SyconsciousAu

I'm assuming that trenching 155m is out of the question. Ethernet over power may work for you if the power source at the camera location is connected to the building you want to link to. I've heard of adaptors with 200m range. The only other option is wireless. Expect to invest in some high gain directional antennas. Is line of sight uninterrupted and free of signal killing things like power lines?

Understood. It's still pretty bad. There is still some tweaking to be done but I'm fairly happy where it is at at this stage given that I'm using an illuminator that cost less than $50 and a camera that wasn't designed for plate capture. Those particular plates are also the hardest to capture (of the local plates) with numbers that are only 50mm high.

Your issue with plate capture appears to be linked to the design of the plates in your local area. I don't have the same issue. [attachment=0]red on black at night.jpg[/attachment] That is a capture of a black plate with red letters under IR. That looks pretty bad. A human can read it, but not automated recognition. It was never set up for automated recognition. Field of view is way to large.

Your issue with plate capture appears to be linked to the design of the plates in your local area. I don't have the same issue. That is a capture of a black plate with red letters under IR.

I have a PC Based NVR which doesn't have a DVR card. Strictly IP cameras. Mine is also a dedicated box.

For ease of plug and play I can see why you would say go stand alone PVR but I went PC based as I couldn't get what I wanted in terms of capability, redundancy and expandability in a Stand alone unit. Need a bit more PC know how though if you intend to DIY.

Have you considered using the web viewer through the internet browser on the TV?

What sort of budget were you thinking? Good advance planning will help a lot here. Decide where you want to put the NVR and the cameras and come up with a plan. Also consider heat. I had to move my NVR from it's original position because it would get too hot.

viewtopic.php?f=19&t=44641 Join us in this thread. You can see my results with setting up a number plate capture system. Buellwinkel shows how he did it with a standard Hikvision bullet with the built in IR's Buellwinklel also did an excellent post over at Network Camera Critic about number plate capture and recognition. It is worth a read for anyone thinking about undertaking number plate capture, particularly at night.

Why not just play the files directly from the NAS using VLC player or similar?

Will that NVR raid 1/5/6 the drives?

I've got an 8 camera system with a mix of Dahua and Hikvision cameras. My NVR is a windows based PC with an I5 processor running Blue Iris. A pair of 3TB Western Digital Red hard drives do the storage. I have them set up in Raid1. A Big UPS/Surge protector ensures things remain running as they should if the power goes out. Or so I thought Last night we had a nasty thunderstorm here. One of the hits was very close. Big Flash, Big Bang, and the lights go out for a second before coming back on. I check everything. Monitor is up, cameras are showing their streams as advertised. I tried to log in remotely by VNC to the server without success so I could check on the other cameras I have hidden from view. No Joy. The VNC Server on the NVR isn't responding. Try to reboot the NVR locally and windows refuses to load claiming no operating system detected. Recovery with the windows disk is attempted but it doesn't even recognise that I have windows installed. The raid utility reports that one disk is trying to verify, and the other requires initialisation. I was going to try a fresh windows install but the windows installer was showing I had four drives, none of which would allow anything to be loaded onto it. I ended up opening the case and disconnecting one of the drives. A miracle occurred. Windows booted. Blue Iris booted. I reconnected the drive and the system began to rebuild it over the next 10 hours. Today both drives are back online and I have had no data loss. I have to say I am really glad I spent the extra money and built some redundancy into my system. If you don't have your NVR raided in some way I really recommend you look into it. It saved me.

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.

the 2332 will be better.. Ive got a couple of the 3332 set up (same format later model I think) and they have excellent night vision. Take the 30 metre claims with a grain of salt though. Excellent to 10 and ok to 15m is closer to the mark.

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

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.

Could it be that your auto iris is getting stuck in the open position at night and not closing by day? I notice your auto iris setting says "close". Is there an auto setting in that menu?

Buellwinkel did a really good post about number plate recognition over at Network Camera Critic. Based on what I know I think you will need four cameras to achieve what you want. One camera to capture the plates and an overview camera.

Exposure is set to manual range with a maximum of 2ms (1/500 sec). Auto iris is on and day/night is currently set to black and white. It was set to auto but would drop into colour by day with the resulting blur so I have fixed black and white Auto is not really an option for me because I need high shutter speed so the IR does not wash out the plates by night. I might try doubling the shutter speed by day and see if that helps. The camera was still switching fine.

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. 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 By Day in Colour 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?

It appears I linked to the manual iris version of the same lens. My lens is definitely a DC Auto Iris lens. Fixed the link now.

I've been toying with the idea of building remote solar powered cameras that are connected to the network by wifi. My initial enquiries seem to put the material cost in the $500 (Aus Dollars) range per camera. For your application you would probably need directional antennas to get the range/bandwidth but it might be something worth considering. That way you can get the camera(s) down in the paddock. Alternatively, if you have access to a trencher, you could trench down to the paddock and run Power/Cat 6 back to the house. Lots of work involved in that though.

I use this one. http://www.theiatech.com/calculator.php

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.

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