First foray into LPR, with IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E

[Janhaus]

Hey all,

Having had a porch pirate experience recently, I found this forum and thanks to Andy, got started on my LPR journey with an IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E. At this point I have the camera mounted in front of the garage, was able to capture my first license plate today via OpenALPR but I see a number of hits that I can't capture so I'd like some input. I've read a number of posts on settings and setup, want to get some feedback on whether I should be adjusting the physical angle differently or if I'm down to the software calibration at this point.

Background: My house is next to a T-way intersection - I've attached a picture of where my camera is set up via IPVM Camera Calculator V3 (its a new construction so the house doesn't yet show up on the map - the camera location is approximately correct).
Also attached a picture from my driveway Nest cam as well as an overhead view of the T-intersection. So, due to the fact that I need to horizontally swivel the camera ~45degrees or so to get an angle at plates, I rotated the camera and flipped the image 90 degrees to get the view I'm showing. At this point I get video but as you can see in a sample snapshot of a car passing by, I don't get enough clarity on the license plate to even read it manually.

Question: Do I need to move the camera physically or am I close enough that I should just be using software adjustments?

Day Profile Settings
Picture
Brightness 50
Contrast 50
Saturation 50
Sharpness 60
Gamma 50
Flip 90 Degrees

Exposure
Anti-flicker Outdoor
Mode Manual
Shutter 1/2000
Gain 0-50
Iris 50
3D NR on
Grade 50

Backlight
Mode WDR

WB
Mode Auto

Day & Night
Mode Color

IR Light
Mode ZoomPrio
Correction 50

 

[SouthernYankee]

read the LPR section in the forum. In general you should see the license plate, and not see the car or background clearly.

LPR

Licence Plate Reader cameras

ipcamtalk.com

 

[bigredfish]

Angle is not optimal. Anything over 30 degrees gets increasingly trickier

Close enough on settings, more Contrast, turn off WDR

More zoom would help as suggested by @SouthernYankee

 

[DLONG2]

I'd suggest trenching out to that telephone pole and placing the camera in an enclosure of some kind close to the pole. If the lens were then pointed at the intersection, you ought to be able to collect most plates regardless of direction of travel.

 

[Janhaus]

I'm trying to see if I can get this done without having to get a ornamental lightpost or something like that closer to the road, ha.
Will play with the zoom some more and see if I can get a better image of the plates sufficient for LPR and change the angle a bit more to try and get a straighter shot

 

[bigredfish]

Can you get a real full size full res image to post? That truck image looks distorted...

 

[bigredfish]

My 5231 Z12 is focused at 120ft at about a 30 degree angle, plans to cut that angle in the coming weeks..

 

[Janhaus]

I fiddled with it a bit more earlier in the day and it seems to start to pick up plates for ALPR at least during the day. Will have to check to see if it misses any tomorrow!
Not having any luck at night though, have tried the various settings from other users on the forums. Will see if any of these result in a good enough match!

 

[bigredfish]

What are your night settings? What’s the distance to the capture point?

Cut back on iris to 30-40. Lots of contrast, no WDR. You could try some HLC..... more zoom

 

[Wildcat_1]

Agree with @bigredfish more contrast, no WDR, HLC is good and depending on speed of target 1/1000, 1/2000.

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

@Chicken has a review here about the LPR setting.
LPR with a pair of IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E

 

[Davahad]

You can place a license plate on the side of the road facing your camera and then you can manually adjust all of your settings at night until you can read and that should get you close. My camera is placed at a similar angle/distance and for night
I had to get a separate IR emitter and now it does not miss at night using Openalpr. The emitter I am using is AXTON MegaPixel AT-11E-S 360'-Range PoE Infrared Illuminator with Day/Night Sensor (850nm, 20 x 10°)

 

[bigredfish]

Looks like the plate is being lit up by the IR, I know I had a similar problem once and a member here noted that iris at anything over about 40 created a similar white out effect ..

 

[Janhaus]

I adjusted the camera angle more, finally figured out that I can actually swivel the physical base of the camera as well so now I have the camera physically tilted ~45 degrees (maybe a bit more) and I'm capturing images in 1920x1080 instead of having to rotate the image 90 degrees. Note: for some reason the software shows a feed with a green hue whenever I use software to rotate the image (is this normal?!) so now that I rotated the camera physically instead, I can just view the results in the preview screen.

Daylight captures are working great now but night-time isn't working just yet. Using similar settings from the forum I essentially get a pitch black screen so not sure if that'll work so well. If I set it to Auto mode I get a viewable screen but not sure about plates. It seems shutter speed has a huge effect on brightness of the image (me being clueless about photography in general) - what's the usual recommended shutter speed to be able to do LPR? If I set it to anything more than 500 it basically results in a black screen, is that normal?

Here's what the settings and output looks like. Also attached a screenshot of what the area looks like from my garage nest cam, with an arrow pointing to about where the LPR Cam is pointing:

 

[bigredfish]

Nighttime screen is mostly black All you see is spots of the lights and the IR reflecting from the tag.

 

[bigredfish]

As the many threads you read show, 1/1000 or 1/2000 is about right. Auto wont get you readable plates, just pretty pictures with motion blur.

See above image. Without the car, its 100% black.

You were much closer in the fitst image, did you adjust the iris as I mentioned?

 

[bigredfish]

How far is thew capture point from the camera? It matters

 

[Janhaus]

According to IPVM, it's ~132 ft from the camera to the capture point. Ok let me try it with 1/1000 and set the iris to <=40 to see if that gets me anything

 

[bigredfish]

Mine above is at 120 ft. You're at the realistic limits of your onboard IR...

 

[Janhaus]

Aha! Thanks for the advice. Now I am capturing some.
Settings are:

Night Profile Settings
Picture
Brightness 50
Contrast 50
Saturation 50
Sharpness 60
Gamma 50
EIS Off

Exposure
Anti-flicker Outdoor
Mode Manual
Shutter 1/500
Gain 0-60
Iris 40
3D NR on
Grade 50

Backlight
Mode HLC 65

WB
Mode Outdoor

Day & Night
Mode B/W

IR Light
Mode Manual
NearLight 100
FarLight 100

Defog
Mode Off

Also, Zoom at 1000, Focus at 1480. Some of the threads mention the camera not focusing correctly if Zoom > 80% so I haven't tried to set it higher just yet. Maybe get better results at night if I zoom in more? Will have to find the right focus during the day probably


Missed at least one, but much better than the none from before!