I may have underestimated the LED lights I purchased....

Here are all my relevant settings:

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Substream 2 is set for the same FPS, etc but with 8192 bitrate as it's the videoclip substream.

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Almost identical to my daytime settings.


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Looking a bit closer at the videos, there is slight blurring behind people when they walk. I'll drop the NR maybe 3 points on each 2D and 3D and see how it looks tomorrow. And see what the gain looks like at 35 but I'm happy with the image at 40.

Backlight is off. WB on Auto. Day/Night set to Colour (obviously, lol).

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I need the illuminator on to infill the garages. They're too dark with it off. I think a lot of people at night think the camera is actually a light which works to my advantage.

Defog and LDc are both Off.
 
wow thats almost daylight type lighting......either gonna attract a lot of attention and drive it away lol..nice job

Thank you. Lol

It may keep the criminals farther away. Which is both good and bad. Good is obvious but bad is we won't be able to identify the thieves as they won't be passing by.

At least I'll get some good shots of classic cars driving by at night!
 
Hey there, ive also illuminated our property and one across the street and both residential. I assure you the astronauts on the ICC use this light to establish their location. However we can all agree that the powers that be have taken away that blessing of abundant power away from most of us leaving us to resort to alterntive means of power generation which in turn means we dont have the privalage of just adding a big bulb to get brighter light anymore cos when the rolling blackout occurs each day, we have to keep those lights burning ourselves. So my question is, what alterative methods of lighting/power generation have you guys come up with even just to keep the cameras rolling during blackouts?
 
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Hey there, ive also illuminated our property and one across the street and both residential. I assure you the astronauts on the ICC use this light to establish their location. However we can all agree that the powers that be have taken away that blessing of abundant power away from most of us leaving us to resort to alterntive means of power generation which in turn means we dont have the privalage of just adding a big bulb to get brighter light anymore cos when the rolling blackout occurs each day, we have to keep those lights burning ourselves. So my question is, what alterative methods of lighting/power generation have you guys come up with even just to keep the cameras rolling during blackouts?

In specific area of Havana, the power rarely goes out. The longest we had was just over four days after the hurricane in late October last year. Unfortunately, the utility didn't trim the trees the entire pandemic so many came down on the cables. By far the exception.

I have a 12v 150ah battery array that I hooked up to a regular APC UPS. Only issues is I have to charge the array with a car battery charger if the power goes out for any significant amount of time.

This setup powers the NVR (which powers the cameras), a fan and television in the bedroom. So the cameras stay on 24/7 and if we're watching TV at night, we hardly even notice save for the fan sounding strange due to the modified sine wave the UPS puts out.

Until I installed these lights, I've been using solar reflectors like this:


They've been working great but I find the lumen output falls significantly on units over 150 watts. They've survived a hurricane, many storms and are working great with even the batteries still holding a decent charge after two and half years.

I may pick up a larger unit next trip to Mexico. This claims to have 22,000 lumen output.


I doubt the stated lumen output is 22k lumens. Considering I see flashlights on Amazon listed at 1,000,000 lumens and the LED used is rated for 5,000 lumens.

I'm looking at a full solar setup for the house in the next couple years. The panels are cheap enough but it's the battery storage that is expensive if you want to have a day's worth of electricity in the batteries. Even without the AC units, it's quite expensive. But we'll definitely plan for it.

Where are you located that you have blackouts?
 
Here's some footage last night from a 2431 variant that I have on the other street where I mounted another of the same LED fixtures. This is one of the cameras from the "my 2.8mm cameras will see everything!" start. For a 1/3" sensor, it's a decent camera. I think I paid around $80 USD two and half years ago for each camera.

View attachment NVR_ch7_main_20230605004122_20230605020856.mp4


















Tree definitely needs to be trimmed and the fixture tilted upwards to get a touch more light on the other sidewalk. Considering the limitations of the sensor, this is a decent image for 4MP on a 1/3" sensor. People walking by were much clearer.
 
So after making a couple tweaks, this is a video from last night. Very, very minimal blur but I don't think it's from NR being too high as there is a bit of noise in the people walking. I think it's the 8.33ms shutter so I'm going to leave it.

I tried dropping the gain last night to see how it looked but even dropping it a touch led to the video stuttering, probably from the processor working too hard. But it looks great where it is and dropping the NR 3 points each on 3D and 2D minimized the blur. Faces look clear enough and clothing details are bang on.

View attachment NVR_ch1_main_20230605002120_20230605002135.mp4


















This is the same time but from the SD1A404XB doing face detection. It picked up all 3 faces and got decent face shots (won't post them here but they're Identify quality). Need to raise the NR a bit as it looks a bit grainy on my 4K TV.

View attachment NVR_ch12_main_20230605002120_20230605002133.mp4
 
Your side of the street looks almost like day time. Local kids might go to your sidewalk at night to play baseball with your stadium light. :rofl:

Last night, a teenager rode his skateboard up and down the street (we're on a slight grade) for about 2 hours. Rode it downhill and then walked it back up. Nice to see he was enjoying the new lights!
 
I purchased more solar reflectors a month or so ago in Mexico. Some of the older ones are now over 4 years old and the batteries (32650 type) are failing. I've taken the older ones down and am in the process of sourcing new batteries. That should give them another 4 years of life. When I opened them up, the units were like new inside. I'll probably also throw in some silica packs even though there's no sign of humidity or corrosion on the small circuits these units have.

These are pics passageway one with an older unit, then with a new unit at midnight and again at 5am. There is a slight drop in output but nothing terrible.


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This is the second passageway. It was previously unlit. Again, pics of before and then after at midnight and 5am.

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Obviously, much bigger difference in the second passageway. I should mention that the after pics of both passageways are after I adjusted the shutter and gain for the new lighting. My memory isn't so great anymore but I believe I went from 20ms/60 gain to 8.33ms/45 gain in the first passage way and 30ms/60gain to 8.33ms/45 gain in the second passageway. Haven't had any cats the last couple of nights so no video.

This is it for illumination! Well, for now at least! The solar reflectors are easy to install as it's simply a matter of connecting the solar panel (25w @ 6v) to the reflector. We had to extend the cable so that the panels can be mounted on the shade-free roof and the reflectors installed about 10m (30 Freedom Units) down. Sure beats running cable back to a breaker in a panel. The 20ah batteries should be good to deal with a couple of overcast days as the panels get sun from 6am to 8pm this time of year and the intensity of the reflectors was turned down.

Only change I plan on making will be to mount these cameras lower but I'll need to have cages made up so they don't get stolen. But that will have to wait until I can replace the current 2431-S-S2's with 1/2.8" sensors with other units. These cameras don't get a lot of play save for trans sex workers and cats so they haven't been a priority.
 

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