wanted to share this here... its a game changer
full thread with images on the UI forum
I wanted to share my initial impressions of Ubiquity’s newly released AI LPR camera - particularly how it does for me at nighttime LPR.
For a little background, I have been running an Axis Q1656-DLE camera (paired to an AI port) pointed North and a Ubiquiti AI Pro pointed South. Both are mounted directly at the side of a residential street - pointed about 20 degrees into the traffic lanes. The speed limit on the street is 25MPH, but traffic is typically in the 26-30 range with about 10% going 30-35MPH. This street has about 150 car/plates per day and 30 or so of which are in the dark. The AI pro has done great during the day on LPR, but at night as everyone knows it detects motion, car, people, etc, but never 1 plate at night. The Axis does equally well to the Ai Pro during the day (via the AI Port in Protect), but at night as it is night LPR optimized (dark image) it goes blind at night so I had to resort to it’s onboard software at night for LPR.The Axis software is horrible - it only catches a single static image and the UI is 10 years out of date. Keep in mind the Axis is a $2500 camera (I didn’t pay that) and the LPR software license on it is another $600. My particular Axis also has integrated Radar - a truly unique feature that adds speed logging to recorded video and images. So I’m comparing the AI LPR against probably the gold standard of LPR - a $3000 Axis setup.
I got the new AI LPR shipped overnight as soon as it became available and installed it yesterday afternoon. Directly next to the Axis and with the same FOV. Only default setting I changed was “LPR Night Vision”, I do not have it set to “LPR Dedicated” (it still detects people, dogs, cars, barking, speaking, etc). Optical Zoom is maxed at 3X and pointed in a good area for plates. Initially I was skeptical of the AI LPR’s night possibilities in the software as “LPR night vision” is the only tweaking for Night LPR. As someone who has spent countless hours tweaking at a nano detail level the night settings on the Axis like Contrast, Local Contrast, Tone Mapping, IR Threshold, Max Shutter, Max Gain, etc I was “stuck” with just installing the AI LPR and hoping for the best?
The daytime LPR was great as I anticipated - on par with the Axis and the AI Pro - capturing 100%. Nothing new there so it looked good so far.
And then the sun set and darkness descended last night…
As the hours went through the night the AI LPR continued to shine. It captured every single plate! 100%! 37/37 in the 12 hours of dark. Combined with the great protect software, the improved timeline frame-by-frame viewer with keyboard support, it really shines. The plates are all crystal clear and easily readable.
I am super impressed by the AI LPR in my situation - it has delivered everything I was hoping for. I will likely sell the Axis camera (my keep it for the Radar speed recording only) and I’ll free up the AI Port that was on the Axis for my Overview Camera (Reolink Duo 3) that captures 180 degrees eagle view of the whole street. I’ll also get another AI LPR to replace the South AI Pro, freeing that up to use elsewhere.
All is not perfect in Protect yet for LPR however - as many know the OCR of the plates itself is still a little wonky - misreading 1 or 2 characters quite regularly (typically at the front/end of the plate, and usually letters withe mistaken for numbers or dropped altogether), and I think there is a hardcoded plate length (4) and it seems to want at least 1 or 2 numbers (regardless of plate length). That said, the plates are detected and capture is good (the important part) and I’m hopeful Ubiquiti will improve the OCR now that the hardware is in place. That said, manual review is super easy to do when needed and perfectly clear (it’s sad that you can’t save corrections though)
All-in-all, this camera is a game changer IMO. A huge kudos to the Ubiquiti engineers - you clearly spent a lot of time dissecting what makes night time LPR great and expertly encoded it into your first LPR camera out of the gate. It doesn’t bother me that it’s all just behind one checkbox - it works perfectly and out of the box - no messing around.
I’ll report back after this setup runs for a week or so. If I don’t in the interim, it’s safe to assume it’s still working 100% at night.
Until then, I’ll leave you with a set of images, in pairs (of the same plate) where the first is the Axis image recorded at the time of LPR (the "before") and the second is a screenshot of the AI Pro at the same time (the "after"). As you can see the AI pro is much clearer (same sensor size, but resolution is 8MP vs 4MP on the Axis).
full thread with images on the UI forum
I wanted to share my initial impressions of Ubiquity’s newly released AI LPR camera - particularly how it does for me at nighttime LPR.
