, at night there are almost always parked cars on both sides down the entire length. I know it's not a 100% guarantee, but in the 7 years I've lived here, I've never seen one (or both) sides free of cars after 6pm. During the day I'm not really concerned, since I have a few other cameras that can already see plates pretty well; maybe not OCR-level, but good enough for me to review the footage. Once I get the camera, I'll play around with the zoom framing & hopefully can get away with roughly 2 car widths.

Before you mount it and run cables, use a test rig and test it day and night. You could just put it on a stepladder. Does not need to be at the total height expected. You can see if you can get the zoom right at that distance.

If using the whole road width is not getting you enough zoom to read plates, realize that you do not need to cover curb to curb. 99% of plates are mounted in the center of the back. Some front plates are offset a bit and some panel trucks rear plate is offset. But none are to the edge of the street. Also, no one gets 100% of the plates.

 

[breakthestatic]

Yeah, I figured I'd just temp mount it hanging from the eave and use some cat6 coming from the room's window. I already have a bunch of zip ties set up to hang christmas decorations in the general vicinity; I think I could easily get it secured tightly enough to not move around (and I guess with such short shutter speeds it probably doesn't need to be perfectly still like on a tripod or gimbal setup). Due to the layout of the road, I think vehicle speeds will be somewhat limited, so hopefully that also eases capture as well.

 

[Timokreon]

I've opened a window just enough for a camera to fit and test it out for an hour or two. Gave me an idea of what different positions would look like without being out in the cold/wind/rain/snow.. lol