night vision with LED's

Can someone give me a little info on what night vision webcams are?
They have 3 LED's on them. I know what an LED is, of course. I just
don't know what night vision is. and what the LED's have to do with the
camera. Can you take pictures in the dark, and still be able to see
someone?

thanx for any info you can give me.

wrote:
Can someone give me a little info on what night vision webcams are?
They have 3 LED's on them. I know what an LED is, of course. I just
don't know what night vision is. and what the LED's have to do with the
camera. Can you take pictures in the dark, and still be able to see
someone?

thanx for any info you can give me.

The LED's are IR LEDs. With a wavelength of around 880-980nm (depending
on the LED) they emit no visible light, but the sensor in the camera can
'see' by it. Depending on the amount of LEDs, the range (of the IR
light) can be anything from dismal to 10-15 metres. The quality of the
images is not as good as visible light and the images are in B&W.
The camera I am using has 18 inbuilt IR LEDs. Objects such as tress are
visible 15+ metres away (although dimly), but animals and people show up
better. Although it is not always on, you can view it he
http://users.tpg.com.au/adsl284i/
It is slightly out of focus at the moment due to me clumsily making some
adjustments! :-) I will fix it tomorrow.

What is the camera and server set up you have there?
Looks very good.
Gordon



On Mon, 24 Jul 2006 18:17:34 +1000, kim
wrote:

http://users.tpg.com.au/adsl284i/
It is slightly out of focus at the moment due to me clumsily making some
adjustments! :-) I will fix it tomorrow.

Gordy wrote:
What is the camera and server set up you have there?
Looks very good.
Gordon
The camera is a Swann 510R CCTV camera, details of it are available he
http://www.swann.com.au/show_item.php?item=144

Software is Conquercam. The camera is fed into a generic (read:
'Cheap'!) TV capture card.
The camera is on it's own dedicated computer. It is an old PIII 800Mhz
with 512Meg of memory. All the computer is running is Win XP, AV
software, Firewall, the Capture card drivers and Conquercam. While
Conquercam may not be the best software around, it is easy to set up,
has all the features I want and it's system requirements are very low.
In fact I used to run the camera and Conquercam on an even elderly PII
300Mhz with 64 Meg RAM and it was running 24/7 for 12 weeks without any
problems, except shutting down the software once a week to clean out
it's cache.
The other camera is a Logitech Fusion running off my main computer, but
I am still 'playing' with this one so it doesn't go online much (It is
mainly used for videochat).

snip

hi..take a look at my cctv setup using webcamxp

http://82.27.65.180:8080/

both left cameras are dome cams with 15 leds per cam... the top left is the
best for quality the bottom left leds are going dull and dont give out
hardly any light! thats cheap cameras for you...!

i say i use webcamxp but thats just to upload the desktop image. the cams
are shown using pico 2000 software with a dvr card...

webcam leds are never going to be the best option to grab as much light from
nothing... but a good start.

the rule is buy a decent camera,, get a decent image... buy crap get crap..

regards

slayer

the_slay_er wrote:
snip

hi..take a look at my cctv setup using webcamxp

http://82.27.65.180:8080/

both left cameras are dome cams with 15 leds per cam... the top left is the
best for quality the bottom left leds are going dull and dont give out
hardly any light! thats cheap cameras for you...!

i say i use webcamxp but thats just to upload the desktop image. the cams
are shown using pico 2000 software with a dvr card...

webcam leds are never going to be the best option to grab as much light from
nothing... but a good start.

the rule is buy a decent camera,, get a decent image... buy crap get crap..

regards

slayer


Agree with everything you say slayer. I built 3 banks of 30 IR leds that
I used to use with another camera. The total of 90 leds gave very good
results, especially when placed in a semi circle above ground level.
Construction was easy and relatively cheap..around AU$10 ea. Only
trouble was power consumption. Ended up using an old PC power supply
rather than 3 plug packs.
By the way...did I do something wrong? All I got when I tried to access
your setup was a message saying 'Connecting to host'

the_slay_er wrote:
snip

hi..take a look at my cctv setup using webcamxp

http://82.27.65.180:8080/

both left cameras are dome cams with 15 leds per cam... the top left is the
best for quality the bottom left leds are going dull and dont give out
hardly any light! thats cheap cameras for you...!

