Project for my town - I don't know where to start

Marble68

Marble68

n3wb
Nov 5, 2018
19
2
Texas
So, my town has asked me to try and build them something that will be mounted next to the road. Big flashing sign "Local PD welcomes you" - they want it to scream surveillance. The cars will pass by at 50mph or so.

The goal isn't to read the plates (but I'd like to be able to) - but to get a clear picture of passing vehicles.

The good thing is I'll have a great angle on the cars. The bad thing I have a "petty cash" budget.

My the budget is super tight (less than $650).

So my first shot at this was an IR LPR camera (generic) from Alibaba and a raspberry Pi.

The camera takes stills and FTPs them, but when it's sending the image, it ignores the next car.

So I started trying to grab frames from the RTSP stream, and bought a radar from Omnipresense, and when a car comes within rage, copy the frame from a ram drive.

Well, the frames are all noisy and blocky, or if the car is moving more than 30 mph, smeared.

So - my question is - if you were going to build this - which camera would you use? Knowing it would be mounted at least 8 ft up - and be as close to the highway as a stop sign?

I'm still working on the software side - I've tried ffmpeg but I'm starting to think it's not the answer. I think I need some type of motion detection. Maybe motion app, or something like that.

Any tips on where to start? I can write software, but I'm not codec / ip camera guru.

Do you think a Raspberry pi is adequate for this? Should I look at something more powerful?
 
Marble68 said:
So, my town has asked me to try and build them something that will be mounted next to the road. Big flashing sign "Local PD welcomes you" - they want it to scream surveillance. The cars will pass by at 50mph or so.

The goal isn't to read the plates (but I'd like to be able to) - but to get a clear picture of passing vehicles.

The good thing is I'll have a great angle on the cars. The bad thing I have a "petty cash" budget.

My the budget is super tight (less than $650).

So my first shot at this was an IR LPR camera (generic) from Alibaba and a raspberry Pi.

The camera takes stills and FTPs them, but when it's sending the image, it ignores the next car.

So I started trying to grab frames from the RTSP stream, and bought a radar from Omnipresense, and when a car comes within rage, copy the frame from a ram drive.

Well, the frames are all noisy and blocky, or if the car is moving more than 30 mph, smeared.

So - my question is - if you were going to build this - which camera would you use? Knowing it would be mounted at least 8 ft up - and be as close to the highway as a stop sign?

I'm still working on the software side - I've tried ffmpeg but I'm starting to think it's not the answer. I think I need some type of motion detection. Maybe motion app, or something like that.

Any tips on where to start? I can write software, but I'm not codec / ip camera guru.

Do you think a Raspberry pi is adequate for this? Should I look at something more powerful?
Click to expand...

Hi Marble -

I would be very cautious on this sort of civic project - there can be significant legal issues and legal challenges - and if they can only give you a budget of $650, well then I am concerned that they will be unable to handle any legal challenges or record requests ( example - FOIA, Open Records challenges, .. etc )
 
Yeah - I was thinking about stuff like that.

This isn’t for speed enforcement, and the like. More a crime deterrent.

That being said - is it technically possible using a Pi?
 
How fast does it save the stills? The camera I have now has an SD card slot - but when it's saving an image to FTP it doesn't capture.

I'll put in a high speed SD Card in it and do more testing - but yeah - if it can snap the pictures and get every vehicle, this would work great!
 
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