Help needed with cam location

[elbillete]

Hello everyone.

Somewhat of a newbie here but have been lurking for a while. Based on what I have read seems that the Z12 is the way to go. I have ordered and received two cams from Andy and am now ready to mount them somewhere? My house does not have the best angles to the street and does have a good amount of trees in the front. I have the added difficulty of having the house somewhat setback from the street increasing the angles a bit. I know that some of you have had good success in capturing the tags from a fair distance away, however not sure what angles you are faced with or what is an acceptable angle. Practically speaking, other than less than 30 degrees what is considered acceptable?

These are the possible locations for the cams, including some of the trees I have to try and shoot through. I do need to capture both directions but could mix and match locations if needed. Appreciate any comments or advise.

 

[wittaj]

If you can get around/under tree, I believe those angles will work. Mine are worse angles than that and higher than street and yours will be fairly straight on.

Certainly do a test rig to confirm the location works before you run wires.

 

[elbillete]

If you can get around/under tree, I believe those angles will work. Mine are worse angles than that and higher than street and yours will be fairly straight on.

Certainly do a test rig to confirm the location works before you run wires.

Thanks for the response. I should have been more clear. The pictures with the trees was just to show the distance between trees and not the angle of the camera. The cams are actually going on the roof overhang which is 14' high on top of the house already being around 3 feet higher than the street.

 

[wittaj]

I realized that; my house sits 12 feet above the street and my LPR cam is on the 2nd story and I get them fine.

 

[samplenhold]

Do not think that you NEED to mount them on your house. High angles like that will probably end up with largely foreshortened plate caps, which can be hard/impossible to read. Add rain, or night time issues, and things get harder still.

When I decided to get into LPR, I spent a lot of time sitting on my front porch just looking at the traffic and getting to know the distances, angles, and access issues. I used my iPhone to take pics of passing cars from different places to see just how foreshortened the plates would be. The IPVM shot of my house was used to calculate the angles. I finally decided on putting a 'camera box' in the flower beds closest to the street. That gave me the best possible angles. I live on a 'T' corner with the top of the 'T' running in front of my house. So I needed two cams, one pointing towards the intersection (East) and one pointing down the street (West).

But I did not buy both cams at the same time. I bought one and placed it on a carboard box in the flower bed as a test to see if the zoom, angle and IR at night would work. Once this was confirmed, I bought the second cam and began building the box. But the biggest issue was getting the cat5e to the front of the house. Finally got everything installed yesterday and I am getting great shots of plates, even at night and in the light rain today.

Here are some pics to give you some ideas. Keep an open mind about where to mount the cams.



Decided to put cams behind this tree. These are some test shots from that position with an iPhone.


Tests shots from on carboard box at proposed locations using the Dahua IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E. Ran the stills though Plate Recognizer to see if they would be viable.


Box and cams installed.


Some east cam caps:


West cam caps:


No night caps from the west cam. Still working out the settings. Having issues with night focus.

Hope this helps.

Like @wittaj said about the tree.

 

[wittaj]

@samplenhold - glad to see you finally got it installed! Looks great!

 

[samplenhold]

glad to see you finally got it installed! Looks great!

Thanks! With the temps finally getting cooler, made a big push over the weekend. Finally got them wired yesterday and have been running them since.

 

[wittaj]

What is the issue with night focus - is it not holding or something else? Are you using the sunrise/sunset utility?

 

[elbillete]

I realized that; my house sits 12 feet above the street and my LPR cam is on the 2nd story and I get them fine.

Damn, you are way up there! Well, if it works for you then I stand a good chance it will work for me.

 

[samplenhold]

What is the issue with night focus - is it not holding or something else? Are you using the sunrise/sunset utility?

Night focus gets smurfed. I am not yet using that utility. It is funny. The East cam has no issue with focus, but the West cam does. I think that I have the night schedule coming on a little earlier on the East cam and it holds. Each cam has it's own settings that are different from the other. The East cam has two street lights and is close to my coach light on that corner. The West cam only has the street light at the end of my driveway but does get some light from the coach lights on the end of the garage. So all of the exposure settings are different.

Another issue is that since I bought the cams a month apart, they have different firmware versions and different exposure controls. I noticed that the latest firmware has the manual focus hold option, so I am going to update to that version. But I have never updated any of my 21 cams firmware before and I need to read up on how to do it.

 

[samplenhold]

Damn, you are way up there! Well, if it works for you then I stand a good chance it will work for me.

Before you mount them, use a test rig to see if it will work.

 

[wittaj]

Damn, you are way up there! Well, if it works for you then I stand a good chance it will work for me.

Yeah, I just don't have the tree issue - provided that they are not in your way, I think you will get some decent images at those angles.

Night focus gets smurfed. I am not yet using that utility. It is funny. The East cam has no issue with focus, but the West cam does. I think that I have the night schedule coming on a little earlier on the East cam and it holds. Each cam has it's own settings that are different from the other. The East cam has two street lights and is close to my coach light on that corner. The West cam only has the street light at the end of my driveway but does get some light from the coach lights on the end of the garage. So all of the exposure settings are different.

Another issue is that since I bought the cams a month apart, they have different firmware versions and different exposure controls. I noticed that the latest firmware has the manual focus hold option, so I am going to update to that version. But I have never updated any of my 21 cams firmware before and I need to read up on how to do it.

Yeah, I was using the schedule in the cams and it just got to be a hassle because if you run it too close to the limits and it is overly cloudy or raining hard, the focus is shot, so I went with that utility and haven't looked back since. The nice thing is if there is a power bleep/outage, etc. at night, with the utility, it will start the camera back up at night with the proper focus setting.

 

[elbillete]

Do not think that you NEED to mount them on your house. High angles like that will probably end up with largely foreshortened plate caps, which can be hard/impossible to read. Add rain, or night time issues, and things get harder still.

When I decided to get into LPR, I spent a lot of time sitting on my front porch just looking at the traffic and getting to know the distances, angles, and access issues. I used my iPhone to take pics of passing cars from different places to see just how foreshortened the plates would be. The IPVM shot of my house was used to calculate the angles. I finally decided on putting a 'camera box' in the flower beds closest to the street. That gave me the best possible angles. I live on a 'T' corner with the top of the 'T' running in front of my house. So I needed two cams, one pointing towards the intersection (East) and one pointing down the street (West).

I have thought a lot about location, believe me. I don't know how many hours I have poured into this already. Going through the same process of going outside and walking around evaluating/exploring possibilities. I have considered the bird house, adding to a tree similar to a game cam, even adding a fake electrical box and placing them inside. In all cases there was an issue and came coming back to the overhang. Seems like you came up with a great solution for your needs. Unfortunately, I think I am stuck and need to work with what I have. Thanks for the idea though.

 

[elbillete]

Before you mount them, use a test rig to see if it will work.

Definitely, I wouldn't consider otherwise. It was so much easier to run the cabling while the house was under construction. If only I would have thought about it then.

 

[elbillete]

Yeah, I just don't have the tree issue - provided that they are not in your way, I think you will get some decent images at those angles.

Having said that, what would you consider the best location to be given the distance and angles?

 

[wittaj]

I would try your IPVM #1 angles first and see if the trees are in the way. You will be surprised how big of an angle you can get before you start missing more plates than you get. Obviously the straighter the shot the better, but most of us have it under less than ideal angles and still get over 95% - which is hard to get 100% anyway as some plates are dirty, rusty, temp tags, etc.