Please help looking for decent cam for parking outside

[kamkar]

flash is blinding on those things

The fash on the mobile speed trap vans here are easy to spot for sure, not sure on the fixed speed cameras we have gotten too, will have to remember to check on that next time i am back in my birth town as it have gotten one of those on a street leading into the town.
What bother me even more are the huge LED billboards, we have one downtown and when it cough up a white picture, well no need for street or headlights for that matter.



In regard to revenue generating, then the municipalities here, that use to make millions on parking tickets every year, well they are screwed now cuz from next financial year the money they make from parking tickets will be subtracted from the money they get from the government each year.
Municipalities can only collect some minor taxes so they cant 100 % finance them self, so money from the big national tax collector have to filter down thru the system.

 

[Nigel]

The camera on police cars,,,, well one of 4 on some police cars here, not sure of their detection range, but they capture cars going the other way at speed just fine and i dont think it have to be 2 lanes right up against each other.

I guess they use an IR flash like the fixed ones?

The FXCAM IBW_2000 ANPR camera is an all in one unit including a camera, a 2000 Watts IR flash, IR filter and a synchronizer special designed and optimised for vehicle identification applications. The effective range of the equipment is from 3 meters up to 13 meters, but it may vary, depending on the environment (weather, sunlight, fog, etc.) conditions and the characteristics of the number plates.

http://www.arhungary.hu/contleft/1071/content.html
Uses a 10 watt LED IR lamp to produce the short 2000 watt flash, seems feasible for a parking mode dashcam as long as you only fire it on detecting an event...

 

[kamkar]

yeah IR i recon.

The big flash in the mobile ATK cars are visible as i said, not sure if they have other lights they use at night.

Also not sure why the flash in the pic are red, when you see it go off IRL it look more yellow to me.
Maybe that box under the 2 cameras and sight are IR light and the IR laser that do the speed measuring the kit are detachable from the VAN.

 

[grachi]

great stuff, thanks everyone for your info and opinions. I think I might go this B1W route. Like I said before, even if I don't get much from parking, at least I'll have one in general which will be good in case other things go wrong while driving.

 

[grachi]

My solution to parking is to record continuously, which a few cams do reliably although none are designed for that. There are a few things against this approach, but they can be managed. First is that if there is an incident you will have to see the damage before the needed recording is overwritten which means a large card will be needed. A BDP (battery discharge preventer) isn't a bad idea but I have no problems as long as the vehicle doesn't sit undriven for more than about two days. This will reduce the lifespan of the car battery, which is not designed for long low current discharging, but again my experiences over about 4 years show no real problems with that yet. In your winter cold, that might be different for you. And if something does happen, you might be stuck viewing long hours of recording before you find the incident. The upside is that with constant recording, you miss nothing and will see every event as long as you get to it in time.

Most dashcams have a "G-sensor" feature which detects impacts and locks that file against being overwritten. But many if not most of these do not function very well, either by not activating as expected or by being too sensitive and filling the card with locked files in normal driving. There is limited adjustment for this feature which often just doesn't give you the range of adjustment you need.

Having said all this, I must say that my B1W works in this fashion with aplomb and total reliability as long as you clear the G-sensor locked files every month or two. There are better cams for low-light conditions but this one does that job quite well, especially considering the cost. And it has the lowest current draw of any dashcam on the market today, making it what I feel is as ideal a choice for your needs as there can be found on the market today. You'll need a smartphone or tablet to use it as all the settings are accessed via WiFi but you've probably got that covered already. With a 64GB card you get about 8 1/2 to 9 hours recording time which for me is just enough to cover the time when I'm not aware of what is going on around my vehicle. I think some folks have found larger cards which work in this cam, but those are a bit too pricey for me. Samsung EvoPlus works well and is discounted on Amazon, it is currently the one I prefer in all but one of my various cams.

Once you discover the peace of having a dashcam, you'll likely not want to drive without one afterward, but that's not a bad thing at all.
Phil

Phil, what hardwiring kit do you use with your B1W? Or do you have it hooked up through some other means?

 

[kamkar]

Indeed any dashcam are better than no dashcam, and the B1W are a good entry into this, and then you can always upgrade if you get the addiction.

