LPR Setup SUCCESS with HFW5241E-Z12E

[samplenhold]

If you place the cam on the tree at the street, how will you get the cable under the sidewalk? I have done that before, when I was much younger, and it was not fun. Plus you have mature trees there. There will be roots galore. Before you commit to that position, you should test it. Also, are you going to have a cam looking in the opposite direction to catch the cars that do not have front plates? I have set mine up this way and it helps as sometimes one cam does not get a good cap but the other cam does.

 

[IReallyLikePizza2]

If you place the cam on the tree at the street, how will you get the cable under the sidewalk? I have done that before, when I was much younger, and it was not fun. Plus you have mature trees there. There will be roots galore. Before you commit to that position, you should test it. Also, are you going to have a cam looking in the opposite direction to catch the cars that do not have front plates? I have set mine up this way and it helps as sometimes one cam does not get a good cap but the other cam does.

There is a small gap where my pathway meets the sidewalk, I plan to go in there

If that won't work, I'll get some friends to help me just lift a slab. One had to be leveled out recently anyway, and I saw them lift it without too much problems

Yes, I am going to get a second camera to face the other way too

 

[sebastiantombs]

Another dodge is to trench up to the side walk, then trench directly opposite on the other side. Drive a metal pipe, big enough to clear the conduit for the CAT cables, with a cap on it from one side to the other. It's probably 3 feet or less of sidewalk to go under and you don;t need to lift a slab that way.

 

[IReallyLikePizza2]

Yep that's a good idea

I just adjusted the camera to be a little further down the street, the downside is that there are some small trees in the way, the upside is that now if a car parks in that space, I SHOULD still get a plate

Still leaning towards putting them on the front trees though

 

[SyconsciousAu]

how will you get the cable under the sidewalk?

Orbit Walkway Tunnel Kit 53333 - The Home Depot

The Walkway Tunnel Kit has a jet stream nozzle that is ideal for tunneling under driveways, walkways, etc. It can connect to any standard garden hose and adapts to 3/4 in. or 1 in. PVC pipe. Materials

www.homedepot.com

The process

Drive a metal pipe, big enough to clear the conduit for the CAT cables, with a cap on it from one side to the other.

You must live somewhere with soft dirt. I'm super jealous.

 

[sebastiantombs]

Yeah, we do. It's the tail end of a glacier from the Ice Age and at one time was a beach. Back when I was a kid I lived where it was clay about three feet down. I watched a plumber drive a pipe through that for about a 50 foot drive, by hand. He had a machine, powered by him, no motor, and just pushed it through from the basement to the water main in the street. Took about a half hour.

 

[samplenhold]

Orbit Walkway Tunnel Kit 53333 - The Home Depot

The Walkway Tunnel Kit has a jet stream nozzle that is ideal for tunneling under driveways, walkways, etc. It can connect to any standard garden hose and adapts to 3/4 in. or 1 in. PVC pipe. Materials

www.homedepot.com

The process

That is actually how I did it. But due to a lot of tree roots, it was not as easy as the video makes it out to be. I had to do a lot of cutting and had to make the hole much bigger. Then getting the dirt back in is another chore.

 

[biggen]

Generally the sidewalk (and anything past it towards the road) is City right of way. If you live in a private community with privately owned roads then the HOA will have right-of-way. I doubt they would ever say anything to you, but they could ask you to remove it. If code enforcement drives by and see you tunneling or lifting City slab I can almost guarantee they will stop to see what you are doing.

Make sure you do the call before you dig. Utility companies will certainly have power, water, sewer, etc.. running under and near the sidewalk.

 

[samplenhold]

If code enforcement drives by and see you tunneling or lifting City slab I can almost guarantee they will stop to see what you are doing.

It's two am, the fear is gone, I'm sittin' here waitin'...

