Backyard IP Camera Advice for also recording Cars

D

dmora

n3wb
May 15, 2019
10
4
las vegas
I bought a cheap camera to experiment with in my backyard from amazon, the ANNKE 8MP Dual-Lens, 180° Filed of View, but I'm not satisfied with the quality at night—I'm sure it's related to the camera specifications or maybe even settings. I'm looking for suggestions for a better option. I currently have two EmpireTech IPC-Color4K-T180 cameras, which are excellent for close-ups. However, I need a camera that can clearly capture cars passing by on the street and identify their colors without distortion at night. I've included a video showing how the current setup looks. The camera is mounted on the second floor of my house, looking down into the backyard.

Video day/night: Camera Footage
 
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The 180 dual lens cameras are built for overview, so a car out on the street only gets a handful of pixels, and at night that turns into a smeared blob. The Color4K-T180 has the same trade-off at distance, which is why it looks great close up but not much further out.

For the street, a separate camera aimed only at the road usually works a lot better than trying to get it from the wide shot:

1. A varifocal with a larger sensor, for example a 4MP 5442 varifocal turret (Andy sells it as the IPC-T54IR-ZE), zoomed in so the road fills most of the frame. You also get no stitching distortion. At night, 4MP on a bigger sensor generally does better than 8MP on a small one.
2. Car colors at night depend on the light on the street. With streetlights you can usually set it to stay in color; under IR alone everything is black and white.
3. For moving cars, set exposure to manual with a shutter of around 1/250 or faster and cap the gain, otherwise the cars blur. A faster shutter needs more light, which is part of why the sensor size matters.
4. If you can, aim across the street at an angle rather than into oncoming traffic, so headlights don't wash out the image.

About how far is the street from the camera? That decides which focal length you'd want.
 
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dmora said:
I bought a cheap camera to experiment with in my backyard from amazon, the ANNKE 8MP Dual-Lens, 180° Filed of View, but I'm not satisfied with the quality at night—I'm sure it's related to the camera specifications or maybe even settings. I'm looking for suggestions for a better option. I currently have two EmpireTech IPC-Color4K-T180 cameras, which are excellent for close-ups. However, I need a camera that can clearly capture cars passing by on the street and identify their colors without distortion at night. I've included a video showing how the current setup looks. The camera is mounted on the second floor of my house, looking down into the backyard.

Video day/night: Camera Footage
Click to expand...

Annke FD800 has a rather small sensor and a wide FOV .. basically 2 camera lenses each at 90 degrees.

Look at the DORI section of the cliff notes, and you'll notice it has a rather short ID range.

This camera should do well for those subject within the ID range in the DORI specs.

A night the performance will drop off significantly unless you have a lot of light.

Look for a 1/1.8" 4MP varifocal camera to catch object further away, like the cars you mention. Depending on the distance you may need a stronger lens model. ( extra $ for that )


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