@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.
Drive-by shooting!
- Thread starter Cold-Lemonade
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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.
Why not get a camera to use as LPR and a PTZ right next to it to track the delinquents as they go by?
bigredfish
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Agree the BEST choice would almost always be two cameras.
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.
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.
I have daisy chained these without an issue to split it more for when we short-sided the number of cable runs LOL
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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.
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Parley
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Parley
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Ok, 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 can the gain and iris.
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But if it is dark and you move it around it won't go back to that same focus? Mine doesn't
Parley
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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.
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Parley
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The is the one I just set up. PTZ1A225U-IRA-N_Datasheet_20171226.pdf (dahuasecurity.com)
Yes, you can change the focus. I did it while playing around with it. As to how good of a license plate reader it is, I cannot say. I did not use mine for that purpose.
He said he wants the ability to be able to move it around if he hears something at night, so it isn't 100% stationary and that is where the problem potentially is.
And there still seems to be a disconnect on what I mean by focus (or maybe I have the disconnect LOL).
The issue is for a PTZ, the focus is not a step interval like they are in fixed cams, so you have no idea what the focus number is to be able to set it to.
Here is a fixed cam GUI and you can see that you can get and set a focus number:
So I can zoom in and out on a fixed cam and set it back to the same zoom and focus everytime regardless of the amount of light.
The PTZ does not offer a "number" that you can set it to. Of course you can manually focus once you get to a preset, but focus is not part of the preset. So it needs light to see to set the focus.
The preset will set the camera to look at location X, Y, Z at whatever zoom level you put it to, but it does a quick focus adjustment when it goes to the preset and does not remember what the focus was for that preset as focus is not part of the preset.
So if I set my PTZ for LPR duty and have it act as a stationary unit on Preset 4 and have it go to that position while there is still enough daylight out to get a focus, all is fine all night long.
Then say at midnight I hear a noise and turn the PTZ to Preset 1 and look around, when I go back to Preset 4, it doesn't return to the previous focus - it will do a focus adjustment after returning to any preset day or night. And that is where the issue is. At night there isn't enough light for it to focus on something.
And there still seems to be a disconnect on what I mean by focus (or maybe I have the disconnect LOL).
The issue is for a PTZ, the focus is not a step interval like they are in fixed cams, so you have no idea what the focus number is to be able to set it to.
Here is a fixed cam GUI and you can see that you can get and set a focus number:
So I can zoom in and out on a fixed cam and set it back to the same zoom and focus everytime regardless of the amount of light.
The PTZ does not offer a "number" that you can set it to. Of course you can manually focus once you get to a preset, but focus is not part of the preset. So it needs light to see to set the focus.
The preset will set the camera to look at location X, Y, Z at whatever zoom level you put it to, but it does a quick focus adjustment when it goes to the preset and does not remember what the focus was for that preset as focus is not part of the preset.
So if I set my PTZ for LPR duty and have it act as a stationary unit on Preset 4 and have it go to that position while there is still enough daylight out to get a focus, all is fine all night long.
Then say at midnight I hear a noise and turn the PTZ to Preset 1 and look around, when I go back to Preset 4, it doesn't return to the previous focus - it will do a focus adjustment after returning to any preset day or night. And that is where the issue is. At night there isn't enough light for it to focus on something.
Parley
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I understand about the focus number. I use that to gauge my camera focus as I have a couple that tend to move over time. In fact, I have the number written down.
Parley
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Ok, I finally got my screen shot working. For some reason I now have to hold down the Fn key, the Window Screen key and the print screen key at the same time. So anyways I used one of my PTZ's and zero'd in on a license down the street and took a picture. Then to return to the home position I pressed the preset 1 key. The PTZ returned to the home position, and everything is in focus. I am using the Hikvision IVMS-4200 program. Here are two pictures from my now working screen shot.
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.
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.
Parley
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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.