Recommend LPR Camera

we7313

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Looking for a solid Dahua camera to read license plates. I will be mounting it outside on the end of a cul de sac & using Blue Iris.
All suggestions appreciated.
 

aristobrat

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What's an estimation of the distance in feet between the camera and where the cars will be when you want to read the plates?

Also, if you haven't already run across it, there's a LPR sub-forum on the site:
LPR
 

b0bthebuilder

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Looking for a solid Dahua camera to read license plates. I will be mounting it outside on the end of a cul de sac & using Blue Iris.
All suggestions appreciated.
I have 3 of these for LPR: IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E

I only buy cameras from Andy: US $225.15 7% OFF|2019 New Arriving Model IPC HFW5241E Z12E 2MP Starlight WDR IR Bullet AI Network Camera ,free DHL shipping|Surveillance Cameras| - AliExpress

There are some tricks to getting these working well at night... but this is documented many times here.
 

we7313

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I have 3 of these for LPR: IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E

I only buy cameras from Andy: US $225.15 7% OFF|2019 New Arriving Model IPC HFW5241E Z12E 2MP Starlight WDR IR Bullet AI Network Camera ,free DHL shipping|Surveillance Cameras| - AliExpress

There are some tricks to getting these working well at night... but this is documented many times here.
I will order the IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E.
It will be about 3 feet from the Road. I was thinking of putting a pole in the ground behind the fire hydrant.
How does this look for capturing the plates?
Also, can you share a link for the optimizations for the recommended camera?
20200618_150444.jpg20200618_150508.jpg
 

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wittaj

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You will be able to get plates easily from that location. Depending on which house is yours, you could probably even place it on your house looking at that distance with the camera mentioned above. House on left you probably could, the one on the right might have too many trees in the way.

The camera mentioned above is the go to camera.

The LPR subforum threads have the set-ups of many of us here used for optimizing to get plates.

Keep in mind this camera will be for LPR duty only - you will zoom in to just about all you see is the car. Many people try to use it as an overview camera as well and then are disappointed they aren't able to read plates.

At night time, the image will be completely black due to the fast shutter speed needed to capture a plate.
 
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b0bthebuilder

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I will order the IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E.
It will be about 3 feet from the Road. I was thinking of putting a pole in the ground behind the fire hydrant.
How does this look for capturing the plates?
Also, can you share a link for the optimizations for the recommended camera?
I have slightly different settings for all 3 cameras as they are each at different angles, distances, lighting conditions, etc (3 separate locations)

The main tip I can give you is forget about using default settings and experiment with manual exposure settings (for daytime I am using 1/2000 shutter speed), at night I find I need to set a custom range for the shutter speed (rather than just picking a high speed like 1/2000) to get the best results. The screen-shot below is the exposure setting from one camera at night:

1592512518082.png
 

we7313

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You will be able to get plates easily from that location. Depending on which house is yours, you could probably even place it on your house looking at that distance with the camera mentioned above. House on left you probably could, the one on the right might have too many trees in the way.

The camera mentioned above is the go to camera.

The LPR subforum threads have the set-ups of many of us here used for optimizing to get plates.

Keep in mind this camera will be for LPR duty only - you will zoom in to just about all you see is the car. Many people try to use it as an overview camera as well and then are disappointed they aren't able to read plates.

At night time, the image will be completely black due to the fast shutter speed needed to capture a plate.
These are my camera angles. I was under the impression that none would be as good as running a line down to the road.
Do you think any of these would work (adding the suggested camera next to it) or should I run the line down to the road?angles.png
 

wittaj

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I mean the closer location is the best, but it could accidentally get hit by someone mowing, maybe a car parked illegal blocks the road, kids turn it unless you mount it higher, etc.

I think the bottom left camera location would still give you a fairly good straight on view and benefit from the protection of the house.

I am guessing where the cul-de-sac slims down to the road width to your house is maybe 140 feet or so?

The Z12 will shoot that distance easily and with a straight shot that you would have you could probably shoot even more distance. Add it next to that camera, aim it up just a bit from this angle and zoom it in to the pinch point of the the road and you are picking up plates.

Even on the house, this is still an ideal location. Mine is about 45 degrees off a straight shot and looking about 40 degrees down at around 140 feet and I get plates, so this will be an easy one.

If you don't have another wire there or it would be difficult to add one, use this splitter - it works perfectly in this situation

 
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we7313

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I love the idea of not needing to run the wire. This is a picture from my cell phone from the bottom left Angle.
Would this work? Where would I zoom in?
Also, what splitter are you referring20200618_162111.jpg to? A splitter using the existing cat6 would be great.
 

wittaj

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That would work!

This would be your approximate zoomed in area - maybe a little tighter, but you will not know that until you get up and running - this would get the cars coming in and going out and pick them up whichever side of the street they favor turning around.

1592516238355.png

So this passive splitter is really simple - take the cable from your camera and put it into the input and then add two small cables - one going to the existing camera and the other to the new camera.

 
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we7313

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That would work!

This would be your approximate zoomed in area - maybe a little tighter, but you will not know that until you get up and running - this would get the cars coming in and going out and pick them up whichever side of the street they favor turning around.

View attachment 64094

So this passive splitter is really simple - take the cable from your camera and put it into the input and then add two small cables - one going to the existing camera and the other to the new camera.

Excellent. I will order one of those.
Any concerns of how close I can mount it to the existing camera? IR interference or anything?
Also are you running any of the third party tools like plate recognizer or anything to make the detection easier?
 
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wittaj

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I have mine side-by-side and no issue and I know many on here have them even closer than I do with no problem. As long as it isn't right up against the house or eave above to get the direct bounce off, you should be fine.

So you do not need a 3rd party - the pics you get you will clearly see the plates.

With that said, after running mine a year, I wanted to get something that would automate it a little and be able to dump it into an excel file to make searching a little easier. I recently implemented Plate Recognizer and it is so simple and awesome.

The problem I have is on my tiny no outlet subdivision, I flew through the free monthly lookups. I was shocked how many vehicles pass in front of my house.

Looking at your situation, you probably do not get more than 2500 vehicles in there a month, so Plate Recognizer would be perfect for you. The integration with BI is seamless.

I have loosely documented my journey with plate recognizer in this thread:

 

wittaj

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Keep us posted - we love to see other peoples plate setups and results - it usually results in some tweaking of our own systems as well.
 
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