Sunshade/Sunshield for IPC-HFW4431R-Z?

[TheWaterbug]

I bought two of these white-box Dahua bullets, and they definitely need more of sunshield than the tiny little one that's integrated into the housing:

Google finds nothing! Does such a thing exist? Or do I have to make my own?

 

[TheWaterbug]

Apparently nobody cares about this but me

Anyway, the only 3.5" tube/pipe I could find was this '3" PVC coupler' (model 1018) from Topaz. It's designed for mating two pieces of 3" ID pipe, so it's ID is specified at 3.5". These are only $1.60 apiece, but most distributors want you to buy 100. Gordon Electric was the only one I found selling in small quantities, but shipping is $11.00 minimum, so I bought 9 of them.

I wanted to use this in two different ways:
1) as a way to mount a camera against the side of a box, like my Swarm Trap or Owl Box, while providing some light shielding, like a baffle.
2) As a sunshade for my cameras that are pointing South (from the Northern hemisphere)

Here's my camera inserted into one of them:

The fit is pretty good, except that there's a "stop ring" inside the coupler, to ensure that an inserted PVC pipe would be correctly seated. Here's what that looks like when the camera butts up against it:

That's going to impinge upon my FOV unless I either cut it off, remove the stop ring, or zoom in. Here's what that looks like, zoomed out:

If I zoom in to "580" on the controller, out of a possible 1350, the vignetting is almost gone:

and at 600, it's completely gone:

If I cut off the coupler off at the stop ring:

then the camera never sees it, even zoomed out to 0:

So this might be suitable as a way to mount a camera against the side of the box, as long as I can cover the open end with something.

For my sunshade application, I put one on my miter box and cut it 45 degrees:

It's just barely long enough for me to cut it at 45 degrees and still have two "closed" pieces:

Now I can hang this onto one of my cameras:

There's some vignetting at the top at zoom 0:

but it's almost gone at zoom 120:

and completely gone at zoom 140:

That's out of a range from 0 - 1350, so the vignetting only occurs when zoomed pretty far out.

The sunshade works pretty well in daylight. At high noon, without the sunshade, it's terrible:

but the sunshade fixes that almost completely:

But now I have a problem at night, where the IR LEDs reflect off the inside of the sunshade and wash out my image:

 

[wittaj]

Pretty cool - I was gonna mention I bet that screws up the IR, but that was your last pic.

You need to matte black finish the inside portion or try black felt.

 

[TheWaterbug]

Pretty cool - I was gonna mention I bet that screws up the IR, but that was your last pic.

You need to matte black finish the inside portion or try black felt.

Would a matte-black spray paint work? Or do I need something more exotic?

Felt will probably break down in the elements.

 

[fstfrd50]

I used a Hikvision sun shade for one of my turrets camera at the edge of the soffit which gets sun nearly all day. I’ll post a picture later on. I definitely like your idea of bullet cam shade, pvc pipe cut at an angle.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[TheWaterbug]

I definitely like your idea of bullet cam shade, pvc pipe cut at an angle.

A bit ghetto, but it works, and it's cheap!!

As long as I can figure out a fix for the nighttime IR reflection.

 

[wittaj]

My neighbor used some aluminum house trim that he painted matte black and installed over the camera and he doesn't get that IR bounce.

Or you could add external IR and turn the IR off on the camera.

 

[TheWaterbug]

My neighbor used some aluminum house trim that he painted matte black and installed over the camera and he doesn't get that IR bounce.

Or you could add external IR and turn the IR off on the camera.

I'll try some matte black spray paint. I think I have some.

 

[TheWaterbug]

Here's my camera inserted into one of them:

The fit is pretty good, except that there's a "stop ring" inside the coupler, to ensure that an inserted PVC pipe would be correctly seated.

Any creative ideas on how to remove that stop ring, so that I could use the entire length of the coupler as a baffle?

 

[jaydeel]

My neighbor used some aluminum house trim that he painted matte black and installed over the camera and he doesn't get that IR bounce.

I'll try some matte black spray paint.

YMMV...in my experiments IR can reflect off matte black sprayed surfaces, and depending on geometry, create new hot spots.

I ended up happier going with with a separate IR lamp positioned about 3’ from the camera and aimed to illuminate the field of interest. I disabled the camera’s IR leds.

 

[jaydeel]

For more ideas, here are few pix of a matte black shield I made last year. While the purpose was different than yours (I was experimenting with it on an IR Illuminator, trying to eliminate reflected light off the underside of an eave) the concept is the same. Materials: 1) aluminum flashing, 2) matte black spray paint, 3) worm drive hose clamp, 4) electrical tape (to prevent through-paint scratches from #3). The flashing is easy to cut with heavy duty scissors.



The next image shows it ‘in action’ (the ‘Before’ image)... Note the IR strongly reflecting off the shield and onto the illuminated area on the driveway (it’s brighter than it may appear in the camera image)

 

[TheWaterbug]

My ultra-matte spray paint showed up, so I roughed up the inside of my sunshade with some very coarse sandpaper:

and then gave it a coat of paint:

It works decently well. Here's a repeat of the image with the unpainted Sunshade on the camera:

Here it is with the sunshade installed:

There's a little bit of play in the fit of the sunshade on the camera, so I can actually tilt it upwards by about 5 degrees, which also makes a modest, but noticeable difference:

I'll have to see how this performs tomorrow at high noon. If it's good at noon (e.g. doing its job as a sunshade!) then I might try making another version at a cutoff angle a bit steeper than 45 degrees.

For comparison, here's the image at night with no sunshade:

 

[wittaj]

Told ya it would work

Looks great!

 

[TheWaterbug]

Yup! Thanks! I'll keep making small changes until I optimize. I just hope that owl moves in. Otherwise this will all have been tremendous waste of time

 

[TheWaterbug]

There's a little bit of play in the fit of the sunshade on the camera, so I can actually tilt it upwards by about 5 degrees, which also makes a modest, but noticeable. If it's good at noon (e.g. doing its job as a sunshade!) then I might try making another version at a cutoff angle a bit steeper than 45 degrees.

I might also try just raising it off the top of the camera by 1/4" or so, but I'd have to cut off the bottom of it, because right now it's still sort of a closed ring.

 

[TheWaterbug]

Semi-on-topic for this: I wanted to mount my IPC-HFW4431R-Z on the side of a bee box to make a time-lapse sequence, so I needed to get rid of that stop ring and make it a continuous tube. Turns out the easiest way to do that was to just cut it in half right at the stop ring, turn that side around, and glue the pieces back together:

The camera won't see the stop ring, and the stop ring actually gives me more surface area to glue onto the side of the box with clear silicone caulk:

That thing on the left is an LED board, powered and controlled by a Raspberry Pi. Every 10 minutes the Pi will turn on the LEDs, curl a JPG from the camera, and then turn the LED off.

Here's what that will look like (click to pixel-peep the full res):


I need to work on the color balance, but the image is in focus, and I'll be able to refocus it during the season as the bees move closer to the camera.

 

[sebastiantombs]

I'm even more "ghetto" for sun shades. I use the slats from a vertical blind from a sliding glass door. Paint them matte black on the "inside" if needed and a cable tie to wrap them to the camera. Keeps rain off the lens really well, too, and multiple pieces can be used to cover as much as you want plus it's workable with a pair of scissors when customizing.

 

[tibimakai]

You could cut a slot along side the tube, and use a hose clamp to tighten it over the camera. That way, you get a tighter fit.

 

[sebastiantombs]

^^^ Slot on the bottom would probably be best.

 

[tibimakai]

It seems like the whole diameter is to big.