New to the world of LPR ... need some help

Blue iris for me, and an NVR with the Amcrest View pro APP for the simple Simons in the house who want to check on the house from work with their phones.
 
If you can find a cheap used one, you can learn how they work and the limitations of them over Blue iris systems. Like offloading video in a goofball format, vs. .mov or .mp4 in Blue Iris.
quick timeline reviews in BI, and not as easy in NVR....it was a worthwhile adventure for me as a complete nooB to the camera game.
Then i could truly appreciate the things they were doing with BI.
As home hobbyist i could gone on with a retail store NVR and called it a day.
But being in charge of security at a 74 unit Condo, Bi was a game changer for saving me time reviewing footage daily. i went from spending an hour chasing down an incident to minutes.
But guys like @bigredfish have become proficient with NVr's and use the latest and greatest and have usefull video and data from them.
 
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Also, is there any benefit to having an NVR ?

Well you’ll need either an NVR or a dedicated PC running BI to record to. For your purposes I’d suggest the PC running BI.
I don’t run it myself but plenty of guys here can help you out
 
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I use both, i ended up retiring some NVR's from the condo and was able to upgrade my Costco Coax system ( nightmare learning curve) to IP cams for the house.
Sorry just to be clear - so are you saying an NVR will do something for me or not ?

if so, what would the NVR’s purpose be ? Thank you
 
Well you’ll need either an NVR or a dedicated PC running BI to record to. For your purposes I’d suggest the PC running BI.
I don’t run it myself but plenty of guys here can help you out

Would any NVR do ? Or does it have to be brand specific ?
What do you think of this one ?
 
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It is best to match camera brand with NVR.

Since you want to use OpenALPR, BI would be the better choice.
 
It is best to match camera brand with NVR.

Since you want to use OpenALPR, BI would be the better choice.

Thank you for all the help! Coming from a Nest cam background it’s a little different here. I have used IP cams in the past too (Foscam) but that was years ago. I found this NVR for cheap , but not sure if it’s any good for the camera in question that Flintsone suggested :


I was hoping to start with Open ALR and in parallel move things into my Home Assistant setup which is where I would like to ultimately land. Hence all the questions.

also, on a separate note , I have read through all the prior comments and was wondering - how do I ‘dial in my settings’ is it just trial and error ? Where does one start and is there a tutorial ?
 
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Yeah, these types of cameras are not like Nest or Foscam LOL.

See my links in Post #4 that includes "starting points", but yes it is just trial and error at some point. Every field of view and lighting situation is different. Even two identical cameras set up side by side can have different numbers once dialed in.

If you have Home Assistant going and plan to do OpenALPR, then just go with BI - way more flexibility and ability to coordinate the two. Many people use Home Assistant and BI instead of an NVR.
 
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Yeah, these types of cameras are not like Nest or Foscam LOL.

See my links in Post #4 that includes "starting points", but yes it is just trial and error at some point. Every field of view and lighting situation is different. Even two identical cameras set up side by side can have different numbers once dialed in.

If you have Home Assistant going and plan to do OpenALPR, then just go with BI - way more flexibility and ability to coordinate the two. Many people use Home Assistant and BI instead of an NVR.
Thank you !
 
Does anyone know what settings i need to put into OpenALPR's software?

The auto discovery yields invalid credentials no matter how many times i try. Thank you !
 
Does anyone know what settings i need to put into OpenALPR's software?

The auto discovery yields invalid credentials no matter how many times i try. Thank you !

Make sure your password is a simple one and do not have @ in it.

You need to select generic protocol and put in the IP address of the camera

It will take several takes of hitting the test before it will find it.
 
Make sure your password is a simple one and do not have @ in it.

You need to select generic protocol and put in the IP address of the camera

It will take several takes of hitting the test before it will find it.


Thank you for coming to my rescue. My password is alphanumeric and about 15 cars in length, it does not have an @ symbol.

Are you advising to use the autodiscovery feature or the manual entry instead?
For manual entry i see it advises this format: rtsp:/username:password@ip_address:port_number/some/unique/extension or a swap to http:// which i think would be for my camera. But for the life of me i can not figuire out what the /some/unique/extension should be ?
 
Manual entry is the best, and even then it will take a few pushes of the test.

Try this, where you replace user, password, IP address with yours:

Code:
rtsp:/USERNAME:PASSWORD@IPADDRESS:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0


And then once you figure that out, do this tool:

 
Manual entry is the best, and even then it will take a few pushes of the test.

Try this, where you replace user, password, IP address with yours:

Code:
rtsp:/USERNAME:PASSWORD@IPADDRESS:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0


And then once you figure that out, do this tool:



Thank you for all your help. That did not work either. Do you think it has to be H264 instead of H265? also does RTSP have to be enabled some how?
 
It has to be H264 and no codec on like Smart Codec.

And it will take several test attempts.
 
Thanks I just changed it to H264, hit the button about a hundred times and... nothing. Very frustrating as this is straightforward.