I have my car parked in the back yard with a 1080p PTZ camera aimed on it, did this cuz after moving here i had 3 counts of vandalisen pretty fast ( keying - broken window and dent in roof from D cell battery being thrown in the air i assume )

 

[Dashmellow]

A couple of issues:

• First is knowing when to trigger the flash, which will likely be even less reliable than motion detection waking the camera out of parking mode in time.
• Second, our cameras don't have shutter sync with the flash, so using a 1 second timelapse parking mode such as the B1W gives less than a 1 in 30 chance of the flash occurring during an exposure, and much less chance than that if it is not fully dark because there are street lights.

So you need to record at full framerate, preferably at 60fps and have multiple flashes while the target car is in roughly the right position. Having said that, I have used flash with action cameras and the results have been very good, the sensors are perfectly capable of making good use of it. If one of the dashcam manufacturers could provide a flash trigger signal synchronised to the shutter and trigger it a few times when motion detection detects a car moving in front of the camera after a G-sensor event, it may be a much more useful feature than the collision avoidance warning they like to give us but which never works! Maybe use a wireless flash trigger signal rather than provide a hot shoe on the dashcam! Also trigger it when the event button is pressed for a manual photo - could be useful even in daylight. I'd quite like a wireless flash trigger for my action cameras as well...

You should re-read my post you are responding to, especially the parts where I said, "I don't really imagine than an IR flashgun would be a viable solution for the OP's needs". I was merely suggesting that since I happen to own several powerful IR flash units, it might be interesting and fun to experiment with them. I didn't specify which of the numerous cameras I own that I might to use for this either, much less the odd conceit "our cameras".

But you are correct that such a unit would require synchronization. There happen to be IR motion triggered cameras that do just that. The are called IR trail cameras or game cameras that shoot video or stills. If you have plenty of money to spend there is even a very compact one available ( 5.5"H x 4.5"W x 2.5"D) that is specifically designed to capture license plates at night.

http://www.reconyx.com/product/Security_Series

 

[kamkar]

The G sensor on the B1W test sample i was sent works well, even a kick to the rear wheel will set it off, and its not like you can kick a steel wheel that hard wearing snickers.

The B1W also set aside 30% ( at least ) of the memory card for event recordings, but i am unsure if it recycle those when that memory space are full, but i think so anything else would be old style and stupid.
And you can hard wire in the B1W with just about any hard wire kit or you can use a USB power bank just fine too as the B1W have a micro USB plug for power IN
If you hardwire be sure to get BDP ( Battery Discharge Prevention ) so your car battery dont go too low to start.
Hardwire are fine if you drive some every day to replenish your car battery, but if you only drive minutes / a hour every day, than that might be too little to fill up the car battery from what it have lost being parked for a day / days.

Some hardwire / BDP kits have a default cut off under 12 volts, and i would not go that low at least not in the winter period where you need juice to crank a cold engine.

 

[grachi]

a USB power bank may be the better bet. I live in an urban area so I don't always need my car. Saves a lot on gas by walking to stuff nearby.

edit: man... that reconyx stuff is pretty much exactly what I need. Unfortunately its about 500 dollars more than I'm willing to spend!

 

[Dashmellow]

a USB power bank may be the better bet. I live in an urban area so I don't always need my car. Saves a lot on gas by walking to stuff nearby.

edit: man... that reconyx stuff is pretty much exactly what I need. Unfortunately its about 500 dollars more than I'm willing to spend!

I think the license plate capture version is actually over 600 bucks. It is a unique camera for its type not only in what it can do to capture plate numbers but that it also has a telephoto lens.

 

[grachi]

The G sensor on the B1W test sample i was sent works well, even a kick to the rear wheel will set it off, and its not like you can kick a steel wheel that hard wearing snickers.

The B1W also set aside 30% ( at least ) of the memory card for event recordings, but i am unsure if it recycle those when that memory space are full, but i think so anything else would be old style and stupid.
And you can hard wire in the B1W with just about any hard wire kit or you can use a USB power bank just fine too as the B1W have a micro USB plug for power IN
If you hardwire be sure to get BDP ( Battery Discharge Prevention ) so your car battery dont go too low to start.
Hardwire are fine if you drive some every day to replenish your car battery, but if you only drive minutes / a hour every day, than that might be too little to fill up the car battery from what it have lost being parked for a day / days.

