MV-52 and license plates

[MarkSauer]

We recently deployed our first MV-52 bullet camera which in located on private property and pointed to a gate accessing company property from a company parking lot.  The camera is a security camera and set to 8MP resolution, enhanced video quality, etc. 

I noticed that no matter what the distance is, the license plate numbers seem to be obfuscated and unreadable.  The vehicle and plate is not at a distant range, so it would be readable.  Is there a reason Meraki won't permit viewing license numbers without the ALPR plugin?

The gate and site the camera is located on is a restricted area that is all private property, so this is not a public area.

Thanks for helping me understand.

[BlakeRichardson]

At a guess they want you to use one of the options in the Meraki market place.

[PhilipDAth]

You should absolutely be able to clearly see the number plate.  The camera should be as level as possible with the car (as opposed to pointing to at a sharp angle).

I would park a car in range and try and manually adjust the camera settings.

[MarkSauer]

No zoom1/2 zoomfull zoom

[MarkSauer]

The photos are directly from the camera view in the Meraki dashboard (not from Vision).  The camera settings are for maximum resolution 8MP, high resolution.  Regardless of distance, the numbers on the plates of all vehicles are obfuscated.

[Ryan_Miles]

Can you provide some examples from this camera showing the plates? Feel free to block out some of the plate for privacy if you like. 

I have a MV52 set to 80% zoom and 1080p/high and can easily read plates at 250+ feet. Feeding this video into ALPR also deciphers the plates accurately.

Are the vehicles in your scenario stationary or moving? And if moving, at what speed? Also, what are the lighting conditions?

[MarkSauer]

We don't (yet) have ALPR, but the camera is set to the highest resolution settings.

 

 

 

[PhilipDAth]

What country are you in?  I wonder if it has something to do with the number plates themselves.

[MarkSauer]

We are in the US, California for this particular camera deployment.

[PhilipDAth]

I'm looking at the bottom photo - the camera's optical zoom needs to be increased a LOT more (or the camera moved closer to the vehicle).  You want to be able to read the plate without having to do much of a digital zoom during the viewing time.

The vehicle should fill most of the camera frame at recording time.  APNR software needs this as well.

Once you have the optical zoom sorted, next have a play with the aperture.  To make the video less noisy, you have to give up image detail.  If you decrease the aperture the video it get more grainy but you'll get more detail back.  You need to search for the balance of just a tiny bit of graininess to get more detail.

[Ryan_Miles]

MV52 aperture is not user adjustable just FYI