Reco please for an IP camera trained on driveway 125 feet away

[grtaylor]

First time novice poster looking for some help from the collective expertise.

I have been using Blue Iris with a couple of Foscam cameras for a few years, but my needs have changed (well, my house to be precise).

In my new house I would like to point a camera at an area of my driveway about 125 feet away. Day or night. And be able to view cars, (and license plates ideally), and faces at that range. I'm wondering if I need an IR floodlight/spotlight, fine if so. I also would like a scene camera for the wider area in front of the house.

I'd like IP cameras that work with BI. I have power where I plan on mounting them so don't need PoE. Budget - ideally $500 or below though I'm getting the sense the driveway camera will be a bit spendy for quality at that range...

Any and all recommendations and advice would be welcomed. Thanks in advance.

 

[icerabbit]

With an inexpensive 12mm lens you'll be at about 40ft width field of view at 100 ft out.
So considering you want 125ft out with car tags ... you may need double, triple that to lens to get a FOV view that more closely matches the width of your driveway (ideally you'd get just 12ft wide or less vs wasting pixels in a broad view of scenery)

See also: http://www.jvsg.com/online/# Where you can play with some numbers for camera lens, distance, etc.

You certainly would need extra IR lighting. Ordinary cameras just go two dozen feet really. Could do some inexpensive units near the target area, if you have power there, or it would have to be some long range narrow beam.

Night time car tags ...

I'm sure some of the resident experts will chime in.

 

[grtaylor]

Thanks for the reply icerabbit, I quickly discovered the whole car tags thing is a touchy subject. it's not a must-have but it would certainly be nice. I'm not expecting to read plates at night necessarily, but during daylight that would be good, just in case.

Thanks for the link to the lens calculator, that really helps. I reckon I'm looking for a lens in the mid 40's. So does that mean a box type camera with a CS connected lens then?

Any recommendations on cameras/lens combos that I could use with Blue Iris for such a task?

 

[icerabbit]

During daytime shouldn't be an issue. And, yes, it would look like box camera with more powerful telephoto lens will likely be needed. You do get a little wiggle room with some extra megapixels vs more telephoto; but ideally you'd try to crop it pretty tight, whether at 125ft or 100. Downside

I need to leave recommendations up for the experts, as I'm only familiar with a couple brands in the regular short use range and have only done one trial with BlueIris.

 

[bp2008]

That is really far for the driveway cam. Yes, you can get a 3-5 megapixel box camera, an enclosure, and a really long lens for it. But you are going to be spending $200+ on the camera, $100+ on the enclosure most likely, and $200+ on the lens since you will want one that is rated for 3+ megapixel cameras! I haven't tinkered with box cameras in a long while so I am very rusty on the best brands and prices.

Another thing to note if you ever pursue night-time license plate capture is that your license plate capture cam isn't going to see much at night besides headlights and license plates. And this is after you have invested in some really good lighting.

 

[grtaylor]

It's a long driveway and the only place there's visibility from the house is that spot. The other option is digging and running cat5 out there. That's not really a good option either.

So any suggestions for camera, lens and enclosures from anyone?

 

[nayr]

burying an ethernet cable and putting a small post up would probably save you some money presuming your yard isint solid rock.. plastic conduit is pretty cheap ($30-40 for a 120ft run) and you could run a wired driveway sensor to get an audible alert when someone comes up the drive.. it dont have to be deep, just low enough the grass can grow over back over it. (4-6in)

It would be alot more reliable, IR ranges would be reasonable and if you really wanted license plates you could later add a 2nd camera setup for plates only without much hassle.

otherwords you might as well just buy a good zoom PTZ like the Dahua IR 12x and fix it where it needs to be; your spending so much money you might as well be able to look around at distances at night too if you have a large parcel of land.. my 12x gets a pretty good shot of vehicles ~300ft away at night and cost $600

attached is a capture from right now; the subjects in the picture are 310ft away according to google maps with my 12x PTZ.. it would have no problem with a driveway 120ft long.. the fence at the bottom of the image is out of focus; but its 160ft away and the IR lights it up and focuses on it perfectly if I want... ive also used its HDR setting to read license plates of parked vehicles at least that far away; moving ones not so much but my angle is poor for that.

