Camera suggestion for day and night vision

noopy66
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Joined: Tue Mar 02, 2021 2:15 pm

Camera suggestion for day and night vision

Post by noopy66 »

Hi, I have been using BI for 3 years now and decided to allocate one of my cameras (8MP IP ) to view car number plates.

Using ONVIF configuration I zoomed onto the road outside and set up the camera for day time viewing, when a vehicle goes past I can stop the BI clip and view the number plate successfully, however when its night I need to change the setting and cannot get a great view of the number plates, when I can get this to work in the morning the view is too bright to see anything and I have to adjust it again for the day. I have tried many various settings of the camera using ONVIF but cannot find one that fits day and night.

Can you suggest a camera that is suitable for day and night viewing where I can read number plates of cars passing by, I dont particularly want an ANPR capture of these plates , just the option of finding the vehicle number if there is an incident which I will see on my other cameras. Distance to road in my attachments is about 25 metres.
Attachments
just see number plate at night
just see number plate at night
Night.png (105.25 KiB) Viewed 1909 times
after the night , bright viewing
after the night , bright viewing
Morning.png (205.81 KiB) Viewed 1909 times
morning after adjustment of ONVIF
morning after adjustment of ONVIF
Morning adjusted.png (188.06 KiB) Viewed 1909 times
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TimG
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Location: Nottinghamshire, UK.

Re: Camera suggestion for day and night vision

Post by TimG »

What type of camera is it ? Most of mine are able to sort themselves out for day/night using an inbuilt light sensor. The Dahua ones can be forced to remain in colour too. I am impressed with that number plate in the dark though; what is illuminating it ?
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noopy66
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Re: Camera suggestion for day and night vision

Post by noopy66 »

It was from a company called Genie in the UK, bought these cameras and NVR but found NVR was not good and then I found BI. attached data sheet for the 4MP camera as I dont have the sheet for my 8MP ones..

I think the number plate is visible due to a very low street light nearby, its the only plate I can see at night :)

What Dahua camera are you using, I will look into getting one of them if its colour day and night. How do you access its settings, via ONVIF or what?
Attachments
Camera data 2.png
Camera data 2.png (196.75 KiB) Viewed 1884 times
Camera data1.png
Camera data1.png (120.54 KiB) Viewed 1884 times
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TimG
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Re: Camera suggestion for day and night vision

Post by TimG »

Most IP cameras have settings that can be accessed via a web page at the IP for that camera. Are you doing something different ?
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noopy66
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Re: Camera suggestion for day and night vision

Post by noopy66 »

The web page brings up the same screen as I get using ONVIF, screen shot of the settings attached. I am probably going to buy another camera that I can use for this vehicle plate capture, but so many models and options out there I didnt want to waste my money by getting the wrong one.
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Onvif settings day.png
Onvif settings day.png (253.19 KiB) Viewed 1867 times
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TimG
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Re: Camera suggestion for day and night vision

Post by TimG »

If the day/night mode auto switching works, it should be as simple as making different settings for day and night in that menu.
If it doesn't auto switch then there may be manual controls, but unless they track daylight hours it will be a mess. Some of the Dahua cameras allow changes by sending commands.
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noopy66
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Re: Camera suggestion for day and night vision

Post by noopy66 »

Hi TimG,

many thanks for the advice you have given me, I now understand more about setting up the camera and I did manage to set up the day/night mode on my camera, however the shots are very dark at night despite trying difference settings and as the camera is over 5 years old and only black and white at night I thought I would buy a new camera (or 2?) to replace them. I see your camera is colour at night as are a lot of them I have been looking at, would you recommend the Dahua cameras?
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TimG
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Re: Camera suggestion for day and night vision

Post by TimG »

The Dahua cameras have been very good for me, but I haven't bought any recently. I stopped at 2MP 1080P cameras and actually bought a box of the PTZs. For night viewing, you need to look at the minimum Lux specifications. For the above camera you have:

Lux.png
Lux.png (19.8 KiB) Viewed 1808 times

Which shows minimum Lux as 0.011. Cameras like my old Dahua DH-IPC-HDW5231R-ZE have these specs:

DahuaLux.png
DahuaLux.png (13.22 KiB) Viewed 1808 times

The difference with the old Dahua was the "Starlight" sensor, and that 0.006 Lux means it can see in colour when my eyes see darkness. I'm not expecting you to buy this camera, but do look at the spec for minimum illumination for whichever camera you are interested in. I'm sure there are now better cameras, but this is a home installation and I'm not going to rip out a working installation to chase Megapixels.
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noopy66
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Re: Camera suggestion for day and night vision

Post by noopy66 »

Hi TimG,

The Dahua cameras look good, seen many for sale but not in UK, where do you buy yours?
not sure about Hikvision, do you think these will work with BI?
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TimG
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Re: Camera suggestion for day and night vision

Post by TimG »

I had one varifocal from Andy on the dark site, and bought a box of nine ptz's on Ebay. Half price because they were "only" 2 MP :D
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