MP IP cams and IR illuminators. Post your real world results

Gday to all the gods of CCTV.

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I am looking for an IR illuminator at present. In a perfect world I would be able to pony up the money for 100 watts of Bosch or Raytech goodness but my budget only extends to the cheaper Chinese offerings.

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I have identified several different types of illuminator that I think will fit my requirement but what I consistently fail to find is any data on the real world performance of illuminators with megapixel IP cameras. Most of the time the manufacture does not tell you how they arrived at the figures they have and when they do the testing is usually done with a low res black and white 1/2" ccd camera with a minimum illumination that most megapixel IP offerings will never hope to match.

I was hoping that the people who have been there and done that could post your results for my benefit and the benefit of all the other CCTV forums users.

Illuminator Brand: Eg Scene IR

Number of LED's and wattage: 12 x 2W LED 28 Watts Total draw

Light Angle: eg 30 degrees

Camera: Eg Dahua IPC-HF3500

Lens: Eg Fujinon 4-15.4mm F1.5

Shutter Speed:

Additional Lighting available

Range to Illuminated Object.

Description/photos of results.

Im currently looking at a 30 degree 12 x 2W led IR illuminator from Scene that will be paired with a Dahua IPC-HF3500 and a Fujinon DV3.8x4SR4A-SA1 4 to 15.2mm Day/Night 3.8x Optical Zoom Varifocal Lens at about 11mm to give me a 30 degree angle of view

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Scene-28W-IR-illuminator-Infrared-Lamp-invisible-IR-light-with-Aluminum-material-night-vision-light-sources/113605_604790569.html - Illuminator Here

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/970519-REG/fujinon_dv3_8x4sr4a_sa1_4_to_15_2mm.html - Lens Here

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I want to be able to do Licence plate capture at 15m with it at 1/250 shutter speed. The same camera with the same lens manages a stationary plate capture at 35m using nothing but the rear plate lights on auto settings. There is a street light but it was 20m from the plate so didn't do much.

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Do the gods think I am in the ball park?

I do license plate capture at 15m with a ordinary Hikvision 2032 mini bullet and it's built in LEDs, 1/200 max exposure and 12mm lens and front license plates to boot.

double post

I do license plate capture at 15m with a ordinary Hikvision 2032 mini bullet and it's built in LEDs, 1/200 max exposure and 12mm lens and front license plates to boot.

 

How does that go at any speed above stationary?

I have been looking at Youtube video of a Hik 2232 attempting plate capture at night and it fails miserably.

Perhaps it would be better with IR illumination and with different settings?

The youtube video is worst case, and BW's image is best case.

The youtube video is catching the entire scene, and the plate is a small portion of the field of view, so you'll never get anything. There's some motion blur as well, but that shouldn't be an issue at 1/200 sec.

It's all about pixels per foot and illumination. You need 80 ppf minimum, and 100 or more is better if anything's not perfect. A US plate is 1' wide, so it's easy to tell how many ppf you have by creating a snapshot with the plate in the position you're hoping to capture. Open it in Paint or similar, draw a selection box around the plate, and see how many pixels you have.

IR intensity, like any light, drops off with the square of distance, so doubling the distance gives 1/4 the intensity. It then drops more on the way back to the camera, doubling the distance again for 1/4 the amount of light that actually hit the plate. With BW's pic, the car's close enough to get good reflection from the on-board IR. As you move further away, the lighting from the LEDs drops of quickly, so you need enough to get good illumination back to the cam.

There's no easy way to tell for sure without trying it out.

 

There's no easy way to tell for sure without trying it out.

I was hoping you wouldn't say that. I am trying to avoid throwing good money after bad on illuminators that don't work.

I do license plate capture at 15m with a ordinary Hikvision 2032 mini bullet and it's built in LEDs, 1/200 max exposure and 12mm lens and front license plates to boot.

 

That gives me some hope. Do you know what number, size, power the led's in that camera are?

I'm using the 12mm lens version of the camera. If you want to catch plates a little further or if LPR is your goal, you can get a 25mm lens and put it in this camera. PM me if you want more details on that solution. But start with the 12mm lens, nothing to lose if you want 25mm later.

Yes, the cars are going slow around the cul-de-sac, they are not stopped, but likely going 5-10mph at most. We do LPR on cars going 20-30 mph without a problem with these settings at other locations and LPR is way more demanding than just plate capture.

