POE camera for mailbox recommendation

[cdogg44]

I live out of town and have built a brick mailbox with a 1" conduit back to the house. About 250' total from switch to camera. Mailbox is at the end of a road in cul de sac only serving 4 houses. So not a lot of daily traffic.

The goal is a camera that has quality image capture with the potential for license plate recognition. Alerts would be secondary.

I have a small Blue Iris system running but also utilize Ring doorbell cameras on all exterior doors. Their quality isn't great, but the setup, sharing with spouse, and app integrated are worthwhile tradeoffs.

What would be a good option for a camera? Low profile would be better. Is the POE Ring camera something to consider?

 

[wittaj]

A ring camera WILL NEVER be able to read plates, especially at night.

You have to setup the camera to get plates, but at night that is all it will get.

This is a camera dedicated to plates and not an overview camera also. It is as much an art as it is a science. You will need two cameras. For LPR we need to OPTICALLY zoom in tight to make the plate as large as possible. For most of us, all you see is the not much more than a vehicle in the entire frame. Now maybe in the right location during the day it might be able to see some other things, but not at night.

At night, we have to run a very fast shutter speed (1/2,000) and in B/W with IR and the image will be black. We need the fast shutter to capture the plate and take advantage of the reflective properties of the plate. All you will see are head/tail lights and the plate. Some people can get away with color if they have enough street lights, but most of us cannot. Here is a representative sample of plates I get at night of vehicles traveling about 45MPH at 175 feet from my 2MP 5241-Z12E camera (that is all that is needed for plates):

At that shutter speed you will not pick up the outline of the car, people walking by, etc. Just like at a shutter speed to capture people at night, the plate will be all white due to the reflective properties of the plate.



See the LPR subforum for lots of examples.

This would be a good choice on a mailbox

https://www.amazon.com/Loryta-2-7mm-13-5mm-Motorized-Starlight-Weatherproof/dp/B082XR73CC/ref=sr_1_28?imprToken=eNnu.Pmf5hsW5hcTVECAQg&linkCode=w61&m=A329YQ83EBQGJF&marketplaceID=ATVPDKIKX0DER&qid=1686428155&redirect=true&s=merchant-items&slotNum=0&sr=1-28