For a little background, I have been running an Axis Q1656-DLE camera (paired to an AI port) pointed North and a Ubiquiti AI Pro pointed South. Both are mounted directly at the side of a residential street - pointed about 20 degrees into the traffic lanes. The speed limit on the street is 25MPH, but traffic is typically in the 26-30 range with about 10% going 30-35MPH. This street has about 150 car/plates per day and 30 or so of which are in the dark. The AI pro has done great during the day on LPR, but at night as everyone knows it detects motion, car, people, etc, but never 1 plate at night. The Axis does equally well to the Ai Pro during the day (via the AI Port in Protect), but at night as it is night LPR optimized (dark image) it goes blind at night so I had to resort to it’s onboard software at night for LPR.The Axis software is horrible - it only catches a single static image and the UI is 10 years out of date. Keep in mind the Axis is a $2500 camera (I didn’t pay that) and the LPR software license on it is another $600. My particular Axis also has integrated Radar - a truly unique feature that adds speed logging to recorded video and images. So I’m comparing the AI LPR against probably the gold standard of LPR - a $3000 Axis setup.
I got the new AI LPR shipped overnight as soon as it became available and installed it yesterday afternoon. Directly next to the Axis and with the same FOV. Only default setting I changed was “LPR Night Vision”, I do not have it set to “LPR Dedicated” (it still detects people, dogs, cars, barking, speaking, etc). Optical Zoom is maxed at 3X and pointed in a good area for plates. Initially I was skeptical of the AI LPR’s night possibilities in the software as “LPR night vision” is the only tweaking for Night LPR. As someone who has spent countless hours tweaking at a nano detail level the night settings on the Axis like Contrast, Local Contrast, Tone Mapping, IR Threshold, Max Shutter, Max Gain, etc I was “stuck” with just installing the AI LPR and hoping for the best?
The daytime LPR was great as I anticipated - on par with the Axis and the AI Pro - capturing 100%. Nothing new there so it looked good so far.
And then the sun set and darkness descended last night…
As the hours went through the night the AI LPR continued to shine. It captured every single plate! 100%! 37/37 in the 12 hours of dark. Combined with the great protect software, the improved timeline frame-by-frame viewer with keyboard support, it really shines. The plates are all crystal clear and easily readable.
I am super impressed by the AI LPR in my situation - it has delivered everything I was hoping for. I will likely sell the Axis camera (my keep it for the Radar speed recording only) and I’ll free up the AI Port that was on the Axis for my Overview Camera (Reolink Duo 3) that captures 180 degrees eagle view of the whole street. I’ll also get another AI LPR to replace the South AI Pro, freeing that up to use elsewhere.
All is not perfect in Protect yet for LPR however - as many know the OCR of the plates itself is still a little wonky - misreading 1 or 2 characters quite regularly (typically at the front/end of the plate, and usually letters withe mistaken for numbers or dropped altogether), and I think there is a hardcoded plate length (4) and it seems to want at least 1 or 2 numbers (regardless of plate length). That said, the plates are detected and capture is good (the important part) and I’m hopeful Ubiquiti will improve the OCR now that the hardware is in place. That said, manual review is super easy to do when needed and perfectly clear (it’s sad that you can’t save corrections though)
All-in-all, this camera is a game changer IMO. A huge kudos to the Ubiquiti engineers - you clearly spent a lot of time dissecting what makes night time LPR great and expertly encoded it into your first LPR camera out of the gate. It doesn’t bother me that it’s all just behind one checkbox - it works perfectly and out of the box - no messing around.
I’ll report back after this setup runs for a week or so. If I don’t in the interim, it’s safe to assume it’s still working 100% at night.
Until then, I’ll leave you with a set of images, in pairs (of the same plate) where the first is the Axis image recorded at the time of LPR (the "before") and the second is a screenshot of the AI Pro at the same time (the "after"). As you can see the AI pro is much clearer (same sensor size, but resolution is 8MP vs 4MP on the Axis).