Here's a video of a car going around the cul-de-sac. This pushes the limits of the what it can see because it's further away from my house than the first image, but the plate is still legible although not sure if YouTube artifacts make it less readable so I included a snapshot from Milestome. Watch it at 1440P (which is less than 3MP). At least you can see the cars are not parked, they are moving. And not only moving, but moving in a turn which is harder to capture than if you are getting cars more perpendicular to the camera without the lateral motion.

For the picture you have to expand it to it's full 3MP to read the plate. Again, this is further than the first photo, maybe 2-3m further. Ideally if I wanted better capture at this distance, the 25mm would make it much clearer but I would lose half the FOV, so a trade off. Just showing what' possible.

The Hik 2032 has about 30 LEDs, but that doesn't mean much. What you really need to know is the IR output power (not input power) and illumination angle, and few vendors spec that. They usually state the number of LEDs (relatively meaningless without the output power specs) and the marketing spec for effective distance, which you should usually cut in half for real-world performance.

The LEDs on many of these inexpensive cams tend to dim and die over time. All of my Hiks and most of my Dahuas have dimming LEDs, and some have gone out completely. This is in the moderate Silicon Valley climate, where we rarely have super high temperatures.

In general, designs using a few high power IR LEDs outperform the ones using lots of low power LEDs; the Hik 2332 turret is an example of this. There's not a lot of data on lifetime on these yet, but my inexpensive 3 LED illuminator is much brighter and has worked much longer than the lots-of-LEDs illuminator it replaced.

BW has a recent review of a high power 3 LED illuminator on his web site. This one uses 2W LEDs, and doesn't spec the actual output power, but this is about as powerful as you'll get in affordable LEDs.

Here's a post showing the improvement of switching from onboard IR to an inexpensive 3 LED illuminator. The main problem here was reflected IR, but illuminator has far more reach than the on-board LEDs.

http://www.cam-it.org/index.php?topic=7429.msg44057

For serious LED illuminators, be prepared to pay more than the camera cost.

ETA: BW's snapshot shows 75 ppf for the plate, which gives a pretty readable image with good illumination and a head-on image. That's about as low as you'd want to get for reliable reads.

The Hik 2032 has about 30 LEDs, but that doesn't mean much. What you really need to know is the IR output power (not input power) and illumination angle, and few vendors spec that. They usually state the number of LEDs (relatively meaningless without the output power specs) and the marketing spec for effective distance, which you should usually cut in half for real-world performance.

I've heard that if you convert the claim in metres to feet you are usually close to the mark.

BW has a recent review of a high power 3 LED illuminator on his web site. This one uses 2W LEDs, and doesn't spec the actual output power, but this is about as powerful as you'll get in affordable LEDs.

The 2w LED seems to be standard across the cheaper illuminator whether they have 3 or 30. I have see 10 to 100 watt LED's in 850nm but no one I can find is building them into an illuminator yet.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/100W-100-Watt-850nm-940nm-Infrared-IR-High-Power-LED-Light-Bulb-Lamp-DIY-/151489832395?pt=AU_Lighting_Fans&var=&hash=item23457f65cb

For serious LED illuminators, be prepared to pay more than the camera cost.

If the minister for finance was willing to let me spend that kind of money I'd buy a Dinion 8000.

ETA: BW's snapshot shows 75 ppf for the plate, which gives a pretty readable image with good illumination and a head-on image. That's about as low as you'd want to get for reliable reads.

I'm working on 352ppm which is the Australian Standard for Identification of faces but in testing I have found that 200ppm gives you a human readable plate using digital zoom.

I ended up picking up a 96 x 10mm 30 deg LED illuminator for under $50. Cheap and nasty but it went down well with the minister for finance and I'm willing to gamble $50 if it doesn't do the job.

The ad for my one did not give a claimed illumination distance but this similar one claims 80 metres.

http://www.amazon.com/Night-Vision-Infrared-Illuminator-Camera/dp/B00NCN1JIO

Given I am looking for a quarter of that distance Ill give it a go and report back.

The 2w LED seems to be standard across the cheaper illuminator whether they have 3 or 30. I have see 10 to 100 watt LED's in 850nm but no one I can find is building them into an illuminator yet.

 

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/100W-100-Watt-850nm-940nm-Infrared-IR-High-Power-LED-Light-Bulb-Lamp-DIY-/151489832395?pt=AU_Lighting_Fans&var=&hash=item23457f65cb

I haven't seen any 30 LED fixtures with 2W LEDs; this would require 60+W of power and quite a lot of heatsinking for reliability. I believe they'd be quite expensive as well. I don't really follow the high-end illuminators, though.

