Night Video on a yacht

[butcher]

Mostly new to IP cams. I have a little bit of experience with blue iris in a home setting. I have an older yacht ~35' long that I'm trying to modernize a bit. I have two main goals for the video system. I want to see better at night while I'm cruising and I want to see into the engine room, so I don't have to open the hatch.

I currently have an i5 NUC with 16gb ram and 512gb m.2 ssd on board which records the engine telemetry, is a media player, and will control some of the lighting. I'd like to use this if possible. I'm not trying to record everything, clicking a few buttons in BI to record for a couple hours as needed is good enough. I have 110v available, but the generator has to be running, so as much as I can, I want stuff I can adapt to work from my 12v system (similar to a car, sits @12.5v when not running and ~14.4V when operating).

Goal 1: Can I use something like those $20 backup vehicle cameras paired with a composite video to usb converter to feed a blue iris install?
- I think this is the most economical path if it will work. The backup cameras are probably more resistant to fumes/grime and I don't have to mess with extra power supplies, but they are seem to have RCA/composite outputs. All i'm really interested in seeing here is: water in the bilge, are my pumps working? and which lights on my battery chargers are illuminated? There would be two cams (one per motor). Are there any recommendations for the RCA/Composite > USB? Cam would be mounted about 3 feet from the front of the motors
-Are there other cams that would fit this application better for under $100?
-I've seen some slick thermal cam solutions for this application to monitor heat @ manifolds and bearings, but not trying to spend a ton on this part.

Goal 2: Whats best at the ~$200, $600, $1200 price points for a camera with good night mode? My goal is to get a better look at other boats out there not trying to detect a swimmer a mile away... The usage is almost all coastal/bays/intracoastal waterway type areas.
- Basically, the good looking FLIR units purpose built for this application are $10-20k. I want to see how close I can get for ~ 1/10th that, all in.
- I was browsing some videos for dahua starlight and axis lightfinder. These look like great results. They were fixed installs; will the video degrade a lot if they are in motion?
- Ideally the camera would be permanently mounted to the top of my radar arch. The boat is stored in a warehouse 90% of the time where I don't need the camera active and it's out of the elements. The cam will sit about 14' above the water, so direct salt water isn't much of a factor, but certainly salty windspray and occasional rain is a concern.
-Primary concern is night vision quality. Pan/tilt would be good. zoom seems less important.

Thank you

 

[Aengus4h]

I expect your biggest issue in terms of night viz when out on the water will be the huge expanse of blackness that you won't easily be able to illuminate, which would likely give very poor detail capture even with a good StarVis sensor and lens combo. Shutter speeds wouldn't be slow enough and if the boat is moving then a slow shutter would result in very blurred picture. You could put up IR illuminators to give some chance of improving that, but what range are you hoping to monitor? Bear in mind that the effectiveness of camera & IR will be compromised as the boat pitches about in the water, unless you plan to fit some sort of self-levelling gimble to mount them on.

 

[looney2ns]

For the engines, these would work well, and you'd not have the composite video conversion mess.
Put SD cards in them if you want to record.
ANNKE I61DR 2MP (Hikvision Cube Clone)

 

[butcher]

There is some ambient light from the stars, moon, and city reflecting off any cloud cover. Plus all of the waterfront property and the things I really care about (other boats) theoretically have lights on too. Plus the water mostly reflects light instead of absorbing it like a field or road. So it's not a barren blackness. I can deal with some noise too. The pitching is something i've thought of too, but for the most part, the boat is pretty big and steady.

 

[Valiant]

Some of the more expensive Axis cameras have optical image stabilisation (OIS). Might be handy to steady the video image.

 

[CCTVCam]

Both the cameras you linked to are in the £2-3K range. The reason they're in that range is they're using huge sensors 1/3rd inch. You're not going to get those sensors in a cheap camera.

Personally, for the engine room, I'd consider some led lighting, even if low level. You get a much more meaningful picture if it's in colour and even the best camera will struggle in total darkness. A cheaper camera such as that suggested by Looney is much cheaper even bought with an LED light, or couple if you want some redundancy, than a $2 or 3K camera that's still going to struggle to deliver in total darkness.

eg. I use 8W LED traditionally shaped bulbs in my ceiling fixings at home as these are way brighter than a traditional 60W bulb. Depending on the size of your yacht, if the engine room is a small compartment and under eg a hatch, you could consider something like an LED strip light. If you're yacht is bigger and has a walk in engine room, then maybe a traditional style LED light bulb? A few watts won't hammer your power supply.

Either way, I think you'll see better visibility with a good camera + lights than a fantastic mega expensive camera and total darkness. Obviously you need to take advice on marine safety about installing lighting in a room with flammable fuel, but generally many led strips run cool. Again for things like specialist marine bulkhead fittings that may be engine safe, there will be LED bulbs that fit as all common lightbulbs sizes are now made in LED. Note: Any lighting, should be daylight with a high colour rendering index for best results, rather than the colour you prefer or a cheap fitting with no specified Colour Rating. Cameras see differently to our eyes and so can be more sensitive to colour tints that eyes which have a brain to compensate. You can pick even high colour rendering bulbs up for less than $10. Also don't rule out small floodlights. A 10w flood can be had for around $10 or less and a 15W flood for around $15. Again the lighting type is going to depend on marine safety requirements and the size of the engine room.

As for externally, I've be dreaming recently and looking at large yachts on Youtube (!) and from what I've seen most expensive yachts seem to use FLIR.

The cheapest viable solution appears to be the MD 625 at 640x480 resolution (there is a slightly cheaper model but it's only 340), however, these come seem to be priced just under $5K at the site I looked at.FLIR's marine systems are here: Marine Systems | FLIR Systems

Only thing I could think of for a normal camera, would be one of the Starlight 2mp (have the best night vision) dahua cameras and maybe a powerful IR light if that alone doesn't see far enough. The current favourites for both dome and turret style powered zoom cameras, can be found in dedicated threads on this forums. There's a list and some links here: Dahua 2MP Starlight Lineup

A gimble would seem sensible however, you may need one specially for the marine environment to avoid corrosion and seizure. Not sure how easy it would be to find a gimble to take a turret camera.

For shooting (firearm) purposes they sometimes use IR lasers as illuminators, however, these are torch based and only only for a few seconds. I doubt you could run them permanently because of lifetime and heat considerations. On trawlers they seem to resort to ordinary flood lighting but they don't see far. I'm guessing one solution for longer vision might IR illuminators especially if you could get something high power with a long more spotlight style reach rather than a simple flood. Unsure where you'd source it - Ali Express etc maybe?

Hope this helps. Far from an expert, but learning!

 

[Aengus4h]

Yeah thermal cameras at good resolution are pricey. I have an Argus 3 ex fire services kicking around here, 320x240 resolution, BST/FPA sensor so different technology to the FLIR ones, think they used to cost in the region of £3-5K and can have a remote viewer over wireless as well. Very rugged and heavy and only really useful to around 30 meters, but then its intended use is to see your way in smoke/fire situations and locate dangers/victims.

I'd have thought if the aim is to avoid collision or have awareness of other boats around the best solution really would be radar as that'd sweep the 360 area around, where a camera will provide only a limited FOV and probably poor resolution and limited ability to discern objects against the background in v low light...

 

[CCTVCam]

I agree radar is an essential. However, I would imagine he has it anyway from the sounds of his boat. Hard to know without feedback from the OP.

I'm guessing he probably wants to be able to see small especially non metallic objects that radar doesn't pick up, such as plastic navigation boys, very small boats, tree log hazards and then sea state, oncoming waves, flows, jetty's etc.