Need comments/critiques on my LPR proposal

TheGooginator

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@TheGooginator - check out this thread I mentioned earlier that @Robert G. started - look at that angle. Yours would be better and no worse than that.

I would go for a bigger plate image at a slightly worse angle than a smaller plate image at a better angle.

I will definitely check this out thanks.
 

wittaj

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@TheGooginator - it is getting there!

To tone down the headlights, since we are running a black image at night, I would knock down the brightness and up the contrast - maybe try 40 brightness and 60 contrast. Since all we care about is getting the plate, we have more ability to move these to extremes than we would trying to use it as an overview camera.

You could try adjusting the HLC a little more, but usually around 50 takes care of it.

You could also run a faster shutter - we hit the plates with a lot of IR, so it can take a faster shutter, but it also may make some plates that are not as reflective a little harder to see. I would first try brightness and contrast.
 

TheGooginator

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A few more from last night I think I am satisfied atm with the setup so I am going to begin to think about the next camera I purchase so I can get make/model/color. I really like the specs on the IPC-B5442E-Z4E. Thanks again for everyones comments I will probably come back and tweak more in the future.

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wittaj

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Do you maybe tilt down a bit - if someone has a low plate will you get it?
 

bigredfish

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Notice how every single one of your "good" caps are in the lower 1/3 of the scene? Why would you not tilt the camera down, zoom in more and get better captures. The top 2/3 of your scene is wasted.
 

TheGooginator

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Notice how every single one of your "good" caps are in the lower 1/3 of the scene? Why would you not tilt the camera down, zoom in more and get better captures. The top 2/3 of your scene is wasted.
I had a hard time with the install getting it to be where it is now I am afraid moving it down will create too much of an angle. The camera is around 11 ft high already and my house sits a little bit higher than the road. Since I get the plates with pretty good readability I really don't want to further tweak atm as it could turn out in my having to re-mount the unit. I did not create a test mount which is my own doing but I understand what everyone is saying. I will post a picture of the install later today.
 

bigredfish

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The camera will tilt without moving the mount, its adjustable 360 degrees. Tilting it (adjusting its view down a bit) wont change the angle and will improve your captures and where your IR is throwing.
 

wittaj

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Mine is on my 2nd story and my house sits above the street, so it is probably more like 3rd story height difference from cam to street. I have a worse angle than yours and going out 165 feet and still get plates.

We have all adjusted ours after initial set-up as we realize we miss something. I had mine on the first floor about 10 feet up for a year and decided to move it to 2nd floor so it wasn't as obvious and no change in quality. Actually I could even go out a little more in distance now as a mailbox was in the way at the 1st floor level and now I can catch vehicles from a dead-end street too.

Like I mentioned earlier, I decided to zoom in even tighter to improve the percentage being viewable. That is even more important if you ever decide to "automate" the reading with Plate Recognizer or OpenALPR, your FOV will send so many photos not of vehicles. Being in a cul-de-sac, you could probably get by with the free version of Plate Recognizer, but that would be dependent on not sending lots of non-vehicle pictures.
 
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TheGooginator

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The camera will tilt without moving the mount, its adjustable 360 degrees. Tilting it (adjusting its view down a bit) wont change the angle and will improve your captures and where your IR is throwing.
I will look to see about tweaking the camera position tonight if I have time and I appreciate the insistence on improving my setup :)
 

biggen

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I adjusted mine for a week before I was happy with it. No one gets it right the first time. Get back up there and tweak it!

:)
 
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