Swan 1080p NHD-820 picture quality at night

Got the NHD-820 connected to my PC through Westell VersaLink 327W DSL modem/router and PoE injector.

Image quality looks bad, both in pitch dark and with 100W light between garage doors on, both look about the same. I can't even read my own license plate about 10 feet in front of the camera. When I zoom in all I see is noise.

Any thoughts on what could be wrong? Hopefully my expectations are not too high.

Image attached,

Thanks,

I've got six of the same cams...

Did you go through the Video/Audio configuration submenu and tweak it up? They come defaulted to lower resolution and bitrate if I remember correctly.

Go through the Image submenu too and play wtih Digital Noise Reduction, Smart IR, WDR.

Remember too, license plates are highly reflective and are going to wash out at that close range to the strong IR light. You'd have to play with the exposure settings to avoid it, but it will make the rest of the image dark. Smart IR, and WDR might help a bit there.

If you are viewing the feed in that window in your screenshot like that.. make sure to click on the 16x9 or 4x3 or even 1x ..not Auto as it usually stretches the image incorrectly. Use 16x9 if you are viewing 1920x1080, use 4x3 if you're using 2048x1536. If you're using 1280x720, you might want to try 1920x1080 if you aren't happy with the image you've got now.

Reading plates is tricky. Try setting the max exposure to 1/200 and the max gain down to about 75. You'll likely see the plate and not much else, a trade off between reading a plate and seeing everything but the plate.

Most cameras these days that have IR tend to have the flashlight effect so the center is much brighter and drops off near the edge. Surprised it's not better with an outdoor light.

Thanks folks for the info.

When I originally tried to setup the camera, I followed some instructions I found on the "net" to change my PC IP address to 192.0.0.100 in order to initially connect with the camera whose default IP is 192.0.0.64.

This did not work for me, I was never able to get 192.0.0.X packets to go through either of my routers (old Westell VersaLink 327W DSL modem, brand new Intelligent 8 port PoE switch). Anyone know what is going on here? Something I don't understand about routers?

Thanks

The 4-port ethernet switch built into the back of the versalink OR the 8 port switch should have no issue with that. As long as both the PC and the camera are both connected to it. A normal switch doesn't care what IPs are being used on its ports.. it just cares about the lower level (layer 2) stuff.

How did you end up getting in?

The vandalism that I am trying to catch is happening at night.

Should I be looking for a CCD camera instead of CMOS?

Are there any recommendations for CCD camera?

Thanks

The 4-port ethernet switch built into the back of the versalink OR the 8 port switch should have no issue with that. As long as both the PC and the camera are both connected to it. A normal switch doesn't care what IPs are being used on its ports.. it just cares about the lower level (layer 2) stuff.

 

How did you end up getting in?

I got in by using hikvision SADP software (free download).

I spent a good deal of time experimenting with the former approach, I thought I understood how routers worked, guess not.

I even tried hooking up two PCs, each with fixed IP address (192.0.0.100, 192.0.0.101), and I could not do pings between them through either router.

There must be some fundamental thing missing here.. cause it really should be that simple.

Both stations connected to the LAN ports, IPs set properly.. No idea what the problem is.. unless it's software related (like some crazy firewall thing going on).

Interesting that the SADP program was able to communicate with it.

And it isn't 'how routers work' .. it's really how *switches* work... IP won't make a diff to them. Not sure what you have going on.

There must be some fundamental thing missing here.. cause it really should be that simple.

Both stations connected to the LAN ports, IPs set properly.. No idea what the problem is.. unless it's software related (like some crazy firewall thing going on).

Interesting that the SADP program was able to communicate with it.

 

And it isn't 'how routers work' .. it's really how *switches* work... IP won't make a diff to them. Not sure what you have going on.

I didnt work because he connected the pc to the router...instead of directly to the camera or the camera and pc to the switch with no router involved. His switch is managed so it may have been screwing things up..

Managed or not it should have no bearing on IP used.

As well, I have to assume he's using the LAN ports on the router to interconnect the PC and camera..which should also work fine.

The vandalism that I am trying to catch is happening at night.