 

[CCTVCam]

Yep that's a good idea

I just adjusted the camera to be a little further down the street, the downside is that there are some small trees in the way, the upside is that now if a car parks in that space, I SHOULD still get a plate

Still leaning towards putting them on the front trees though

View attachment 77039

You're never going to prevent every eventuallity. What if someone parks a van where the small white car is? You won't get a shot then either. I think you need to accept that the way forward is to choose the best spot for plate capture and then hope no-one parks there. It only becomes a problem if a) someone parks there regularly and b) if you only have one camera reading LP's. If as most people do you have one pointing in each direction then if 1 direction is blocked the chances are the other isn't and will capture the car from the other direction.

 

[IReallyLikePizza2]

Some updates, I have the camera mounted, I plan on painting it the same color as the tree, maybe even throw a fake branch up there?

Mounting this thing with the pigtail of wires sure sucks, so this is the best I could do







I'll even out the lawn on the weekend

 

[wittaj]

Looking forward to the pics from that location!

 

[IReallyLikePizza2]

I'm not a fan of the attached wire being exposed, but I'm not sure what else I could have done. I'm going to spray everything including the cable with paint, so that should help it last longe

I could also split some kind over cover over it

Also didn't want to put an RJ45 jack on there, but there was no way I could do a jack and a patch cable. Tests fine though despite it looking rough, passes the fluke








Thats right on 100ft. Still need to do some fine tuning on the angle of the camera and rotation etc






Where it enters the house

 

[sebastiantombs]

I'd suggest a 4x4 or 6x6 weatherproof electrical box with the camera mounted directly to it. That will protect the pigtail and all the connections. I'd also use SealTite conduit all the way up from the ground to the box. Be aware that trees, even big ones like that one, tend to grow more than we may normally notice. I have two tree mounted cameras and had the conduit attached to the tree using 1/4" aluminum bar stock to prevent the conduit from being pinched as the tree expands its diameter.

Let me know if you find a good color match and what it is. I used "camo" and it still stands out a little.

 

[IReallyLikePizza2]

I plan on doing a mix of grey and brown, like the tree currently is. Hopefully I don't make a mess!

We will see how this goes, if I think its not going to last I could upgrade the box.

I need to angle the camera down a little I think, but so far the results have been pretty much 100% playing with OpenALPR

 

[samplenhold]

Mounting this thing with the pigtail of wires sure sucks, so this is the best I could do

Why did you not just use the Dahua PFA121 box that is made for this purpose? Also, you really should use the supplied waterproof connector for the RJ45 and some dielectric grease.

 

[IReallyLikePizza2]

Well damn, I guess I'll pick one of those up!

I'm not too worried about the RJ45, it can't get wet where it is

 

[IReallyLikePizza2]

The IR on these is so good the pictures look photoshopped

 

[SyconsciousAu]

Those are some great captures, but I shudder when I see exposed cables that any vandal could cut with a pair of scissors.

Like @samplenhold said, get the junction box, and can I suggest putting some conduit in to protect the cable as it runs up the tree.

If you don't like the look of conduit running up the side of the tree there are several people on this forum who have cut vertical rebates into the side of the tree to run/hide the conduit / cable

I've personally got all my cable that goes into or out of the ground behind steel these days. In earlier installs I just used PVC conduit but as the sun did it's thing they became brittle and getting too close with the line trimmer one day broke the conduit.

Also have you considered painting the install in a colour to match the tree?

Out of curiosity, what stream are you feeding to the Openalpr watchman program, and how much CPU is it using in your setup? I'm feeding mine 20fps at 2mp and it uses about 20% processor.

 

[IReallyLikePizza2]

This is Texas, if someone gets near those cables they won't be leaving the cables alive

I ordered the junction box, I'll update tomorrow when its installed

Yep, I'll be painting it to match the tree, just want to verify everything works as it should first

I am feeding OpenALPR from a different system, this is 2MP 30FPS max quality and no QuickSync as its a VM. I'll tune it more for lower CPU usage when I get it in place fully, this system has 2 x Xeon E5-2680 V4's which are 14 Cores/28 Threads each so I'm not too concerned about CPU yet