Recommendations for camera to capture license plates

P

p1morris

n3wb
Apr 30, 2020
13
4
Monterey Park
Hello all,

I'm new to this forum and have seen a lot of great information on this site. I'm hoping that someone could provide recommendations on a custom setup for my situation.

My current setup: We remodeled our house a couple years ago. At that time, we ran cat 6 cables and added Reolink POE cameras surrounding the exterior of our house. After reading discussions on this forum, I see that Reolink was not the best move. I'm considering Dahua or Hikvision for any future additions (though I still don't have a clear idea yet of which would be best for me).

Over the past couple years, we have had several incidents captured on camera at our house. The most serious of which was 2 masked individuals jumped our fence and tried to break into our house at 11 pm. Luckily, we were awake and scared them away when we turned on the lights. Our cameras captured their car pulling out of an alleyway down the street, parking in front of our house for 10 min, pulling in front of our neighbors house before exiting the vehicle, searching our windows, and then they went into our back patio where they tried to break into our sliding door.

Ever since this incident, I've been wishing that I could capture license plates. I already have a cat 6 cable which we ran to the front of our driveway under the concrete to our vinyl gate. Our handyman suggested that we run a tiny POE camera (though he had no suggestions on which) that we install inside the vinyl fence looking at the street. I have a few questions:
  • Firstly, is this legal? I live in California where regulations tend to be strict. This would be a camera that resides on the exterior of my property facing the street.
  • This would be installed about 4 feet off the ground. Do you have any camera recommendations that would be able to capture license plates in this situation?
  • From reading other discussions, do I need to mount the camera at a higher angle to be able to capture license plates? I don't think I've ever seen a house with a pole mounted bullet/turret camera at the street . Should it be mounted 10-20 feet back from the property line?
  • Lastly, is anyone else doing something similar? I don't want to be creepy; however, being able to capture license plates would go a long way towards actually helping these individuals get caught.
Thank you for considering and for your ideas.

Paul
 

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p1morris said:
Luckily, we were awake and scared them away when we turned on the lights.
Click to expand...
Even luckier would be if you lived in a state that wasn't so anti-gun (I lived in the Silicon Valley for 29 years, BTW)....then it could have had a very different outcome for those guys. Breaking in at 11 pm on a Saturday, car(s) in the d/w, they've GOT to suspect someone's at home.....which makes them VERY dangerous. Personally, I may have let them come on in then dispatched both of them right there inside the house.

OK,that's out of the way......Welcome to IPCT! :wave:

Have you visited the LPR thread?
 
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TonyR said:
Even luckier would be if you lived in a state that wasn't so anti-gun (I lived in the Silicon Valley for 29 years, BTW)....then it could have had a very different outcome for those guys. Breaking in at 11 pm on a Saturday, car(s) in the d/w, they've GOT to suspect someone's at home.....which makes them VERY dangerous. Personally, I may have let them come on in then dispatched both of them right there inside the house.

OK,that's out of the way......Welcome to IPCT! :wave:

Have you visited the LPR thread?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the welcome! A lot of people told me the same thing. Makes me wonder if I should get one too.
 
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I had a Hikvision DS-2CD2032-I 12mm camera pointed at a stop sign about 80 feet away (yes, I measured), and it would get half the plates stopping at the stop sign during the day. Part of the issue was the angle... the camera was towards the rear right corner of each car. I also got good shots of people coming onto the street through their windshield. I would share footage here, but I had to move the camera several months ago due to tree branches growing in front of it and blocking the view. I ended up redirecting it to the mailbox, and it's too far for plates. If I had a house that squared up with the street and a little closer, I'd have one looking both directions at the street. I've given footage to the police a few times, after neighbors' cars were broken into. One of my videos linked a car from a different arrest to a burglary on my street, and after a search warrant at the suspect's house, my neighbor got her stuff back.
 
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FWIW, this might answer some of your questions. I live on a corner of a 'T shaped' intersection and am in the process of installing two Dahua IPC-HFW5241EP-Z12E cameras for LPR work. Most cars here have front plates. With the location I have picked to mount them, I will get back plates and front plates for most vehicles that pass by or turn. The main road runs more or less east-west and the T intersecting road north-south. I live on the NW corner. The only plates I would miss are if the car does not have a front plate and turns onto the T intersecting street. I will place both cameras in a wooden box about three feet off the ground in the garden behind a pine tree in my front yard and paint it to match the accent color of the house, which is a brown color. It will be about 20"x18" and 10-12" in height. Hopefully it will not be too conspicuous.

As proof of concept I set one camera out at the install position and took some daytime videos of both directions. The camera was just laying on a box about two feet off the ground in late afternoon. Below are some captures.

The first set is facing east towards the corner. The distance is 51 to 99 feet depending on the direction of travel. The angle of view is 0-26 degrees, zero for cars turning onto the T street directly into the camera view.

