I noticed last week that my security camera that covers the long stretch of street along my property was beginning to have issues after dark. When cars drove by and the headlights would cause the day/night vision to toggle, it would sometimes knock the camera completely offline. Sometimes it would snap back, other times I could reset through the software, and yet other times i had to pull the PoE plug to reboot it. Had a couple instances where it didn't record anything all day because of that, so decided it was time for an upgrade.
Dropped the run of the mill 4K bullet camera, for a 360* PTZ with 16x optical zoom. Don't really need a wide field of view to be covered, but I would like the option of shifting the camera around, zooming in on license plates of people loitering/dumping trash, without having to try to run outside and catch them on my phone for reporting. I honestly didn't know cameras were made with that much optical zoom, so I was hopeful, yet skeptical at the same time.
Got it mounted to my vertical 2x4, wired up and ready for some testing. The plan was to drive down to the end of the street where the most activity usually takes place, and then use my phone to focus in and see how well I could read my own plate. Then I noticed something... My neighbor has a small sign on his fence, facing me...
Why not?! Zoomed ALL the way in, adjusted the aim, and this was the result. That's pretty damn good in my book!!!
I'll see how well the image quality is tonight after sundown, and what settings I may have to tweak for some better visuals. One problem compared to the bullet camera, since this one is HUGE, it hangs down a bit further, so you can see the fencing on the right side of the street blocks view of the shoulder. I may try to mount the camera higher, if I can get some more slack in the ethernet cable. I like having it mounted a few feet in from the fence to deter anyone messing with it, but we'll see how things go.
While playing with some of the presets, I had one set to zoom and focus on the corner, to see how well plates can be read when people turn. A Lexus rolled through at a pretty decent clip (as some people tend to do in that area) but when he slowed down to take the turn, I could read the plate clear as drinking water. I could never do that before, so I'm pretty happy. I'm sure this won't stop all the nonsense that goes on back there, but when people start getting fines and charges on their record for being stupid, the karma scales will be a little more even!