Something's funny about that 100W LED; it looks like the marketeers are playing fast and loose. The maximum power draw spec on it is 60W, and the output spec is 9W at 850nM. Regardless, it sounds powerful, but would need a biggish DC supply (something the size of a laptop brick), and would require serious heatsinking to avoid burning out a $75 US LED.

I ended up picking up a 96 x 10mm 30 deg LED illuminator for under $50. Cheap and nasty but it went down well with the minister for finance and I'm willing to gamble $50 if it doesn't do the job.

 

The ad for my one did not give a claimed illumination distance but this similar one claims 80 metres.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Night-Vision-Infrared-Illuminator-Camera/dp/B00NCN1JIO

 

Given I am looking for a quarter of that distance Ill give it a go and report back.

The linked illuminator uses 0.25W LEDs, which are typical in the multi-LED lights. The main thing to watch for with this is LEDs dying or going dim over time, which is the most common failure on the inexpensive multi-LED devices. Typically, these have multiple sets of LEDs connected in series, so if one burns out, 4 or 5 more go dark at the same time.

Some people have good luck with these, and it all depends on how well it's designed and manufactured.

I haven't seen any 30 LED fixtures with 2W LEDs; this would require 60+W of power and quite a lot of heatsinking for reliability. I believe they'd be quite expensive as well. I don't really follow the high-end illuminators, though.

http://sceneelectronics-led.en.made-in-china.com/product/DKtnEZRyghcr/China-850nm-60W-IR-Illuminator-Infrared-Lamp-IR-Light.html

Something like that is what I mean.

Something's funny about that 100W LED; it looks like the marketeers are playing fast and loose. The maximum power draw spec on it is 60W, and the output spec is 9W at 850nM. Regardless, it sounds powerful, but would need a biggish DC supply (something the size of a laptop brick), and would require serious heatsinking to avoid burning out a $75 US LED.

Most of the Heatsinks I have seen for them are actively cooled with a fan.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/NEW-AL-Heatsink-Cooler-Fan-12V-44mm-Lens-Holder-Kit-for-20W-100W-High-Power-LED-/261591478635?pt=AU_B_I_Electrical_Test_Equipment&hash=item3ce811316b.

Would probably be an interesting project to water cool one using PC water cooling gear.

Some people have good luck with these, and it all depends on how well it's designed and manufactured.

I'm hoping I will have some luck but for under $50 I don't expect too much.

It's not that the cheap illuminators don't work, they will work, sometimes a month, sometimes a few months.

It's not that the cheap illuminators don't work, they will work, sometimes a month, sometimes a few months.

Ok so I have it set up.

Here are the night time results.

I am pretty pleased. The camera is set to 1/500sec exposure because anything less washes the plate out. Max gain is set to 50%. I figure that gives me a bit of adjustment if the illuminator fades out.

The one difficulty I am having atm is blue iris is not detecting rear plates at night, even with the sensitivity all the way up. I have the overview camera triggering at the moment as a stop gap. Going to try increased contrast at night.

The letters on those plates are 50mm high. Vertical resolution is about 360 pixels per metre or 108 pixels per foot in that shot.

I have recently set up a Dahua IPC-H-3500 with a Fujinon DV4x12.5SR4A-SA1L 12.5 - 50mm 5mp Day Night Auto Iris lens. I have it set to 12.5mm. It is set up for numberplate capture and is illuminated by a 96LED illuminator at night.

 

The exposure is set to Manual with a Maximum exposure of 1/500 sec. I set up the exposure at night under IR and get excellent clear number plate capture by night. Slower exposures wash the plate out.

 

[attachment=2]vlcsnap-2015-03-02-20h54m52s241 (2).jpg[/attachment]

 

By day I get similar quality if I leave the camera in black and white but everything is blurry in colour.

 

By day in B&W

[attachment=1]By Day in BW.jpg[/attachment]

 

By Day in Colour

[attachment=0]By Day in colour.jpg[/attachment]

 

 

It almost appears as if I have lower depth of field by day in colour than I do at night under IR which seems to run contrary to everything I've read. The lens is IR corrected so theoretically visible and IR should focus on the same plane.

 

Anyone have any ideas as to why this might be? Should I refocus at night with the IR off? Refocus in colour at night?

Original Post with Pics is here

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=45097

Thought I would post this over here so that people can see the issues I am having with my setup and hopefully get some more ideas. Also I never did get Blue iris to detect, even with increased contrast.