 

Should I be looking for a CCD camera instead of CMOS?

 

Are there any recommendations for CCD camera?

 

Thanks

What's important is to to decide what you're trying to capture and test for that. Your image is a typical Hik low-light image, where the area illuminated by the IR is clear but the IR coverage is smaller than the field of view, the IR reflective plate is washed out, and the dark areas have a lot of noise.

Try walking around the car, especially in the areas where the vandals would act, and see if you can get a good image.

Your IR spot will always point at the center of the FOV, so you'll get a decent image there and noisy images everywhere else. You also have a very wide FOV compared to the car; if you want to catch people on the lawn, that's useful, but if you want to focus on the driveway, you might want to get a longer lens. This would also have the benefits of more pixels per foot, and the IR would cover more of the FOV.

Because of the wide FOV, you'll have few pixels per foot once they move back a little, and you'll get nothing but a blob at night. My guess is that someone standing at the passenger's door or the trunk will be unidentifiable.

It's not usually practical to capture nighttime activity and license plates with the same camera, so if you want plates, you'll need to read up on the other plate posts. This plate reflects so much IR that it's washed out, but exposing for a good plate read will make everything else dark and useless, as noted above.

If I wanted to watch the cars for vandalism, here's what I'd do:

- Get a longer lens that will cover the driveway without so much yard.

- Add an extra wide-angle IR illuminator or a couple of narrower ones that illuminate the areas that the camera's IR doesn't, especially further away.

- Do some walkthroughs to see if it captures your motion, if you're using MD, and to make sure you can get an identifiable image in the places you need it.

MaxIcon,

Thanks for the detailed response.

Can you recommend a specific longer lens camera?

Today I replaced my old rusty garage door lamp (100W) with a floodlight (150W x 2). Seems worse, big bright spots on driveway cause too much contrast. If I make brightness high, I can see to end of driveway but close to garage is all washed out. Person standing between cars is just a white outline. If I lower brightness to be able to see person standing between cars, background is pitch black.

MaxIcon,

Thanks for the detailed response.

 

Can you recommend a specific longer lens camera?

 

Today I replaced my old rusty garage door lamp (100W) with a floodlight (150W x 2). Seems worse, big bright spots on driveway cause too much contrast. If I make brightness high, I can see to end of driveway but close to garage is all washed out. Person standing between cars is just a white outline. If I lower brightness to be able to see person standing between cars, background is pitch black.

This is as it should be. Who cares what the concrete behind the intruder looks like?

Anyway, your initial image is normal for a camera that has not been configured for the environment. If you have gone to the trouble of lighting the area then I would force the camera to day mode to utilise the full effect of your standard lighting.

If you want something with a longer lens, look at the NHD-830. Variable zoom, so you can play around with the picture width a bit until you're happy with it.

Thanks for the insight.

If I turn brightness down to 3% in night mode I get good facial recognition even though background is dark. Seems counterintuitive but now it makes perfect sense. Heck of a lot more IR bouncing off if the perps face than off of the street behind him.

Anyway this leads to next question: I would like to be able to have intensity change automatically to 50% for daytime operation. I have found a Perl script online to do this, new territory for me but I am willing to learn. Any other easier way to do this?

I would also like to create a motion detected summary video that I can look at briefly each evening just to see if anything happened, but keep the full mp4 files so I can go back to them if needed. Is this what folks typically do?

Thanks

Where did you get the perl script?

For lenses, you can either specify a longer or variable lens when you buy the cam, or buy one from m12lenses.com, being sure to look at their megapixel 1/3" lenses. It's a bit of a pain to change a lens on these cams, but inexpensive.

http://www.m12lenses.com/category-s/64.htm

For settings, you can run profiles that automatically change at given times if your firmware is recent. I don't remember when they introduced profiles, but you'll see it on the image settings page if you have them.

This lets you set day and night profiles with custom settings for the best images.

Script is from this thread. I have not gotten it working yet. I am not sure where they got the DateTime-Event-Sunrise package (references to it online seem to be Unix/Linux related), I'm on a PC.

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