HDW5231R-ZE settings for LPR

[carbonita]

How are folks tuning your cams for those wonderful night plate captures? I've been twiddling with a HDW5231R-ZE as an upgrade to an older non-Dahua camera for about a week. Daytime images are good, but night and twilight are problematic. Below are the settings I've tried, but I've yet to get a legible capture for 30mph vehicles on an non-street lit road.

Exposure: Shutter priority at 0-1ms. Tried 2ms, 4ms to reduce noise at twilight.
Auto Iris: On
3dnr: Tried off and on. Tried grade of 9 and 50 (presume this is proportional to the time-averaged frames?)
Sharpness: Tried 50-60.
Contrast: Tried 50-60.
HLC: Tried 40-75.
WB: Outdoor
IR: Tried SmartIR and Off (external IR sources).

System Version 2.622.0000000.31.R, Build Date: 2018-08-13
WEB Version V3.2.1.616707

Can someone share settings (or even better, their tuning process) that works for this camera? Below is a typical night image, same vehicle front and (illuminated) rear plate.

 

[bigredfish]

Shutter manual 1/2000
Gain 10-40
Iris 40
HLC 65
3dnr 45
Smart IR on

You may need more or less HLC depending on the angle of the headlights to the camera

Note that when switching from color to B&W/IR the camera tends to lose focus. Seems to be somewhat dependent on how far you zoom. More zoom = more chance it loses focus. Read up on the focus issue in this forum...

 

[carbonita]

@bigredfish -- thanks, I'll give this a go tonight (I only see auto-iris on/off though, no numerical setting visible). I've been manually focusing after BW switch based on the focus issue, and will script fix (AFAIK the only way to remedy) once the cam passes testing.

 

[richardgohth]

Gain is too high
Exposure ( not exposure time ) is too high

 

[bigredfish]

Agree probably.

Mine seems good at 10-30 or 10-40 no more.

Also @carbonita you may play with the exposure a bit, 1/1000 or 1/2000 should work fine. See pics, you should just see a wee bit of light where the tailights are and the IR reflection off the plate.

Some plates are better than others. Some are dirty, old or have an anti reflective cover. Some are so mangled you just aint gonna read them..

 

[carbonita]

Them there are some sweet captures. Can't wait for nightfall

Edit: Gain and shutter prio appear to be mutually exclusive (using web activex gui). LMK if I can constrain shutter AND gain concurrently. I was guessing that when the exposure time was decreased, the camera increased the gain in response, since the visual noise increases with shorter times.

 

[bigredfish]

 

[carbonita]

Thanks @bigredfish and whoa! -- first night plate is mighty nice

 

[bigredfish]

Progress!

 

[richardgohth]

Thanks @bigredfish and whoa! -- first night plate is mighty nice

View attachment 34777

did it read?

 

[carbonita]

@richardgohth No OCR software capability connected (yet). Wetware (eyeballs) declare initial success though.

 

[bigredfish]

From here, play with just one setting at a time. Exposure (probably choose between 1/1000 and 1/2000), then HLC (maybe a bit more), then Gain (maybe a bit less), then Iris (again maybe a bit less).

Ive found 3DNR will cause blur over 45-50 so keep under that, WDR will also. Other than those, motion blur seems to be primarily exposure speed.

 

[carbonita]

First masked plate. I've gimp'd around the vehicle, and reduced resolution, since these images were shared with neighbors, who might inadvertently share.

 

[carbonita]

The plate image attached reads as T U S N O B O in cloud.google.com/vision -- pretty close. Using the settings below, one profile for day and night seems to work fine (as does focus set with IR cut filter off):

Anti-flicker outdoor
Mode manual
Shutter 1/500
Gain 10-40
Auto Iris On
3dnr On , Grade 45
HLC 70
IR: SmartIR

Impressed with this IMX291 sensor (and this forum!).

 

[bigredfish]

Excellent!

May try 1/1000 just to see if it reduces the headlight glare a bit more

 

[richardgohth]

reduce the gain for the headlights
exposure time is fine

 

[carbonita]

I'll give all suggestions a try -- too bad I'm not on a busier street . During the daytime, a motorcycle plate shot is not so hot. I have my camera ~9ft up, which helped to avoid headlight flare with the previous camera -- maybe this cam's HLC is good enough to mount lower, and catch these smaller and angled downward plates (?)

 

[richardgohth]

I'll give all suggestions a try -- too bad I'm not on a busier street . During the daytime, a motorcycle plate shot is not so hot. I have my camera ~9ft up, which helped to avoid headlight flare with the previous camera -- maybe this cam's HLC is good enough to mount lower, and catch these smaller and angled downward plates (?)

gain too high
bitrate too low

 

[bigredfish]

agree with @richardgohth now that I look at your images on laptop instead of phone, Gain is too high.

As to Bitrate and FPS, I run max on both for the tag cameras and it works well. 30fps and 8192 bitrate. I run 1/1000 on the one cam at the culdesac and 1/2000 on the Entrance cam as cars are traveling 25-30mph and need the faster shutter to reduce blur. This IR illuminator helps Tendelux BI18

2 captures from each from last night

 

[carbonita]

@richardgohth , @bigredfish -- I'll give it a go today. I've tried 1/1000 shutter, but plates get too dark/noisy. I have so many illuminators that the neighbors (with Nest cam) were wondering what was up