Some hardwire / BDP kits have a default cut off under 12 volts, and i would not go that low at least not in the winter period where you need juice to crank a cold engine.

which do you think would be the better powerbank ?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/B0194WDVHI
https://www.amazon.com/gp/B01GB1OENU

 

[Nigel]

Also not sure why the flash in the pic are red, when you see it go off IRL it look more yellow to me.
Maybe that box under the 2 cameras and sight are IR light and the IR laser that do the speed measuring the kit are detachable from the VAN.

My guess is that the red/yellow you see is a yellow LED that is there so that people can see that the IR lamp is on and is bright enough to stop anyone staring at the lamp, because looking at a very bright IR lamp at close range can permanently destroy eyes. Unlike human eyes, the camera can see the IR so has turned the exposure down until the green sensors can't see that it is yellow.

That box could be the laser since it presumably needs to scan the road rather than be pointing at a fixed spot so will have motorised mirrors in there. On top there will be an IR camera for reading the plates plus a visible light camera for the photo to send out with the fine, and maybe a range finder for setting up the correct distance.

 

[Dashmellow]

which do you think would be the better powerbank ?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/B0194WDVHI
https://www.amazon.com/gp/B01GB1OENU

I would avoid both of those power banks, especially the solar powered one. The idea of leaving a lithium-ion powerbank cooking under the hot sun seems highly questionable and potentially risky to me. Anker makes a good product but they tend to be very expensive. I would suggest some of the products from PowerADD or RAVpower, which are well made, well supported and come with excellent warranties. These tend to be better values than the very similar Ankers. Also, I would use the savings to invest in a power bank with extra capacity such as the RAVpower 22,000 mAh lithium-polymer bank with lifetime warranty or the PowerAdd Pilot X7 20000mAh Power Bank.

 

[Nigel]

which do you think would be the better powerbank ?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/B0194WDVHI
https://www.amazon.com/gp/B01GB1OENU

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/B079FPMCNF
10000mAh will run a B1W for around 28 hours, you might want two so that you can charge one while using the other, the one I linked will take about 4 hours to fully charge if you use a quick charge (PD) charger, note that it is on sale at the moment, although I don't know about USA.

 

[grachi]

ok thanks dash, glad I asked before making purchases yet.

 

[kamkar]

Power banks are not my specialty, or area of expertise,,, like at all but then in here there are always some other one to enlighten one.

 

[Dashmellow]

I doubt it would work. The issue at night is the slow shutter. Without the camera knowing a flash gun was going to fire, the camera would be on it's normal settings. So all you'd probably get is an over-exposed blurred picture. You have to remember with a DSLR, it knows the flash is present and it knows the settings via the hot shoe communication, so it knows the shutter to set.

Best option would probably be a quality CCTV camera, on the house although this soon gets v. expensive for anything decent.

(Cross posted with Nigel)

As mentioned above, people use IR flash

I doubt it would work. The issue at night is the slow shutter. Without the camera knowing a flash gun was going to fire, the camera would be on it's normal settings. So all you'd probably get is an over-exposed blurred picture. You have to remember with a DSLR, it knows the flash is present and it knows the settings via the hot shoe communication, so it knows the shutter to set.

Best option would probably be a quality CCTV camera, on the house although this soon gets v. expensive for anything decent.

(Cross posted with Nigel)

Seems like once again you are engaging in armchair speculation from a perspective of never having experimented with IR sensitive cameras or IR illumination, hence your "doubts". A powerful enough IR light source could well negate any "slow shutter" concerns but you'd need to get up out of your armchair and actually try a few things to find out. There are a number of possible solutions to how this might be made to work but whether it works or doesn't, the point of these types of experiments are to have fun and learn things, as well to come up for a solution to a problem. That was my approach to IR videography in pitch black conditions using an IR illuminator.

The powerful IR flash units I have are built to remote trigger studio and on location lighting equipment as far as 3000' away (and around corners). I've used them primarily for architectural work in large corporate settings along with radio controlled camera triggers. I can think of a few possibilities of how one might go about getting this to work (and sync) but obviously it will require some study and experimentation. One wouldn't necessarily have to use one of "our cameras" either. Also, as it happens there is a sizable DIY Trail camera community out there where people share all kinds of interesting homebrew ideas and designs for motion triggered IR video and still capture, so it would be interesting to see what the experience of these folks has to offer.

 

[SawMaster]

The hardwire kit I use came from SpyTec, a reputable company, but I don't know if it has BDP built-in. It never shut down in my minivan after about 60 hours recording, haven't went any longer than this. Standard sized battery about a year old in that one. @grachi would probably be better off with a power bank, but at least needs BDP because of longer time being parked.

