Security cameras

[Kevin B.]

I need to put some cameras in. I don't know anything about them. How much do I have to spend to get good enough cameras to read license plates at night?

 

[Deleted member 12904]

Quite honestly if you want to read a license plate number at night time from anything more than 15 feet plan on spending several thousand dollars. Essentially think about it like a camera on your phone I mean it is a digital camera you have so many pixels so the larger the area that you cover the Less Detail you get. Companies like axis which specialized and nothing but high-end security cameras have cameras dedicated to reading license plates and even those have quite a few limitations. The other thing you need to remember is cameras need light to work so to see in the dark you either needed to be in a well-lit area or use infrared lighting. The infrared lighting will allow the camera to see in black and white. Unfortunately sometimes there's too much of a reflection with spot lighting to pick up license plates cleanly. with cameras the levels they talk about is recognition and identification. So my recommendation would be 5 megapixel camera set up no more than 5 feet high looking straight on to where the license plates would be with proper lighting covering no more than two lanes of traffic or approximately 16 ft.

 

[Deleted member 12904]

Also on that you're probably going to want to set it to record minimum 7 frames per second on motion. When it comes to pulling license plate numbers you normally have to run through each individual frame to pull different letters off different focal points.

 

[jeeper]

Security cameras are pretty useless for getting serious detail. We can see people and cars pretty well during the day, but at night it’s almost impossible to get a good view of persons or vehicles. All the cameras really do is show you how somebody stole your stuff. The key to prevention is letting people know they are on camera. We had a situation last week where somebody drove into my neighbors backyard and tried to get there locked up Trailer, then drove into my yard for my trailers… But as soon as they saw our signs for cameras they bolted quickly. I can tell that they were in a ford expedition, but can’t make out faces or plates.

 

[Kevin B.]

Quite honestly if you want to read a license plate number at night time from anything more than 15 feet plan on spending several thousand dollars.

Yark, I can't afford that. I might need to readjust my expectations.

 

[Deleted member 12904]

I have one of these I used as a demo camera. https://www.axis.com/en-us/products/axis-q1614
It won't pull license plates at night time but it does see in the dark extremely well. it has a lot of other really cool features and apps that you can install like cross line detection or even put an external speaker on it and say during hours of midnight to 5 a.m. if somebody comes in this Zone play a pre-recorded message on the camera saying that you're being audio and video monitored. It is rated to be outdoors in an enclosure and we actually sold and installed quite a few of these for outdoor applications specifically for saying in Low lit nighttime environments. You can direct it to record to an NAS or to an SD card located on the camera. it's super easy to set up for remote viewing over the Internet so you can watch streams from your phone or pull footage remotely from your phone. I mean really they're pretty cool cameras just not see license plate numbers cool. If you're interested I'll let it go super cheap.

 

[Deleted member 12904]

Also something else to think about at my old work where I sold and installed well over $1000000 worth of security cameras we put some pretty high-end stuff on our building one specific way to read license plates coming in and out of every single entrance and then others to cover the general parking lot so that when somebody came in we could identify the license plate number and then still see everything that happened.from the time we installed those till I left was about a year and we had three different occasions where something was stolen or vandalized and we got license plate numbers on all three vehicles and all three vehicles had stolen license plates on them.so really all it informed us as they were driving a car with license plates that didn't belong to it while they were committing crimes.

 

[Herzog]

Ubiquiti is probably the best in the consumer priced ballpark.

https://unifi-protect.ubnt.com/

I run a lot of their equipment and I recently started setting up their unifi video stuff at home. It's REALLY nice, pro grade stuff.

 

[dutchman]

https://www.amazon.com/Security-Wir...40_QL65&keywords=smonet+wireless+camera&psc=1

We recently set up a system like this in our house. A couple cameras outside and a couple inside. It won’t catch license plates, but it’ll get a good image of someone walking up my driveway. I’m hoping the outside ones will be enough to make a thief head down the street. And, being able to check-in from the phone brings additional piece of mind.

 

[Caleb]

I've got a full suite of Unifi stuff (5 switches, their pro gateway, their 2nd gen cloud key w/dvr, several access points, etc) including their cameras. They're good, decent quality (especially for the price point) but as others said, you won't be getting license plates at night with them. If you're looking for a good option, I wouldn't skip them. You can find cheaper, but they're rarely as nice and you'll usually have crappy software and no support from the company if something breaks.

 

[TRD270]

Be a pain in the ass to run the cable, but why not just mount a camera out on the mailbox or something where you don't need the range to catch a plate. Mount it tight to the bottom where its fairly inconspicuous

 

[Deleted member 12904]

Be a pain in the ass to run the cable, but why not just mount a camera out on the mailbox or something where you don't need the range to catch a plate. Mount it tight to the bottom where its fairly inconspicuous

Most quality cameras you can change the lens on. For $40 you can get a varifocal lens that can reach out to catch the area you need without physically moving a camera to the sidewalk. Again it comes down to pixel count aka the amount of area you can cover and still get identification and light.

 

[jeeper]

Mount it tight to the bottom where its fairly inconspicuous

The point of cameras really isn’t to be able to ‘catch’ the thief. Even if you can get their name, phone number, and social security number, you still have to find them, convict them, and probably still won’t get your stuff back. The real point of a camera is to prevent any theft. You want to draw attention to your cameras. You want people to know they are being watched. Stick 2 dummy cameras at the end of your driveway, no one will ever enter your yard.

 

[Caleb]

The point of cameras really isn’t to be able to ‘catch’ the thief. Even if you can get their name, phone number, and social security number, you still have to find them, convict them, and probably still won’t get your stuff back. The real point of a camera is to prevent any theft. You want to draw attention to your cameras. You want people to know they are being watched. Stick 2 dummy cameras at the end of your driveway, no one will ever enter your yard.

While that's usually the case, at a non-profit I used to do side work for, we have, on two occasions, video of people stealing the damn cameras. So not only did they not deter them, they actually enticed them.

 

[Deleted member 12904]

My sister had a problem at her old house with the next door neighbor constantly looking at her through the side window. it was super creepy anytime she was in the backyard or had the windows open she would see the blinds constantly creep open on his house. So I mounted one of those dummy cameras on the side of the house pointed directly at the window he would Creep from. Problem solved