Hello! "Long time listener, first time caller."

[Gymratz]

I've been stalking these forums for a bit now. For some reason I was crazy enough to read all 158+ (at the time) pages of the Starlight thread.
I've had some cameras in the past consisting of Foscam, then Amcrest, and most recently some Hikvision Cube cameras (for inside) but had issues with all of them and low light. Given my neighborhood having an HOA, I needed to be cognizant of light pollution with my neighbors.

Got almost all the cameras from Andy - great seller.

C1 - Cheapo 2MP $39.99 from Amazon. This was just to test the quality difference. Day time it is 70% as good, night time generally sucks. Really poor compression on the device is part of the issue I believe - where the Dahua cameras hit a visual plateau as I increase bitrate, the Cheapo camera looks significantly better as I increase bitrate to the point it's using 2x what the other cameras use.
C2 - 5231R-Z - Watches driveway.
C3 - 5231R-Z - Watches RV Parking, focused primarily on gate to enter while still giving enough context for the area. Another kid's play area.
C4 - 5231R-Z - Patio and backyard mostly context driven (more to watch kids play than anything).
C5 - 5231R-ZE - Backyard to capture most blind spot and still provide decent quality on gate.
C6 - 5231R-ZE - Side yard / gate. Corridor mode.
C7 - 5231R-ZE - Mainly watching windows that aren't otherwise covered. Need to prune some branches...
C8 - 4231F-AS 3.6mm - Front Door Camera, corridor mode.

Most cameras are set to 10fps with variable bitrate, highest quality, 4096 max bitrate.
Front Door is set to 15fps, because why not.
Most other settings have remained the same and are on auto.
Everything set up on a dedicated Blue Iris machine, with tuning from this forum it is running on an i3 and staying around 40% CPU when not being actively watched. In addition to the cameras listed, I also have 6 4mp cameras inside the house - so a pretty decent MP load on the server but works well tuned right.


Attached are pictures of each camera, as well as a general idea of the layout.

Curious about any feedback - anything major I'm missing? Anything I should consider moving/focusing?

 

[Q™]

Looks good bro. Keep up the wood gork!

 

[bp2008]

On your cheap camera, try turning down/off the noise reduction and see if that un-blurs finer details? You could also try reducing frame rate but keeping bit rate as high as possible to see if that helps make each frame look better.

C6 does look a little blurry, like it isn't focused quite right.

As for the others, I don't know about you but I prefer the look of my starlights with sharpness at 0. It does look a bit duller when you first make the change, but then I get used to the more natural appearance.

 

[actran]

Nice work @Gymratz

 

[Gymratz]

Thanks guys!
@bp2008 to confirm you're talking about the one with the black gate in it? I can play around with that, but I didn't notice any focus issues. I'm mostly interested in focus at the gate and closer.
I haven't really touched any settings other than a little bit of noise reduction, I'll play with sharpness and see if I like it.
I'll play with noise reduction too and post back on that - maybe some pictures at night. I'm concerned it may look OK during the day but completely ruin any night vision. We'll see!

 

[actran]

@Gymratz Have you started configuring Blue Iris motion detection and recording based on that? Also, you have alot of access points. In addition to Blue Iris motion detection, in my case, I use also some DSC wireless contacts to alert my DSC alarm system. DSC is integrated with Vera (home automation) where Vera can trigger Blue Iris to record any action related to these gate, door, window events.

 

[Gymratz]

@actran - Right now I have it recording 24/7 with alerts based on motion.
C3 is set to object detect if goes from zone C to zone B. Zone A is everything, zone C is "outside the fence" - which is mainly the driveway, zone B is the paved area. This has worked fairly well to alert me when the gate is opened from the outside and someone comes in - while allowing me to enter the area with the kids to play and not alert.
C8 is set similar to C3, but alerts when an object goes from outside of the porch to up on the porch (close to door). Fairly good at no false positives here.
The rest are set with standard motion detection / object tracking, but with certain areas masked off (e.g. mask off road so I don't get alert of cars going by).

There are neighbors to the left and top of image. Corner lot so "most" exposed area is right/bottom of image.
I haven't played with any contact sensors yet - haven't even thought about it, so would definitely need to spend time researching. My budget for this is about fried, so would have to be something somewhat cheap that could integrate with what I already have - or wait a bit.

 

[bp2008]

@bp2008 to confirm you're talking about the one with the black gate in it? I can play around with that, but I didn't notice any focus issues. I'm mostly interested in focus at the gate and closer.

Yup. The blur is mostly noticable when you look at the ground.

 

[Gymratz]

Thank you. Not sure why the Auto Focus is failing me - maybe the bug caught in the spider web swinging back and forth near the top of the image. I'll have to get rid of that tonight >.<
I think I cleared it up a bit though here.

 

[bp2008]

Yes, that looks better.