LPR with a pair of IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E

C

Chicken

Getting the hang of it
Dec 30, 2016
45
35
So I picked up a pair of the IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E cameras from Andy last week and installed them a few days ago. I live on the outside turn of a small circle so I needed to have a pair of these as a lot of people do not have front plates around here it seems like. I have only just started playing with the tuning of them so I know I can get them to look alot better so if you have any tips on my settings please feel free to share. Hopefully this is useful to others looking to setup their own LPR system.

I installed both cameras about 10' off of the ground, one above my garage door (named NE-LPR) and the other on the side of the front porch (named SE-LPR). The NE-LPR camera is straight onto the street so it has a great shot of the vehicles coming and going, while the SE-LPR camera is off axis by about 25 degrees or so. Sometimes its worse as people either take the turn really wide or cut the corner pretty close. I have the cameras focused out about 100' each due to the turn in the road. I tried going closer but I had to zoom out to wide to pickup the whole turn.

Here is a rough picture of the way I have the cameras installed.

LPR Camera install.jpg

This is a shot during the day of the SE facing camera (in green above)
SE LPR Day.jpeg

This is a shot during night / early dawn of the NE facing camera (in blue above). I'll get a better middle of the night shot tonight to share as it will be nearly black besides the lights and plates. Our city upgraded the streetlights to LEDs a few years back and its near pitch black out unless there is a full moon overhead.
NE LPR Night.jpeg

Currently I do not have any supplemental IR lights for these cameras setup and I am hoping to avoid it. I did run into the focus issue as other have had with these cameras and had to use the great Dahua Sunset Sunrise utility running on my BI DVR. I have it set to switch the cameras to B&W an hour beside sunset and keep them there until an hour after sunrise and that seems to work in the short time I have had it running. I'll post screenshots of the camera settings in a few hours after the kids go down. Please let me know any questions you guys have and I'll try to answer them. As I mentioned above if you have any tips on how to better my setup please let me know as well.
 
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Here are my current settings video settings
LPR Video Settings.jpg

Here are the Day Conditions Settings
LPR Day 1.jpg
LPR Day 2.jpg
LPR Day 3.jpg
LPR Day 4.jpg
LPR Day 5.jpg
LPR Day 6.jpg
LPR Day 7.jpg
 
What is the distance to the plates?

Interesting your'e using WDR at night in B&W. Try turning it off. The image may get darker and/or you may have to increase shutter speed, but WDR typically adds some blur..
 
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In the night profile, try putting the shutter speed on 1/2000, that might help too.

There is no "magical" setting, this is trial&error as each situation/environment is different for each cam.

Good luck!
CC
 
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bigredfish said:
What is the distance to the plates?

Interesting your'e using WDR at night in B&W. Try turning it off. The image may get darker and/or you may have to increase shutter speed, but WDR typically adds some blur..
Click to expand...

The plates are both right about ~100ft. I just turned off WDR and turned on HLC at 50. Do you think that would be better for night or just leave blacklight off totally? Thanks
 
I tried 1/2000 at night and it seemed iffy as its so dark here at at about 100ft I dont know if I was getting enough IR. I then tested it at 1/1000 and it seemed ok. I then moved it to 1/500 and it was great. I'll try 1/1000 again tonight but I may end up back at 1/500. The only good thing for me is I am on a corner and people have to slow down as its sort of blind depending on what cars are parked on the street. Thanks!
catcamstar said:
In the night profile, try putting the shutter speed on 1/2000, that might help too.

There is no "magical" setting, this is trial&error as each situation/environment is different for each cam.

Good luck!
CC
Click to expand...
 
Chicken said:
The plates are both right about ~100ft. I just turned off WDR and turned on HLC at 50. Do you think that would be better for night or just leave blacklight off totally? Thanks
Click to expand...


I dont run any backlight on mine
 
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That looks pretty darn good! Congrats

And a correction, I DO run HLC on one of the Z12's.
 
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On one I do on the other I let switch to color in daytime. But I use the Schedule to switch one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset
 
It's not crispy as chips, but your daytime & night shots look very good! All things being "equal" (eg too much darkness, sun beams flashing & yielding in your lens on which you can't "protect" yourself of), they are of value.

Only improvement point if I may: it looks like your shots are taken when the cars are already taking their turn - your FOV is not "inline" with the plate, so not sure if you could point a bit more "to the left" before they turn?
 
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If you see the first post I am on the outside of a turn and have focused down the street to an extent but depending on what cars are parked on the street at any given time people will cut the corner, as you see in my last daytime post. I could max out the zoom and aim them down the street a little further but I am afraid the IR will not be enough then. I am going to tune them a little more and maybe try to move out a another 10-15’ and see what it looks like. Thanks!
catcamstar said:
It's not crispy as chips, but your daytime & night shots look very good! All things being "equal" (eg too much darkness, sun beams flashing & yielding in your lens on which you can't "protect" yourself of), they are of value.

Only improvement point if I may: it looks like your shots are taken when the cars are already taking their turn - your FOV is not "inline" with the plate, so not sure if you could point a bit more "to the left" before they turn?
Click to expand...
 
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Take notes as you play with settings! Helped me greatly as I tried different suggestions from everyone here. If something worked or didn’t I knew my previous settings to revert back to. Also try to change only a few settings at a time so you know what it was that made the difference. By the looks of it you are almost there. I was surprised at how much difference a small angle change made in reliability.
 
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FPS matters on these cameras? I see 30FPS above. I have it on 15FPS.
 
IMHO it does for LPR.

Depending on the speed of the vehicle, and attack angle you have. ...
The plate can pass my capture spot in as little as 4-6 frames with an angle of about 30 degrees.
 

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I have my main streams at 30FPS which is what ALPR is accessing. Then I have a sub stream at 15fps that blue iris takes. I've found the recorded 15fps is good enough for human readability. While the 30fps gives ALPR a higher accuracy. YMMV.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Chicken said:
If you see the first post I am on the outside of a turn and have focused down the street to an extent but depending on what cars are parked on the street at any given time people will cut the corner, as you see in my last daytime post. I could max out the zoom and aim them down the street a little further but I am afraid the IR will not be enough then. I am going to tune them a little more and maybe try to move out a another 10-15’ and see what it looks like. Thanks!
Click to expand...

Any updates? My camera will be here Monday.
 
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