What Does This Need To Read TN Plates At Night?

[ARAMP1]

Instead of fill up the TN plate thread, I figured I'd make a new one trying to dial in my setup.

I'm using Hikvision DS-2CD7A26G0/P-IZHS which are dedicated plate readers for my cameras. The angle is about 37 degrees and the distance is right around 100 ft. I've had the settings for the old TN plates, which worked pretty well, but it's time to try to dial this in. Frame rate and I Frame Rate are set to 30. (it's a 30mph zone but occasionally we get some speeders). Clear<->Smooth is set to 10. Brightness, contrast, sharpness, and saturation all at 50%. Manual focus and 1/1000 exposure time with gain at 25%. Auto White Balance, and Digital Noise Reduction set to Normal. Here's what I get with those settings.

I picked up this from my camera with the same settings going the other direction. It was the same about the same time out, so same moonlight/illumination but this one has more background lights from neighbors houses. (The angle is about the same but the distance is probably closer to 130ft). Vehicle Northbound



I'm going to do some testing tonight with it. The adjustments I've made since this video...I've dialed down the clear<->smooth to 1, increased the contrast to 70, changed the exposure to 1/750 and gain to 10.

I'm thinking some more infrared light might help, so I'm going to mount another camera on the pole directly above. This will give me two things, a clear image of the entire vehicle at night and more IR light.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

 

[wittaj]

The problem is infrared can't see that particular blue that is being used very well, especially at distance.

The only thing I have found (waiting for @wtimothyholman to be able to try his strobe white light) is to get the camera a lot closer.

In my testing if you can get within 40 feet you stand a decent chance.

I have moved mine as I could get well over 98% at 175 feet with the old raised character plates, and was getting less than 1% with new 3M printed plates with blue in it. That just wasn't cutting it.

So I had to go with the ornamental landscaping and hide it to get it closer. I now get most of the plates again.

Maybe when @biggen tries out the plate you are going to send him with his custom narrow beam infrared we will see if these plates can be read at a distance with focused infrared.

But when I tried blasting IR at my then 175 feet by turning several cameras to that spot as well as an IR blaster, it did nothing for the ability to capture the plate, but mine wasn't the focused Axton IR that costs more than the camera either LOL.

I tried everything but white light to try to not have to move my LPR as I had spent a long time dialing that in to the success I was getting.

 

[ARAMP1]

We're planning on doing some major landscape overhaul this spring. After that, I'll be able to move the cameras within 5 feet of the road with angles around 10 degrees. So, hopefully that'll work.

 

[wittaj]

Yeah you should get a lot more plates then. It just sucks cause I liked having the LPR up on the 2nd floor where it couldn't be touched.

If you have a camera sitting around, go into the garage or basement with all the lights off and see how far you can get - that was my initial testing with a static plate for these new 3M printed plates and then after I got the distance max before it started getting tough, I then tested it at that distance by the street.

 

[ARAMP1]

Yeah, I like having mine closer to my house away from the road too. Less of a chance of people messing with them.

If you have a camera sitting around, go into the garage or basement with all the lights off and see how far you can get - that was my initial testing with a static plate for these new 3M printed plates and then after I got the distance max before it started getting tough, I then tested it at that distance by the street.

That's a good idea, though my LPR cameras are the 8 to 32 mm lens versions, so even with a big 4 car garage, I'm out of space before I max out the distance.