TheWaterbug
Getting comfortable
TL;DR: How to trigger 3 cameras in BI when my mailbox is opened?
Long version: After a spate of neighborhood break-ins, it's finally time for me to install cameras out on the street. I have a BI 5.5.2.5 installation running 12 cameras on renewed Core i7-6700-based PC. I live at the end of Tee, and my mailbox is pretty much perfectly positioned to see down the Tee as well as in both directions of the cross street:
Here's the "boresight" view from the mailbox:
I don't want my house or neighborhood to look like a prison yard, but I can put two eyeball cameras just beneath the mailbox, and they won't look too horrible, but of course then they won't be able to see down the boresight view:
To look down the street, it occurred to me that an eyeball camera looks pretty much like the round finial thingy on top of my mailbox post!
I'm going to run 2 strings of outdoor-rated Ethernet in PVC conduit out to the post, so I'll be able to power the cameras, and I will put a POE-powered-POE switch out there so I can power more than 2 devices. I will set up BI to record continuously, but motion-triggers aren't going to be very useful because there is a fair amount of vehicle traffic on the streets.
So now, the questions:
How do I trigger the cameras when the mailbox is opened? Are there affordable POE eyeball cameras with hardware trigger inputs?
I saw this thread and the attached PDF on using the Shelly1 device with BI, but WiFi is very, very iffy out by the mailbox, so I don't want to rely on it; I'd much rather have an Ethernet-based Shelly-like device, like the Shelly Pro 1, but Shelly says that's "coming soon" with a 404 error when you click the pre-order link.
Lately I've been buying these Amcrest IP5M-T1179EW-28MM units, because they're cheap, they have audio, they work reasonably well, and I've found the magic diode to bypass if I want to run 12 V for an external IR illuminator (and/or to power a Shelly-like device). Are these going to be useful for LPR? I'm literally right on the street, so the distance to target is going to be very, very short.
Any other tips or advice for this setup?
Thanks!
Long version: After a spate of neighborhood break-ins, it's finally time for me to install cameras out on the street. I have a BI 5.5.2.5 installation running 12 cameras on renewed Core i7-6700-based PC. I live at the end of Tee, and my mailbox is pretty much perfectly positioned to see down the Tee as well as in both directions of the cross street:
Here's the "boresight" view from the mailbox:
I don't want my house or neighborhood to look like a prison yard, but I can put two eyeball cameras just beneath the mailbox, and they won't look too horrible, but of course then they won't be able to see down the boresight view:
To look down the street, it occurred to me that an eyeball camera looks pretty much like the round finial thingy on top of my mailbox post!
I'm going to run 2 strings of outdoor-rated Ethernet in PVC conduit out to the post, so I'll be able to power the cameras, and I will put a POE-powered-POE switch out there so I can power more than 2 devices. I will set up BI to record continuously, but motion-triggers aren't going to be very useful because there is a fair amount of vehicle traffic on the streets.
So now, the questions:
How do I trigger the cameras when the mailbox is opened? Are there affordable POE eyeball cameras with hardware trigger inputs?
I saw this thread and the attached PDF on using the Shelly1 device with BI, but WiFi is very, very iffy out by the mailbox, so I don't want to rely on it; I'd much rather have an Ethernet-based Shelly-like device, like the Shelly Pro 1, but Shelly says that's "coming soon" with a 404 error when you click the pre-order link.
Lately I've been buying these Amcrest IP5M-T1179EW-28MM units, because they're cheap, they have audio, they work reasonably well, and I've found the magic diode to bypass if I want to run 12 V for an external IR illuminator (and/or to power a Shelly-like device). Are these going to be useful for LPR? I'm literally right on the street, so the distance to target is going to be very, very short.
Any other tips or advice for this setup?
Thanks!
, so you must install the crappy, Windows-only management software in order to find out whatever static IP was assigned to it by the factory, or by the last amazon customer who returned it. There's also no hardware reset button, so there's no easy way for the retailer to reset one of these things if it gets returned. The paperwork inside the box contains 2 QR codes. The Google Drive version does not contain links for the software, but the OneDrive version does 