You will not find one camera that does all of that well and you probably need several to accomplish it all.
- This camera will be installed for a driveway - is the purpose for overview of what is going on or to IDENTIFY?
- Should be weather proof - that is pretty much a given for most of the good cameras.
- Night color vision option - do you have enough light or be willing to run the built in white LEDs? Night Color cameras are not magic and need light and they do not see infrared.
- Blue Iris compatible - Stay away from consumer cloud based cameras.
- Ability to see details (face, license plates, etc.) at a distance of 50 feet, day or night - one camera cannot do it all - see below
- Speaker / mic combo option - these are gimmicky and are more like walkie talkie.
- Wireless preferred / POE option - wireless is junk and we have thousands of threads here with people coming here because their wifi camera doesn't work.
- Person / Vehicle / Animal detection - most are setup for human or vehicle. If you want animal then you would need to consider BI with CodeProject AI.
- NVR option - for best results, it is best to match the camera brand with the NVR brand.
You have to setup the camera to get plates, but at night that is all it will get.
This is a
camera dedicated to plates and not an overview camera also. It is as much an art as it is a science.
You will need two cameras. For LPR we need to
OPTICALLY zoom in tight to make the plate as large as possible. For most of us, all you see is the not much more than a vehicle in the entire frame. Now maybe in the right location during the day it might be able to see some other things, but not at night.
At night, we have to run a very fast shutter speed (1/2,000) and in B/W with IR and the image will be black. We need the fast shutter to capture the plate and take advantage of the reflective properties of the plate. All you will see are head/tail lights and the plate. Some people can get away with color if they have enough street lights, but most of us cannot. Here is a representative sample of plates I get at night of vehicles traveling about 45MPH at 175 feet from my 2MP 5241-Z12E camera (that is all that is needed for plates):
At that shutter speed you will not pick up the outline of the car, people walking by, etc. Just like at a shutter speed to capture people at night, the plate will be all white due to the reflective properties of the plate.
Here is what the plate will look like if the camera is setup to get people at night:
Here is someone walking past my LPR camera in the middle of the night with a reflective vest on. As you can see, all you see is the reflective stripes. Had he not been wearing that, the camera wouldn't even have picked him up.
See the
LPR subforum for lots of examples.
See this thread for the most commonly suggested cameras based on distance to IDENTIFY. These represent the best overall value in terms of price, performance day and night, and reliability.
At the urging of several folks here, I created a thread to show the importance of focal length and how focal length can be more important than megapixels (MP). I mentioned some of this in the post regarding The Hookup’s latest video demonstrating different cameras, including one sold from a...
ipcamtalk.com
