Hoping for some advice on some adjustments I can make to my LPR camera

[morelup]

I am running a 5241-z12e that is getting inconsistent results at night, I've dialed it in as well as i think I can but hoping you all might be able to provide some better advice.

Probably 1/2-2/3 of the results i'm getting look like this


While 4 hours earlier I got this result


Here is a daylight picture so you can see the approximate zoom level i am using, one thing i've considered is pulling the zoom back a little bit more since i found i had better results at 1560 zoom level rather than max zoom

Here are the settings I am using


I found using any kind of backlight setting would result in any motion being a blur, while increasing the shutter speed any more than 1/4000 resulted in an image either too dark to see or too much gain and again washed out. Distance is probably ~100 feet from the locatio

 

[wittaj]

First thing I would do is drop the shutter down to say 1/2000. 1/4000 at night is too fast and will certainly miss any temp tag or newer 3M type plate many states are going to.

Let's see what it looks like with 1/2000 shutter and then we can look at other parameters.

 

[morelup]

hey wittaj, 2 from this evening. 1 very visible, the other a completely mess, maybe an hour difference between the two.

The one that was clear was going much slower than a normal vehicle, and the blurry was going probably faster (which the cars i'd probably care about will be probably driving the fastest )

 

[samplenhold]

Is the bad plate a front plate? Or if it is a rear, the plate light may not be working. Do you have an overview cam to tell if the plate is dirty, obstructed, or damaged? All of those issues can make it difficult to get a plate. What state are you in? It could be that some of these plates are the 3M plates that are not reflective in the IR range of this cam.

I agree with @wittaj on lowering the shutter speed to 1/2000.

If you got better caps at less zoom, then it would not be wrong to try that back again.

Here is one of my cam's settings for you to look at.

 

[morelup]

We only have back plates in this state, the both plates looked to be illuminated but hard to tell from the overview camera. it is 100% when a vehicle is moving quickly it is blurred. I'll attempt your setting which increases 2d noise reduction, lower 3d, and a bit more gain.

The cameras photos from last night were both with 1/2000. My only worry about pulling out more than i already have is that before it was a focal length issue where plates would come in and out of focus across the camera, that one good one was clear throughout.

 

[morelup]

Yeah those settings seem to have made it worse sadly




Trying lowering the 2d NR to 23 and gain to max out at 65 and will see then

 

[Flintstone61]

Are you letting the camera switch from a day/color setting to a night/IR setting?
or is it locked into night with a narrow range of exposure time?

 

[Flintstone61]

Dont try and see color in the day. it has one job....B&W fast shutter captures.

 

[morelup]

i am controlling it switching to night using home assistant, and yes as you see in the first post i am using b&w

did some more testing tonight, dropped it down to 1/1000, and cranked the NR/gain/iris down a lot and seems to be doing "ok" will have to see a couple other cars go through other than just mine to be sure

 

[samplenhold]

Yeah those settings seem to have made it worse sadly

Every cam and situation is different. I posted an old setting set. Sorry. Below is my two night settings for the two LPR cams I have. They are different from each other. I am always tweaking the settings.

Maybe this will help, maybe not.

 

[CCTVCam]

Something I noticed straight away and confirmed by Sampenhold's settings, your Iris is set to 65. This controls the amount of light entering the camera. If your focusing is accurate, you shouldn't need as much depth of field so try lowering it to Sampenshold's setting of 35.

I wondering if what's happening here is an hour later it's darker and the higher iris setting means smaller iris and thus the cameras no longer pulling in enough light. Just a guess but might be worth looking at.

 

[samplenhold]

I don't get every plate. But I can decipher most plates by slowly going through frame-by-frame. But even going frame-by-frame there are some I can't read. Some plates at night are just not readable.

Here is what my LPR-W looks like. The LPR cam is on top, and an overview cam is on bottom. See how much light I have due to the streetlight and other lights around the area.


Here is that LPR shot. It is pretty good, and it is a front plate.

Here are a few that are not so good.

Yet here a few that are just fine.


I wonder if the one that you have that is so washed out is just a plate that is non-reflective, like the 3M plates in TN. Or maybe a paper plate?

 

[Flintstone61]

everytime you switch it to night, it will focus hunt... and that make it can decide to stop at a different focal length than you had the night before........

 

[samplenhold]

everytime you switch it to night, it will focus hunt... and that make it can decide to stop at a different focal length than you had the night before........

He has the focus and zoom set to manual. It should stay in focus as long as he sets the focus value correctly once it is in night mode.

 

[Flintstone61]

If you can sneak a reflective piece of tape ( shown below) somewhere out where the LPR is looking, you can play with the focus, in between cars, and see how to dial it in....

 

[Flintstone61]

Are you almost at max zoom? here is a setting i had in my previous generation to the 5241 the 5231.....

 

[wittaj]

I do not believe it is a focus issue - it appears to a paper plate or the new 3M plate.

 

[Flintstone61]

Don't you ever sleep?

 

[morelup]

so here are some samples with the latest settings. The one having trouble could be the unreflective, but i think these are all the same plate. Actually, as i type this, i think the settings for that third picture (my test run) aren't what was used in the last 2, i mustnot have hit save >.> I had turned noise up to 15 on each and upped the gain/iris just a little.

I think the thing that gets me with these middle ones, is i can make out that the camera is "almost" got the letters its just the NR or something obscuring it. Possibly a slight focus adjustment one way or other might help, set to 965, might try putting it to 975 for a night and 955 for another.



Also Flintstone i'm not worried about focus/zoom because i have it set to manual, and worst case if i saw it drifting i can write a script to force it back regularly. But it has been spot on with zoom/focus for ~2 months to what i set it to.

 

[Flintstone61]

Is there something you can adjust to get more plate reflectivity? It seems as if I'm not seeing an awful lot of IR bouncing off the plate to the lens....maybe try a fairly extreme Iris adjustment like 20-30 points either way..( shut up Wittaj)
My best setting came when I took @wittaj suggestions but went out on my own with sampling iris settings to clear up the grainy stuff.....
Alas the cams are taken down due to fogging....