 

[networkcameracritic]

To read a plate at 100' you'll need a dedicated camera and the plate has to be within 30 degrees of perpendicular to be visible. You'll need a long telephoto lens, but I think with 3MP you'll be able to read a plate at 100' with a 25mm lens like a Hikvision ds-2cd2032-i with a custom 25mm lens. At night, you'll need a very expensive illuminator to reach that far, like a narrow 10 degree illuminator. If you have power near the end, place a lower cost illuminator near where the car passes. Also, at night, you'll have to set the shutter speed pretty high so you can overcome head or tail lights, so it will not be good for anything other than seeing the plate so you'll need a second camera to see what's going on. During the day will be normal.

If your budget is higher, I would get the Axis Q1604 box camera with a 15-50mm Fujinon lens in an Axis enclosure and if it's rear plate which are typically lit you can read them. More details on an article I wrote here - http://www.networkcameracritic.com/?p=2177

Alternatively, get this Dahua IR PTZ camera - http://www.networkcameracritic.com/?p=2346 It has an illuminator than can light up 300' away and 30x optical zoom to see 300' like it's next to you. They make a lower cost 12X that may do the trick for 100', You can see in my review I can ID a plate a block away.

 

[nayr]

a 12x would do fine; here is a night time shot of a completely dark 6' privacy fence 170ft away @ Maximum Optical Zoom with the 12x PTZ version of the camera @networkcameracritic just linked..

 

[networkcameracritic]

Yes, for about $600 that would be the best value that does what you want. You can get it HERE on sale for that price

 

[grtaylor]

That looks very interesting, thanks guys. I'll take a look.

 

[bp2008]

+1 for the 12x PTZ at $600

I have a slightly smaller Dahua 12x without IR of its own and it sees really well just with the IR from my other cams and a cheap illuminator.

 

[bp2008]

Here is the zoom on my 12x Dahua. This neighbor's driveway is 130 to 150 feet away from the camera.

Fully zoomed out:



Full optical 12x zoom:



Note I have the SD42212SN-HN which is smaller and cheaper but it has no infrared built in and it is more restricted with its vertical tilt range, as you can see in the zoomed out picture where the edge of the camera enclosure gets into the frame.

 

[networkcameracritic]

The SD42212SN for $499 is a good value and is PoE+ so simpler wiring, but if the area is dark, the IR version is very powerful, good for a few hundred feet, actually never seen any IR go that far. Keep in mind with plates is that you have to overcome the power of head lights or brake lights and IR helps offset that. Also, the Dahua has a unique feature called HLC that automatically darkens the image so you can see license plates in a blown out situation like reflective license plates. This is using HLC at night about 300' away with the 30x version -

 

[grtaylor]

Great replies. Thanks all.

I also came to the conclusion that leaving my driveway lights on at night, now I have LED's in there, is really not that big a deal.. and that will help with the imaging I'm sure.

So I think I'll take one of the options above.

Thanks again, you guys really helped.

 

[icerabbit]

By the way, speaking of driveway lights, do you have 110 power along the driveway?
Or is it an extended run of 12v "malibu" lights?

 

[nayr]

yeah if you have a driveway 110v light you can run a much shorter burrial to a post with an IP cam and a waterproof enclosure with a wifi bridge and supporting equipment.. especially if your using LED light as there is almost no load on that line.

 

[grtaylor]

The 110 I have out there is switched with the driveway lights. old school. So when the lights are on I have power, else, nothing.

 

[nayr]

can you put a switch lock on switch so it cant be shut off and hookup a dusk/dawn sensor to handle turning it on/off automatically?

 

[grtaylor]

I have a ton of Insteon home automation in this house. I could put a switch into each fixture and then leave the circuit power on and control each lamp centrally, but that too is costly for the number of fixtures I have. I don't want dusk/dawn at each fixture as I found them unreliable, they come on a lot in the pacific NW as we have a lot of dark days, and I want to know the state of the lamps for automation reasons. But I get the thinking.