I tried putting some images into Open ALPR without much success. It even had trouble with the cropped images showing nothing but the plates. It seems to be more an issue with the format of our local plates than lack of pixels. We have half a dozen different formats and all the colours of the rainbow. Even the number sizes on the plates changes between formats. The program only has US and Euro options.

It's not that the cheap illuminators don't work, they will work, sometimes a month, sometimes a few months.

 

Ok so I have it set up.

 

Here are the night time results.

 

[attachment=0]vlcsnap-2015-03-02-20h54m52s241 (2).jpg[/attachment]

 

I am pretty pleased. The camera is set to 1/500sec exposure because anything less washes the plate out. Max gain is set to 50%. I figure that gives me a bit of adjustment if the illuminator fades out.

 

The one difficulty I am having atm is blue iris is not detecting rear plates at night, even with the sensitivity all the way up. I have the overview camera triggering at the moment as a stop gap. Going to try increased contrast at night.

 

The letters on those plates are 50mm high. Vertical resolution is about 360 pixels per metre or 108 pixels per foot in that shot.

make sure you dont have object detect reject selected....if that is not the issue, try using the hopspot function...

make sure you dont have object detect reject selected....if that is not the issue, try using the hopspot function...

Thanks for that. It is selected. I will change it and report back.

make sure you dont have object detect reject selected....if that is not the issue, try using the hopspot function...

 

Thanks for that. It is selected. I will change it and report back.

That fixed the detection problem for me. Took a while to tweak the sensitivity. Bugs in front of the camera were causing it to run continuously when I initially disabled it.

Now to work on the focus issue.

I do license plate capture at 15m with a ordinary Hikvision 2032 mini bullet and it's built in LEDs, 1/200 max exposure and 12mm lens and front license plates to boot.

 

BW,

The camera you speak of ("Hikvision 2032 mini bullet"), can it be connected through my router and to my computer via a Cat6 cable? Can I get some free/open-source software to record events? I assume there is no registration/account/internet-connection required to get permission to use/run the camera? (If there is, I'll walk away right now) I understand I can also find software that lets me view the camera from online (like from a cell phone)?

I'd like to get a cheap little camera to watch my driveway. I notice there is a 2032 camrea on Amazon: Here for $93. It's a 4mm lens I think, but can I put another lens (like 1 12mm) on it (is it a "CS" lens)?

Thank you.

Sincerely,

IM

I do license plate capture at 15m with a ordinary Hikvision 2032 mini bullet and it's built in LEDs, 1/200 max exposure and 12mm lens and front license plates to boot.

 

 

BW,

 

The camera you speak of ("Hikvision 2032 mini bullet"), can it be connected through my router and to my computer via a Cat6 cable? Can I get some free/open-source software to record events? I assume there is no registration/account/internet-connection required to get permission to use/run the camera? (If there is, I'll walk away right now) I understand I can also find software that lets me view the camera from online (like from a cell phone)?

 

I'd like to get a cheap little camera to watch my driveway. I notice there is a 2032 camrea on Amazon: Here for $93. It's a 4mm lens I think, but can I put another lens (like 1 12mm) on it (is it a "CS" lens)?

 

Thank you.

 

 

Sincerely,

IM

Sorry to break this to you but Carl, aka Buellwinkel, died suddenly at the end of March. In his spirit the answers to your questions are as follows.

The camera you speak of ("Hikvision 2032 mini bullet"), can it be connected through my router and to my computer via a Cat6 cable?

Yes but unless you have a POE router you will need a separate 12V power supply.

Can I get some free/open-source software to record events?

yes

http://listoffreeware.com/list-of-best-free-cctv-security-surveillance-software/

I assume there is no registration/account/internet-connection required to get permission to use/run the camera?

No but you will need an internet connection to remote view from off site.

I understand I can also find software that lets me view the camera from online (like from a cell phone)?

Yes. Some "free" software charges for this functionality but with only one camera you can also log into the individual camera and view it by it's web interface.

Your best bet would be to get a well-supported name brand camera like Hik or Dahua, and use their free apps for both recording and remote viewing.

These inexpensive IP cams all use M12 lenses, not CS or C mount. Replacing them is trickier than CS lenses. A good place to look is m12lenses.com, making sure you select the 1/3" section unless you bought a 1/2" camera (always more expensive).

The Hik 2032 bullet cam can take up to a 12mm lens without much trouble. I have a 25mm lens on one for plate testing, but it didn't quite fit, and required longer screws to be able to mount the sensor board once the lens was focused. It's working fine in the day, not so great at night, but was a bit of a pain to install the lens on.