i say i use webcamxp but thats just to upload the desktop image. the cams
are shown using pico 2000 software with a dvr card...

webcam leds are never going to be the best option to grab as much light from
nothing... but a good start.

the rule is buy a decent camera,, get a decent image... buy crap get crap..

regards

slayer


Ignore my last comment..Just didn't seem to like Firefox...worked in IE :-)

In ,
kim dribbled from a puss filled blister enraged
mouth:
the_slay_er wrote:
snip

hi..take a look at my cctv setup using webcamxp

http://82.27.65.180:8080/

both left cameras are dome cams with 15 leds per cam... the top left
is the best for quality the bottom left leds are going dull and dont
give out hardly any light! thats cheap cameras for you...!

i say i use webcamxp but thats just to upload the desktop image. the
cams are shown using pico 2000 software with a dvr card...

webcam leds are never going to be the best option to grab as much
light from nothing... but a good start.

the rule is buy a decent camera,, get a decent image... buy crap get
crap.. regards

slayer


Ignore my last comment..Just didn't seem to like Firefox...worked in
IE :-)

im impresed kim... sounds like you like to "play" with this cctv stuff
too......

mine paid for itself only last night..it records on motion detection and
after i got up i noticed some damage on a rear window,, after checking the
cctv footage found a young fool had tried breaking in. got a loveley image
of his face as he looked directly into the camera to see what the faint red
glow was that the led's were giving off. (thats their only downside). he
must have noticed my usually placid staffy waiting for him to stick a limb
through the window, as he stopped trying to force entry and ran off fairly
quickly.

the police now have him in custoday and he cant argue with a print out of
his face from my cctv as evidence...
it seems my computers are not only usefull to me lol !!

i have the cctv software set up to send an email alert when it captures
motion and it also begins to record to a network drive... also it has the
option of sending a text message to my mobile ... i think ill start using
all the opotions it gives... as the cctv didnt deter this guy from trying to
break in,i assume a slightly higher profile of cams is needed.

id rather the cctv stopped em and didnt just record them in the act.

best burglar deterrent? my staffy and his huge jaws....
best burglar catcher? full face image looking directly into camera...

as yet i havent built my own bank of led's as i use the ones supplied with
the camera, but i might have a go when i get some bits for the job... i once
had a rope light that had multi coloured lights around my front door one
xmas. watching the cams showed that this rope light was giving off infrared
light just like the leds do... lit up the whole garden too the led's on the
rope light were dim to human eyes but the cams picked up the invisible light
no problem.
only thing is they are not designed for 24 hour usage and quickly burned
out.

im always interested to hear about other peoples cctv and how they set it up
and how they use it....

so kim when you coming round to help me build the led banks?

regards slayer

"the_slay_er" wrote in message
...

mine paid for itself only last night..it records on motion detection and
after i got up i noticed some damage on a rear window,, after checking the
cctv footage found a young fool had tried breaking in. got a loveley image
of his face as he looked directly into the camera to see what the faint
red glow was that the led's were giving off. (thats their only downside).
he must have noticed my usually placid staffy waiting for him to stick a
limb through the window, as he stopped trying to force entry and ran off
fairly quickly.


Nice one, good story.

Few questions: I thought the (uk) law states that you can have CCTV camera
running from your house but it must not go over your border line, i.e. your
fence where it can see the pavement & the road, including the
house on the other side of the road.

Something to do with privacy, I think.

Do you know anything more about it?

Thanks,


--
- Tony Sutton
- http://www.fordst170.co.uk

On 26-Jul-2006, "Tony Sutton" wrote:

Do you know anything more about it?

Doesn't sound enforceable if only you can see the area
covered, who is to know what angle of vision of
the camera has?
It would take a complaint, and some evidence off your
hard drive. Mind you if you had a bloody great zoom
lens pointing into your attractive neighbour over the
roads bedroom, then this might give you away.
Still you and your mates could all enjoy a Skype
hookup while it lasted.