ZoneMinder Forums

Has anybody used an external IR emitter ? What sort of range were you able to achieve?

I have a number of camera's that are basically 'blind' at night, the inbuilt IR LED's just don't have enough power to illuminate anything that isn't right in front of the camera. This isn't a problem for the front door as I have installed a sensor light to turn on when there is movement, this is not practicle on all sides of the house.

I have one IR/LED array I bought several years ago with approx 40 IR/LED's which I will try this weekend. I would like to illuminate to approx 10 meters and was curious if anybody has done so.

At this stage I am using a number of cheap black and white camera's in weather resistant cases, partly due to cost and partly as I was informed black and white camera's were better for night vision/IR. As to whether this is true or not... I get nothing except the occasional insect that buzzes the camera (one looked like a torch crossing the yard which had me concerned).

Cheers
Jason.

Yes, the illuminators with a dozen or so IR LEDs only really provide adequate illumination for a few yards, at most, and they often don't work too well through glass.

I combined a large (30W LED array) with a low-light monochrome camera, and it gets tolerable results. Ideally the IR would be more uniform and better spread, though.

Thanks for that. For reference I was considering running 3-4 of these IR spotlights down the side of the house:



I was thinking 3-4 of these every 2-3 meters down the side of the house would provide enough illumination for the camera.

The field seen in the image in my previous post (above) is lit by an illuminator like this one from Henrys Electronics. I expect that distributing the LED arrays at intervals will do a much better job of providing uniform illumination. I've come to the conclusion that, when the specs say something like "an effective range of up to 15M under optimum conditions" they're covering a lot in that "optimum". The lamp will need to be close to the camera, the camera will need to be the most sensitive (to IR) available, and then some....

I have found the same myself - An IR camera advertised as 'up to 5 meters' seems lucky to do 1 meter.

I was planning on putting one of the above emitters above each of the area's I really want to monitor, ie:

1 for the side entrance.
1 each for the windows at the side of the house.
1 for the shed door.

Hopefully providing adequate illumiation of the key zones. I already have one of the above LED arrays and will do some testing this weekend. Failing that I may have to opt for an IR Emitter which are seemingly expensive.

Cheers
Jason.

I have found two things contribute to how well you can see an image using IR.
First is the output of the IR light. It all about the lumens. I found that using a halogen light with an IR filter works the best but they are spendy.
Second is the lux value the the camera requires. I changed out all my cameras to KT&C b/w with a lux rating of 0.0003 and they do really well.
Cheers,
Cordel

The results have been far from satisfactory, unfortunately. Given this is a budget installation I don't want to spend lots on IR lights.

Instead I will install conventional lighting with motion sensors. This will cover all of the managed zones and will do the job for me.

Cheers
Jason

I found this link on using unexposed and developed film as a IR filter. The only problem I see is that it would be valnerable to heat. Might work with a 100 watt bulb though. Anyone have the ability to try it?
http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/text-infrared-filter.html
I also found a company that sells 1 ft x 1 ft plastic IR filters for $25 USD + shipping/handeling
I might give this a try.
Cheers,
Cordel

Cordel,

Could you post some links to images taken by your KT&C .003 lux cameras? I am looking to replace my Sqan and Qsee cameras because they wash out in bright sunlight (lots of all white areas), have lots of noise and very poor low light performance. I am looking for a camera that can do bright light (I live in Texas with very harsh summer light) as well as very low light performance with just orange streetlight. I would like to see samples of both and your general opinion on these cameras performance.

I have come to the conclusion that the usefullness of zoneminder for outdoor surveillance is directly proportional to the quality of the images provided by the cameras.

Scott

you are unlikely to achieve this with electric shuttering alone i would advisE if you need that amount of dynamic range you look at something with auto iris. reason is with an iris fully open to give good low light perfoance it will white out in direct sun. vice versa if iris is closed to stop whiting out low light performane will be poor. a pevious post mentioned ir and bw. reason for this is most colour cameras have an ir cut filter to help the auto white balance so using ir illimination with a cut filter would be useless. when specing a camera for ir use you need a chip that peaks in sensitivity at your illuminators freq. failing that use 715nm ir and ull be fine but u will have little red lights cos its only just outside the visible range. on this topic anyone know if im gonna have a problem with day night cams?http://www.securitywarehouse.co.uk/catalog/