I've got a similar angle almost the exact distance that you mentioned you had (85 feet). Any chance you can share screenshots of your options?
IPC-HFW5231E-Z12 LPR from 137 feet
- Thread starter crc2004
- Start date
Because of the turn in the street cars are moving slow so I haven't needed super fast shutter speeds, yours may be quite different if the cars are moving faster. I've been using the same zoom and focus for night and day and I'm not using any WDR or HLC.
I believe it's about 75-80 feet. FWIW camera shows zoom 920, focus 1600. If I'm figuring right I think that's 76-77% zoom.
bigredfish
Known around here
Zoom needs to be enough to fit about 2 car widths no more whatever that zoom is. The key is not trying to do too many things like overview as well as LPR with one camera.
Setting up LPR can be very tedious, every location is different. You can look through his thread and see what people are using. My settings evolved from trying other people's suggestions and experience in this thread. I REALLY appreciate their advice because if I had to start from scratch I would still be trying to get this working. With their shared experience I was able to get readable plates in a day and I continued tweaking for about a week.
I use the IPC-HFW5231E-Z12E for my LPR cam. Here's an example of my captures:
My night shots biggest enemy is mist/fog (weather related) which I seem to get on occasion - can see a bit in the shot I posted below. @bigredfish made a great suggestion for me to bump up my contrast and set a fixed shutter speed at night and that has helped even more - see bottom shot with adjusted night settings.
Note: I may not have any exact reason for my settings below, I just tweaked them all after reading many posts here and on other sites. They seem to be ok for me so that's why I've stuck with what you see below. I can't really explain "why" I've chosen some of the settings below.
I'm only trying to get a good image at a target spot of 102 feet away - I parked my car at that spot in the day and at night to adjust the focus - so I have my iris set quite open at 90 because of don't care about a narrow DOF. That way I can maximize the light coming into the lens. My understanding is that a small iris setting gives a wide DOF (good focus near and far) and a large/wide iris gives a very shallow DOF.
Adjusted night settings from @bigredfish suggestions of contrast increase and fixed shutter setting, also went to 1/1000 vs 1/500 (1ms vs 2ms):
- Vertical camera height - 11 feet
- Horizontal angle - nearly straight on (maybe 5 degrees)
- Distance from target area - 102 feet
- Zoom - full zoom (64mm)
My night shots biggest enemy is mist/fog (weather related) which I seem to get on occasion - can see a bit in the shot I posted below. @bigredfish made a great suggestion for me to bump up my contrast and set a fixed shutter speed at night and that has helped even more - see bottom shot with adjusted night settings.
Note: I may not have any exact reason for my settings below, I just tweaked them all after reading many posts here and on other sites. They seem to be ok for me so that's why I've stuck with what you see below. I can't really explain "why" I've chosen some of the settings below.
I'm only trying to get a good image at a target spot of 102 feet away - I parked my car at that spot in the day and at night to adjust the focus - so I have my iris set quite open at 90 because of don't care about a narrow DOF. That way I can maximize the light coming into the lens. My understanding is that a small iris setting gives a wide DOF (good focus near and far) and a large/wide iris gives a very shallow DOF.
Adjusted night settings from @bigredfish suggestions of contrast increase and fixed shutter setting, also went to 1/1000 vs 1/500 (1ms vs 2ms):
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It don't get any better than this! It would be hard to beat that.
Do you get those setting #'s from the Dahua SunriseSunset utility? I have my cam fully zoomed in to 64mm and my zoom setting in that utility shows 1.000.
SunriseSunset shows .769551. Also camera zoom is from 0 -1202. Doing the math, zoom of 920 out possible 1202 gives the same results, almost 77%. When I hold my mouse over the zoom slider in the camera gui I see 920.
Ahh, I see it now - never knew it showed a number on the zoom slider in the cameras UI. Mine's at 1202 (max zoom). If the cam has a range of 5.3 - 64mm, I wonder if the same math would apply to determine the focal length at your setting.
(64-5.7)*0.77 = 45.2mm zoom ?
Yes, I wrote down settings every time I changed zoom and focus in my tweaking, those numbers were what I depended on. Good question about the focal length. I've seen a post or 2 about using math with varifocals to determine focal lengths - that can be useful to know. What you figured sounds reasonable to me.
Actually that formula won't work because then I'd never reach 64mm zoom, I'd only get to 58.3mm at 100%. Need a math guru here LOL
Check this out from the tools link:
www.ipcamtalk.com
Focal Length Calculator
Calculate the focal point of a camera to help determine the best size lens to order. Save & view your results later.
Gotta love this..
Guess how PlateRecognizer tagged this plate?
SCH00LBUS
Maybe worth jumping over to another service, but luckily my road is a cul-de-sac and I get 2 shots at every car that enters the frame. On the way in the plate was read successfully.
This is at max zoom
I need to test my night settings, but I've copied from many here. We shall see.
Guess how PlateRecognizer tagged this plate?
SCH00LBUS
Maybe worth jumping over to another service, but luckily my road is a cul-de-sac and I get 2 shots at every car that enters the frame. On the way in the plate was read successfully.
This is at max zoom
I need to test my night settings, but I've copied from many here. We shall see.
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Plate Recognizer will do the same thing LOL. A van when through here with their website, contractor license numbers, plates, etc. slapped all over the vehicle, when it was all said and done, Plate Recognizer reported back 8 plates LOL - the good thing is it did capture the plate as well, so I was able to dismiss what I knew were not plates.
Oops just made an edit, but yea I'm using Plate Recognizer ALPR, sorry for the confusion!
I understand that these HFW5241EP-Z12E cameras are LPR projects that need a lot of tweaking. The cameras are great - but the firmware is just awful. One day they work fine, picking up plates day and night, then the next day they randomly go out of focus and stay in night mode for days until rebooted.
A new firmware that should bring a solution brings just an unexpected new problem. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. Has anyone found a firmware version that isn't terrible?
Also, is the sunrise/sunset utility still working for people? Mine has stopped working after a recent firmware update.
A new firmware that should bring a solution brings just an unexpected new problem. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. Has anyone found a firmware version that isn't terrible?
Also, is the sunrise/sunset utility still working for people? Mine has stopped working after a recent firmware update.
Mine works great, the focus is set with the sunrise/sunset utility each day no problem. What made you update the FW? I haven't touched my FW lately.