LPR-E.20200317_184515_1f.jpgLPR-E.20200317_184515_1g.jpgLPR-E_W-E straight.jpg

The next set is facing west. The distance is 87-99 feet depending on direction of travel. The angle of view is a maximum of 36 degrees.

LPR-E.w1.jpgLPR-E.w2.jpg

I think I can get good captures from these. Realize that the exact positioning is not worked out for these tests.

Hope this helps.
 
stevenizme said:
I had a Hikvision DS-2CD2032-I 12mm camera pointed at a stop sign about 80 feet away (yes, I measured), and it would get half the plates stopping at the stop sign during the day. Part of the issue was the angle... the camera was towards the rear right corner of each car. I also got good shots of people coming onto the street through their windshield. I would share footage here, but I had to move the camera several months ago due to tree branches growing in front of it and blocking the view. I ended up redirecting it to the mailbox, and it's too far for plates. If I had a house that squared up with the street and a little closer, I'd have one looking both directions at the street. I've given footage to the police a few times, after neighbors' cars were broken into. One of my videos linked a car from a different arrest to a burglary on my street, and after a search warrant at the suspect's house, my neighbor got her stuff back.
Click to expand...

This is essentially what I'm trying to accomplish. I know that I won't capture every license plate, but maybe I would have captured my would be robbers unmasked faces. How high was your camera mounted?

Since I'm looking to install below chest height (the camera would be mounted at ~ 4ft), I'm not sure if I should install a full bullet/turret camera. So I started looking into covert cameras (ex. Hikvision DS-2CD6424FWD-30). I was also thinking that having 2 cameras facing in opposite directions would best. I'm hoping that I can somehow disguise it so it doesn't look as odd.

I'm not sure if I'm just waiting my time by going with this setup. Or if it would, at least, allow me to capture some license plates and faces.
 
samplenhold said:
FWIW, this might answer some of your questions. I live on a corner of a 'T shaped' intersection and am in the process of installing two Dahua IPC-HFW5241EP-Z12E cameras for LPR work. Most cars here have front plates. With the location I have picked to mount them, I will get back plates and front plates for most vehicles that pass by or turn. The main road runs more or less east-west and the T intersecting road north-south. I live on the NW corner. The only plates I would miss are if the car does not have a front plate and turns onto the T intersecting street. I will place both cameras in a wooden box about three feet off the ground in the garden behind a pine tree in my front yard and paint it to match the accent color of the house, which is a brown color. It will be about 20"x18" and 10-12" in height. Hopefully it will not be too conspicuous.

As proof of concept I set one camera out at the install position and took some daytime videos of both directions. The camera was just laying on a box about two feet off the ground in late afternoon. Below are some captures.

The first set is facing east towards the corner. The distance is 51 to 99 feet depending on the direction of travel. The angle of view is 0-26 degrees, zero for cars turning onto the T street directly into the camera view.

View attachment 60878View attachment 60879View attachment 60880

The next set is facing west. The distance is 87-99 feet depending on direction of travel. The angle of view is a maximum of 36 degrees.

View attachment 60881View attachment 60882

I think I can get good captures from these. Realize that the exact positioning is not worked out for these tests.

Hope this helps.
Click to expand...

Wow, those are excellent captures. I think I'll check out Dahua as well.

I'm interested in the box that you're building. Do you have any need to hide the cameras so that no one will tamper with them? I was thinking about adding a box with a one way mirror film so it's less obvious. In my situation, the cameras would be located right next to the sidewalk - a lot of people walk by daily. I don't want anyone to spray paint over them.

For the Dahua, how does it perform at night with LPR?
 
p1morris said:
This is essentially what I'm trying to accomplish. I know that I won't capture every license plate, but maybe I would have captured my would be robbers unmasked faces. How high was your camera mounted?

Since I'm looking to install below chest height (the camera would be mounted at ~ 4ft), I'm not sure if I should install a full bullet/turret camera. So I started looking into covert cameras (ex. Hikvision DS-2CD6424FWD-30). I was also thinking that having 2 cameras facing in opposite directions would best. I'm hoping that I can somehow disguise it so it doesn't look as odd.

I'm not sure if I'm just waiting my time by going with this setup. Or if it would, at least, allow me to capture some license plates and faces.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that for LPR cameras, at night time, the screen will be totally black, and the only thing that will be picked up are the headlights or taillights and the plate. You need to run a fast shutter speed to pick up plates at night and that results in the black screen and nothing else really being picked up.

Cameras set up for LPR are just for that - capturing plates. In the daytime you do get some benefit of being able to see other things, but you would need another camera to get faces at night.

The Dahua referenced above (or it's predecessor) is the the LPR camera of choice for many here.

Check out this thread that gives settings examples and such

LPR with a pair of IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E
 
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