New to LPR? Considerations Before You Begin

[brianegge]

This sounds very interesting. Is this object detector a commercial product or something you wrote yourself?

Just something I wrote myself. The yolov3 default weights worked ok, but was too slow.
You might be able to get something similar by using the cameras vehicle detector and snapshots. One advantage of my system is it crops the 4K image before sending it to SightHound. This improves things greatly.

 

[LittleBrother]

This thread was the final motivation I needed. Bought a HFW5241E-Z12E from Andy a week back. Currently playing with settings, but somebody on amazon said it likes 1/500 and HLC @ 85% at night. I set that as night setting, and nothing comes through--even a dim solar light on a neighbor's lawn. Yet, when my car went by there it was like magic: the license plate. Very impressed with this for the cost. The huge zoom is critical. Will try a quicker shutter perhaps.

 

[wittaj]

Yep - the screen should be black except for the headlight/tailight and plates popping out! This is why too many people that try to use it as an overview camera and LPR are mad they cannot get plates at night - you get one or the other but not both with a camera for LPR unless there is a ton of ambient light or the car comes to a stop.

 

[samplenhold]

Thanks for your great review @@samplenhold
We will send you a christmas gift like a IPC-T5442T-ZE black or white. Let me know in PM.

So that was back on Nov 12th. I did PM Andy but asked to wait since I would be out of town for a while. Well I got back and Andy shipped the cam to me from Hong Kong on Monday. Well It arrived today (Wednesday) at 7:26pm!

Wow. That is the second time he has shipped me a cam that arrived in about two days!

Also should mention that all of the cams in this post were bought from Andy and shipped from Hong Kong. I now have 21 Dahua cams from 12 different models. All bought from Andy since 2018, except for one that I won in @bigredfish 's lottery last December (thanks BRF). I liked it so much that I bought a second one for inside the garage.

 

[extremador]

I'm glad I found this forum. My neighbor's Prius was jacked up this morning (at 7:22 am!) and had their catalytic converter stolen, which is apparently a trend.

We all have doorbell cameras and I have a wireless Reolink Argus Eco, but none of the cameras were able to successfully capture the license plate of the thieves car and the police report will basically be meaningless without that bit of evidence.

I've been doing research all day on different LPR systems. I also had a consultation with someone from Flocksafety, which would be $2,250 a year for one camera or $4,500 for two cameras... which, when split between the neighborhood wouldn't be terrible. My only thing about DIY is doing ethernet cable runs, which is never fun.

A lot of the specific "LPR" cameras I've been finding are hella expensive, with one from Nelly's (NSC-LPR832-BT1) being the cheapest at $700 a pop. But from what I'm seeing here, it looks like you guys are mostly using Hikvision or some other type of camera and then leveraging OpenALPR.

Is that the best course of action for saving a buttload of money and having a highly configurable system?

Thanks, and apologies in advance for the noob post.

 

[sebastiantombs]

See this thread -

LPR

LPR

Licence Plate Reader cameras

ipcamtalk.com

 

[extremador]

Which one specifically? That link takes me back to the LPR threads but not a specific one.

 

[sebastiantombs]

Any of the Dahua, 2MP, zoom cameras. Zoom depending on range. If you look in the posts you'll see specific model numbers. It's difficult to say the XYZ with a xyz zoom will work for you because each situation is different. You may also find you need additional IR light for night reads.

Here's an example -

Loryta IPC-B5442E-Z4E 4MP Starlight+ WDR IR 8mm–32mm Motorized Lens Bullet

I got this camera becuase it say it can do LPR. I installed it and attached is the picture it came out. I cannot see the license plate of the car because the light is too bright on the driver car. Is there a setting or guideline i need to adjust to lower the light setting? or disable auto night...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[wittaj]

The OEM Dahua 5241-EZ12E from @EMPIRETECANDY is the go to camera for most of us here for LPR purposes. And read up on the subforum listed above to learn about the specifics - what shutter speed to run (1/2,000), expect to see nothing else but head/tail lights and plate at night, this camera is only for plates and not an overview camera, etc.