@kamkar1 mentions locked files. This cam has an allotted limit for them and does not overwrite them, which I think is a sensible approach because you do not want to risk losing a locked file that you need. Twice my B1W has hit the limit with these. What I noted was that the cam had shut down while I was driving. I stopped, pulled the USB cable and reinserted it, then the cam started up normally. A few minutes later a glance in the mirror showed it stopped again. At home I reformatted the card without checking anything, and the cam functioned normally again. About two months later it happened again, but this time I checked the card and noticed lots of locked files(didn't note how much space was used though). I put the card back and restarted the cam, and about two minutes later it shut down. I deleted all files and tried again, with normal operation as the result. There was still room on the card for unlocked files and it was over-writing them. There were no G-sensor events during this as I was parked here at home and watching the car and cam. I don't know why it stopped with space available for normal recording but it did. I was going to check this further when the minivan crapped out, which put everything on hold for now.

The roads here in SC are in terrible shape, so getting G-sensor events while driving isn't unexpected. It also activates when I open a door or the hatch, but in glancing through some locked files it never seemed to activate due to winds or anything else like that. In my mind, that is as perfect as this function can get. With any dashcam, cards should be checked every month or two just to be sure all is well with card and cam, and if you delete all files or reformat the card then, this becomes a non-issue. Newer firmwares may behave differently; I am still on the first one. Of the several cams I've tried, this is the only one which approaches the feelings I have for my Möbius, which says a lot about it. I can totally trust this cam as long as I do my part in maintaining it. It's as discreet as you can get and a cute little bugger too, and at it's price point nothing else even comes close to it in any way. There are better cams for any given purpose if you want to spend more, and those should not be overlooked, but IMHO for a budget-friendly cam this is the one to have.

Phil

 

[c4rc4m]

As mentioned above, people use IR flash


Seems like once again you are engaging in armchair speculation from a perspective of never having experimented with IR sensitive cameras or IR illumination, hence your "doubts". A powerful enough IR light source could well negate any "slow shutter" concerns but you'd need to get up out of your armchair and actually try a few things to find out. There are a number of possible solutions to how this might be made to work but whether it works or doesn't, the point of these types of experiments are to have fun and learn things, as well to come up for a solution to a problem. That was my approach to IR videography in pitch black conditions using an IR illuminator.

I can see fully how it might act like a 1st or 2nd curtain sync normal flash. The issue is you're going to get blur. On a stills camera such a blurred picture is just an artistically blurred picture with, depending on the sync, a solid picture at either the start or end of the frame. However, as I see it with video the flash is going to have to last for long enough to encompass quite a few frames otherwise the plate capture will not last long enough to be visible on the video (although you may be able to separate out the frame with it on if you know it's there and have the correct forensic video tools) - lets not forget, video is taking 30-60 frames per second. So anything less than a second or 30-60 frames is probably going to be an issue and most flashes are probably going to last a fraction of a second. Evidentially acceptable? Maybe some questions if the plate isn't view-able in the video itself but only forensically retrievable.

Looking at the experiment you did, you had a continuous IR source and not a momentary flash. That's entirely different and proven tech, as a continuous IR source lasts for every frame. Written from my armchair....

 

[SawMaster]

Something to keep in mind regards IR illumination is that the human eye does not respond to it as it does with visible light by closing the iris. Thus the retina can easily be damaged by IR lighting. My eyes seem to be rather sensitive to IR lighting. I had noticed that in certain places at night, my eyes would feel dried out or like they had dust in them. It was when someone showed me the cell-phone image of the IR illuminator that I checked some other places where I had the same experiences. In each instance a security cam had it's IR illumination in operation.

Only once have I witnessed the flash of a red-lightcam at night when the fool beside me didn't stop. There were two quick but very bright flashes which caused me some loss of night vision, but since this was on a well illuminated city street, it wasn't a safety issue for me. On a dark street it might have been a problem though.

The OP here (and anyone else in a similar situation) might have alternatives to mounting a home-security cam on their house, such as putting it on a tree or other object closer to the road where it can better do what they want. Cabling might he tougher to deal with, but often there will be a way to manage that without too much trouble. Always keep an open mind on your options remembering that it's the results that count most in the end, and that extreme results usually happen only after extreme efforts are made to get them.

Phil