Another car break in.

Lance

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Mine didn't get broken into luckily, just a few down the street again. Back in April, had a guy on one of my cams looking in our car with a flashlight, so since then, I have installed bright LED porch lights, and a few yard cameras. Got more footage this time, but still can't make out a licence plate or facial features. Had the camera been inbetween the cars, probably would have got a better view. Any suggestions on improving my situation? Would one of those PTZ cams be able to zoom in on the movement automatically to see more?




 

nayr

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why are you running them in color? thats not helping you in the least.. congrats, you can make out the car's color.. and nothing else at all.

you dont have nearly enough light for color.. not really enough for B&W either imo.
 

FrankOceanXray

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Seems like you have a desire but not a good application. What purpose are your cameras serving? It seems they do not acquire any beneficial information other than someone looked into your vehicle after exiting a white car.

Better placement. Better settings. Better cameras?
 

Lance

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That's why I'm asking on here, to improve it. I have them set to color because with the IR, faces get washed out it seems. The cams are dahua 3mp domes and bullets. The one that is IR is a dahua zoom dome. How can I improve on it? I know one looking down between the cars would work, but what else? The two yard cams are inside fake rocks with holes looking through. The yard cams holes aren't big enough for the IR to shine through.
 

nayr

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if faces are getting washed out its likely because whatever's obscuring your FOV's is totally fucking w/autoexposure.. see these pix of my 4MP Dahua before and after adding 10W of IR power to the frame.

more light evenly dispersed wont result in overexposed hotspots, it will result in much less noise.
 

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Lance

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if faces are getting washed out its likely because whatever's obscuring your FOV's is totally fucking w/autoexposure.. see these pix of my 4MP Dahua before and after adding 10W of IR power to the frame.

more light evenly dispersed wont result in overexposed hotspots, it will result in much less noise.

interesting, where did you get these emitters? I'll try it out. What about the yard cams? Put emitters out there too?
 

Kawboy12R

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I love the sidewalk cams. The way they're set up is most useful for ID is in the daytime though. You'll have to disable the onboard IR (unplug it if they can't disable it in software) and add some IR floodlights to get better facial ID at night. That'll wreck your chances of getting plates at night unless you dedicate the cams to plate cams and hope to get lucky (not really long enough lenses though). Slightly larger holes or cams with a bit longer lens to peek through the existing holes would get rid of those black edges which don't help with your exposure.

To improve the driveway cam you'll need more light. Also, parking the white vehicle with the white light shining on it darkens the rest of the scene, but I don't expect a dramatic improvement even if you swap parking spots with the black truck but it'll help. That cam's not great at night anyway. Getting a good face shot from that cam when he was only there for a quick peek would be just luck anyway. No shame in that and the current cam is angled well to show a crossing shot of the yard for double duty. The lens is sized well to cover both vehicles with not much wasted to the sides. You'd hate to pick a longer lens and only cover 1.5 vehicles or maybe half of each. You might add a second driveway cam in the middle with better low light performance than the ones you've got.

Your front yard cam would really benefit from some more IR plus maybe a camera upgrade as well if you aren't happy with the picture after adding the illuminator. Get a big one that matches the FOV, not the little ones the size of a lemon, but anything's better than the onboard stuff.
 

Lance

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I love the sidewalk cams. The way they're set up is most useful for ID is in the daytime though. You'll have to disable the onboard IR (unplug it if they can't disable it in software) and add some IR floodlights to get better facial ID at night. That'll wreck your chances of getting plates at night unless you dedicate the cams to plate cams and hope to get lucky (not really long enough lenses though). Slightly larger holes or cams with a bit longer lens to peek through the existing holes would get rid of those black edges which don't help with your exposure.

To improve the driveway cam you'll need more light. Also, parking the white vehicle with the white light shining on it darkens the rest of the scene, but I don't expect a dramatic improvement even if you swap parking spots with the black truck but it'll help. That cam's not great at night anyway. Getting a good face shot from that cam when he was only there for a quick peek would be just luck anyway. No shame in that and the current cam is angled well to show a crossing shot of the yard for double duty. The lens is sized well to cover both vehicles with not much wasted to the sides. You'd hate to pick a longer lens and only cover 1.5 vehicles or maybe half of each. You might add a second driveway cam in the middle with better low light performance than the ones you've got.

Your front yard cam would really benefit from some more IR plus maybe a camera upgrade as well if you aren't happy with the picture after adding the illuminator. Get a big one that matches the FOV, not the little ones the size of a lemon, but anything's better than the onboard stuff.
The sidewalk cams are a project I tested out with a couple of dahuas cheapest 3mp bullets. I'll have to find a better way to hide them though. A fake rock with a big hole in it is about as obvious as just having cams mounted on a post. The sidewalk cams could probably be pointed up a little more too. They have given me some footage of coyotes, racoons, rabbits, mice and the neighbors cat who loves to eat the mice and take them back home.
 

LittleBrother

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if faces are getting washed out its likely because whatever's obscuring your FOV's is totally fucking w/autoexposure.. see these pix of my 4MP Dahua before and after adding 10W of IR power to the frame.

more light evenly dispersed wont result in overexposed hotspots, it will result in much less noise.
Damn, if that doesn't sell it nothing will. I think I need some extra IR, that's a huge difference.
 
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