Use this site to determine the distance you will need, but I strongly recommend getting the mentioned one even if you need less zoom - you can almost never have too much zoom for plate reading purposes LOL:

IPVM Designer / Calculator

Using Google Maps, layout and design cameras, choosing from 10,000+ models, delivering FoV and image quality previews plus export to PDF, Powerpoint and more

calculator.ipvm.com

 

[samplenhold]

But from what I'm seeing here, it looks like you guys are mostly using Hikvision or some other type of camera and then leveraging OpenALPR.

The very first post in this thread states the cams are Dahua HFW5241EP-Z12E. I have posted a few other LPR threads, as have others here. @coney27 really likes the cam below for LPR, but the max focal length is 32mm. But it has a nice accounting of plates internally that can be easily sent to a database. But it is a few dollars more than the other cams.

2 MP DeepinView Ultra-Low Light Outdoor LPR Bullet Camera | Hikvision US | The world’s largest video surveillance manufacturer

 

[DLONG2]

I'll take a look at parsing for PR records within the BI log files; it wouldn't be so hard to do, and get them stored into a database.

 

[samplenhold]

I'll take a look at parsing for PR records within the BI log files; it wouldn't be so hard to do, and get them stored into a database.

Wow, that would be great. Since I have no idea how to do that myself. I was hoping to get some time to research how to do that with some kind of script, but have no current experience. I retired five years ago and it was at least five years before that since I did any scripting. I can't even remember what language we used.

 

[Kevin_Essiambre]

I know a LPR camera is best for this, but would a regular 3MP camera with the shutter speed set to something like 1/2000 or faster get any results? Mounting location is going to be max 10' from the plates, at the same elevation as the plates, But at approximately 45° off to the side.

 

[bigredfish]

45 degrees is a pretty sharp angle, and speed matters, but that aside, any 2MP+ camera with enough lens, IR and shutter control should be able to pick up plates reasonably well at 10 ft.

 

[Kevin_Essiambre]

45 degrees is a pretty sharp angle, and speed matters, but that aside, any 2MP+ camera with enough lens, IR and shutter control should be able to pick up plates reasonably well at 10 ft.

I know 45° is a little sharp but its my only option (downside of not owning the property...).

Vehicle speed physically can't be faster than 30km/h that would be top speed. Average is probably 10-20km/h . Any faster and they won't be able to stop in time to exit the parking lot.

Glad to hear I don't have to invest in a LPR camera right now.

 

[bigredfish]

The camera most of us use for LPR (5241Z-12) isn’t by definition an LPR camera. It just has the zoom we often need. There’s nothing special about it otherwise.

 

[samplenhold]

This is a shot for a plate at about 45 degrees. It is not from a cam that I use for LPR but is rather the one I use for vehicle ID. This is the Intersection cam that is talked about in post #40 on page 2 of this thread.



As what we here always say, "The only real way to know would be to put it on a test rig and test it".

 

[chyatt21]

In my system I first process the feed with an object detector. If it sees a vehicle, it crops the image and passes it to the sighthound api. It removes the problem of false alerts due to other movements.

Is sighthound a subscription? Also is if software that can be downloaded, or cloud based only?

 

[chyatt21]

This is a shot for a plate at about 45 degrees. It is not from a cam that I use for LPR but is rather the one I use for vehicle ID. This is the Intersection cam that is talked about in post #40 on page 2 of this thread.

View attachment 78033

As what we here always say, "The only real way to know would be to put it on a test rig and test it".

How does it perform at night?

 

[samplenhold]

How does it perform at night?

Here is a shot from last night in about the same position. Realize that I am not using this cam to get tags. If I was, the shutter would be at 1/2000 and everything would be black except the car lights and the tag.