- Nov 25, 2016
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Many neighbors who have seen what my camera system can do have commented on how they would love to have LPR cameras for their own homes, but they're too intimidated at the idea of installing and maintaining them. In some cases, these are people who already have Ring or Nest or Arlo cameras, but could still be persuaded to put up a couple of high-performance cameras to record license plates as an additional deterrent to property crime. Cost is not necessarily the barrier for them, but fear of computers and high-tech items definitely is.
So I began to think about how one could construct a relatively inexpensive dedicated LPR system that would be separate from an existing cloud camera system, but still provide good performance at low cost. Here are my thoughts so far:
(1) I purchased a Dell Optiplex 9020 i7-4790 with an Nvidia GTX 745 video card for $249 on eBay. I've installed Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) on it, and installed the Ubuntu OpenALPR client along with OpenALPR Nvidia GPU accelerator software. My tests have shown that the GTX 745 can process three 2 MP video streams at 30 fps at about 70% GPU usage. Not bad for a 4-year-old Nvidia card that was bundled with a 4th generation i7 CPU. The CPU idles at under 40% with only one processing thread active.
(2) I soon plan to add an Ubuntu camera recording package to this system, and let the CPU handle continuous recording for two LPR cameras, plus one 4 MP bullet camera to get the "big picture" of what goes on as cars drive down the road. I am going to first try Bluecherry, which for $50 seems like a reasonable package for the price. Add a 2 TB or 4 TB HD that is optimized for surveillance recordings, and that's another $100 or so.
(3) The LPR cameras will probably be Dahua IPC-HFW5231E-Z12E cameras for about $215 each, plus $100 for a 4 MP fixed-focus bullet camera (many models in that price range). To avoid autofocus issues while switching from day to night view, the -Z12E cameras will operate continuously in B&W mode.
Put it all together, and that's a single package that would stand alone for LPR usage at about $1000 (excluding installation costs), while saving weeks of continuous video recordings. Not dirt cheap, but certainly not bad performance for the price. The main trick is finding a CPU that is bundled with a reasonably good Nvidia card. The i7 is probably overkill; a good i5 CPU would probably be more than sufficient. There is also the drawback that Bluecherry doesn't have a mobile client for remote viewing, but being able to view the scanned license plates on cloud.openalpr.com would compensate in part for that. And of course, running the system on Ubuntu will provide a very stable software platform with (hopefully) low maintenance once it is set up.
These are my thoughts so far. I'll provide some updates as I proceed with the project.
So I began to think about how one could construct a relatively inexpensive dedicated LPR system that would be separate from an existing cloud camera system, but still provide good performance at low cost. Here are my thoughts so far:
(1) I purchased a Dell Optiplex 9020 i7-4790 with an Nvidia GTX 745 video card for $249 on eBay. I've installed Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) on it, and installed the Ubuntu OpenALPR client along with OpenALPR Nvidia GPU accelerator software. My tests have shown that the GTX 745 can process three 2 MP video streams at 30 fps at about 70% GPU usage. Not bad for a 4-year-old Nvidia card that was bundled with a 4th generation i7 CPU. The CPU idles at under 40% with only one processing thread active.
(2) I soon plan to add an Ubuntu camera recording package to this system, and let the CPU handle continuous recording for two LPR cameras, plus one 4 MP bullet camera to get the "big picture" of what goes on as cars drive down the road. I am going to first try Bluecherry, which for $50 seems like a reasonable package for the price. Add a 2 TB or 4 TB HD that is optimized for surveillance recordings, and that's another $100 or so.
(3) The LPR cameras will probably be Dahua IPC-HFW5231E-Z12E cameras for about $215 each, plus $100 for a 4 MP fixed-focus bullet camera (many models in that price range). To avoid autofocus issues while switching from day to night view, the -Z12E cameras will operate continuously in B&W mode.
Put it all together, and that's a single package that would stand alone for LPR usage at about $1000 (excluding installation costs), while saving weeks of continuous video recordings. Not dirt cheap, but certainly not bad performance for the price. The main trick is finding a CPU that is bundled with a reasonably good Nvidia card. The i7 is probably overkill; a good i5 CPU would probably be more than sufficient. There is also the drawback that Bluecherry doesn't have a mobile client for remote viewing, but being able to view the scanned license plates on cloud.openalpr.com would compensate in part for that. And of course, running the system on Ubuntu will provide a very stable software platform with (hopefully) low maintenance once it is set up.
These are my thoughts so far. I'll provide some updates as I proceed with the project.
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