Looking for traffic camera

[Killjoy7]

Hello all

I have trouble with speeding cars in front of my house. We get banged cars and killed animals at least once a month. I am trying to find out what camera is best for my case. I got sufficient lighting outside my house due to a street lamp and the distance of my house’s outer wall from the street is about 10-15 meters. I’ve been using cheap Tapo cameras, e.g. C500 but I got 2 issues. One, the framerate is too low to clearly display a license plate of a moving vehicle, sometimes even in daytime. Two, new car models have lighting on their license plate that completely f-up the camera image. Most of the time during night, video shows a bright light over the license plate. Why I’m talking about license plates? Well, the local police station only goes after someone if you have specific plate numbers on video or image. Even if you have the car on tape, they do nothing, unless they’re absolutely sure they got the correct car. So, I’ve been looking at LPR cameras like the Dahua ITC413-PW4D-IZ1. But I’m not sure if that’s the camera type for me. I’ve seen some really dark images when processing a nighttime license plate with the ANPR software and some people are using a second camera for detailed video.

What are your thoughts and suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

 

[wittaj]

Welcome,

I know plates are bigger there than the US, but nobody would use Tapo for mission critical.

FPS is more important than frame rate.

You would have to set the camera up specifically to read plates. You need the proper camera with OPTICAL zoom for the distance you are covering and the angle to get plates.

Regarding plates, keep in mind that this is a camera dedicated to plates and not an overview camera also. It is as much an art as it is a science.

You will need two cameras.

For LPR we need to OPTICALLY zoom in tight to make the plate as large as possible. For most of us, all you see is the not much more than a vehicle in the entire frame. Now maybe in the right location during the day it might be able to see some other things, but not at night.

At night, we have to run a very fast shutter speed (1/2,000) and in B/W with IR and the image will be black. All you will see are head/tail lights and the plate. Some people can get away with color if they have enough street lights, but most of us cannot.

Here is a representative sample of plates I get at night of vehicles traveling about 45MPH at 175 feet from my 2MP 5241-Z12E camera (that is all that is needed for plates):

The camera you reference will work as well and will actually read and log the plates, but most here are ok with manual reading like the Z12 above or using a 3rd party.

See the LPR subforum for more details.

 

[bigredfish]

^^^^
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