ZoneMinder Forums

Does Anyone Know Anything About This IP Cam: DCP-WP-IP561??? I currently have a Panasonic BL-C10A looking out the top of a window in the front of my house. It is great during the day, but the view at night is pretty crappy. I'd love to just add an IR Illuminator outside the house, but this cam is a color cam and I'm guessing the IR wouldn't help...

Does anyone know anything about these cams? I'm considering them as alternatives and can't really beat the price:

A link to the DCP-WP-IP561 cam

Current day & not so great night view from my BL-C10A through a window:

--Removed pictures...

-Kevin

I found a link to a manual, and I'm guessing that it unfortunately only pushes mpeg4...

Link to IP561 Manual (PDF)

Anyone happen to know more or anything about how I could improve quality of images from my Panasonic at night?

Since it is color... you are correct that most likely (unless it can switch to a b/w mode) IR will not help.
A standard light would though.

Regards,
Corey

If you remove the ir cut filter (usually removable from the sensor) then yuo can use ir but your colours will be slightly out during the day

You wont be able to use IR from inside without taking care of the internal reflections.

If it has to be an IR sensitive cams then i know of 2 proper cams, panasonic and bosch. The bosch i am currently testing the non ir sensitive day night but Phil is modifing zmc to support this cameras

Else you could goto std cams and a capture card

I see lots of IR leds on the picture, isn't it supposed to have the ir filter removed since it uses IR leds?

eh?
the blc10 is a colour ip camera ie no ir.
All colour cams have an ir cut filter to keep the colours accurate and a true day night removes this when it switches to mono mode. You can remove it and make it work with ir, it wont be perfect and you will end up with a red tinge but it will work

Thanks James, I figured that may be the case. I may just need to purpose the blc10 for inside use only and see about getting a hold of some proper outdoor ip cams like the gadspots.

I did yank the cam down for a second last night just to see how it would react to IR and got the results below. (I pointed my roomba remote control at the dark blinds and held the power button while pointing the cam in the proper direction.) I'm guessing the filter just doesn't filter out all IR properly, and that an emmitter outside still probably wouldn't provide adequate light without removing the filter, right?

--removed pictures--

i dont know what freq the filter cuts at, but if you do want to cut your filter out then it will work quite well. But it wont be as sensitive as a mon camera

I ended up picking up a 44 led 830nM IR illuminator to see how it'd look... Before cracking the panasonic open, I ended up just deciding that I'd be better off purposing the panasonic for indoor use (as it was intended). I ordered a Gadspot GS1600H with the wide angle lens, so hopefully I have a little bit better luck with that and possibly a an additional illuminator.

oh is the gadspot a true day night then, i didnt know maybe i should have a look at these things, be interested to know your findings?

I'm pretty sure its just a software switch to b/w with IR leds around the lens, but I'll post some pics once I have it. If it doesn't work out, I'm defiinitely going to have a much better understanding of why so many people on here push Axis cams like most people push tivos.

I'm still really new to this stuff, but it really is a shame that all the sites selling these cams don't provide good examples of the expected output...

lol i know axis do and few others but the bulk dont. I tend to think there is a reason why they dont!

James