Designing Dashcams to Freeze License Plates
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- čas přidán 28. 05. 2024
- Here's how we could design dashcams to work like police license plate readers:
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Related Videos:
Part 1: Dashcam Video Quality Deep Dive: • We Need To Talk About ...
Part 2: (This Video)
Part 3: Dashcam Designed to Capture License Plates: • Dashcam For Recording ...
Part 4: Why Dashcams Only Sometimes Need to Capture Plates: • Why Dashcams (Sometime...
0:00 Intro
1:47 Police ALPR
2:51 Dual Lenses
4:14 Multicam Dashcams
5:12 Testing a Dualcam Dashcams
6:16 Daytime Testing
8:47 Night time Testing
11:01 Infrared Illumination
13:02 Non-IR ALPR
14:03 Exposing for Plates at Night
15:07 Variable Exposure
17:00 Camera Design
18:15 Cost & Resolution?
21:01 Demand?
22:21 Dual Lenses Are the Way To Go
23:01 Wrapping Up
Mobius Action Cam Telephoto: dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads...
How LPR’s work: • HOW IT WORKS: License ...
Axon Fleet 3 Overview: • Equipping Public Safet...
Axon Fleet 3 vs. Ferraris: • Fleet and The Furious ...
Variable exposure trick: • 250 FPS ANPR at Night ...
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#Dashcam #ALPR - Auta a dopravní prostředky
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As for the reverse HDMI - just get an HDMI extender cable.
Exactly!
how about one thing you plug in between the cameras that just flips the hdmi port around?
Beat me to it.
I could find a mini HDMI male to female cable but did find a micro to mini cable and adaptor back the other way, like $10 on eBay for both so bargain.
Came here to say this. Or, if you are just even slightly handy, it's quite easy to open the camera case and just flip the port. Closing it back together can be snapping in place or just a few drops of adhesive.
dual cam with telephoto makes the most sense, wouldnt be too complex.. i'm surprised its not done already. smartphones have 2-3 camera setups for years now.
But they only use one lens at a time as far as I know
@@Tom-sg4iv Most of the high end ones already got multiple sensors video modes. Theres even one from Axon that lets you use all 5 simultaneously, including the selfie one.
They can Remove rear cam and put it inside of a front unit to make dual cam system. I guess people needed rear view camera.
@Phillip Banes - I remembered that I saw a vid showing that it's possible to record from two back lens on a phone (wide + telephoto) at a very good quality recently. I don't remember what phone it was, but I found this video made two years ago about an app doing it. ...tho, what I saw a few weeks ago been native in the phone (no need 3rd part app). I wish I could find what phone I saw exactly but here's what I found for now: czcams.com/video/dsjRHhx9zb0/video.html
Maybe the future is to ONLY have a telephoto camera, but have 4 units covering each corner of the car. Stitching the image together gives you an Ultrawide footage anyway. Except the image is sharper.
In fact, I'd be completely happy if Western Nations made it mandatory for all new cars to have this as default. It should make insurance claims, and really MANY issues very solvable thanks to unbiased footage. Old cars on the road can get them retro-fitted, but with time slowly they will be replaced with new cars that have these installed.
Cameras, Lenses, Processors, Storage, and Connectivity has become far cheaper, abundant, and better around 2017 and beyond... compared to a decade before that, and the decaded before that.
Dude nice work, this vid could very well change the industry. You did most of the leg work for the manufacturer's. If I was one come Tuesday this would be the new direction of the company.
To me, the real leg work is getting that solution to a price point that normal people would actually buy.
Not really legwork, ideas are easy, implementation is hard
Hmmm, providing prof of concepts testing off the shelf parts and putting it all in a well organized presentation such as a CZcams vid seems like quite a bit of leg work. Implementation is of course gonna be difficult that's why the ball lands in the manufacturer court as it will require a team of people.
@@toddstratton9197 Proof of concept is usually the stage where someone actually integrates the parts together as a starting point for development of a real product.
Another trick used is 'stacker'.. you can take sequential images and process them to somewhat sharpen the image a lot.
Yep, Google popularized this in their smartphones, and Samsung and Apple have copied them. It's actually brilliant. First you capture high framerate, underexposed video. Then you combine ~4 frames into 1, compensating for anything that moved. Now every pixel has more precise color/brightness, so you can crank up the brightness and colors without making the image noisy. Obviously you need a lot of RAM and a powerful ISP/DSP.
You don't need a great framerate to capture dashcam footage. Can we use stacking on already-captured video from current dashcams?
@@runed0s86 Yea, that's something I've already thought about several times while watching dashcam footage on CZcams... you can stack multiple frames from existing videos to enhance the license plate and make it readable. It would take both stacking and adjusting position, zoom, and skew to line each frame up to the reference frame, but it does work. I've worked on image processing systems that have done the same for identifying images printed on a printing press.
Great idea. Could be an opportunity here for one of the dash cam manufacturers to put a dual front-facing camera out to test the market. As long as it's not too expensive it could potentially be a winner.
Linus Tech Tips covered a similar issue with dash cameras very recently. He showed even the more pricer cameras image quality was not much better than the sub $100 ones. The reasoning is they are all basically using the same System on a Chip, and those are mostly at least five year old technology. We are probably better off making our own with something like Raspberry Pis
Bro, I love how humbly you say "'I'm just a tester, not a manufacturer, it's not up to me" when we all know you've become *THE* one to come and listen to when it comes to dash cams before buying. I've purchased 4 cameras based on your reviews. I know I can't be the only one thinking this way.
*It looks like we the consumers watch you to know what to buy, and the manufacturers watch you to know what we want to pay for*
yea
Another great video. I left almost this exact idea in my comment on your last video 😀 If you want to do some additional testing most of the rear camera setups that I've tested are actually still utilizing standard analog security camera wiring (AHD/CVI/TVI). You could get an analog security camera with a telephoto lens and with a little splicing you could plug it into the rear camera input of most dashcams (the ones with the TRRS connectors would be the easiest).
As far as exposure on the plates, the tech you are looking for is called "HLC" or highlight compensation. Basically the algorithm works so that there are no clusters of pixels on the image that have a value of 255 and the camera will dial down exposure until that block goes down to 254 or less. HLC would need to be built into the dashcam though, so that would need to be a firmware change.
Most current dashcams are still using processors that came out 5+ years ago. Typical story of racing to the bottom.
The tech is there, SoC with built-in high-res computational videography optimized for tough lighting conditions. There's just not enough market demand for higher end dashcams.
And that's why we need to get more people on board with it. Insurance companies should require them. Bigger market, higher demand, more units sold, higher budget and more competition equals better products
All dash cams should be required to capture license plates in several tests before they're allowed to be sold.
@@runed0s86 yes what we need is more regulation and bureaucracies because life isn't unaffordable enough already smh
THANK YOU! I know optics and math and resolutions, and after trying and returning two high end dashcams, I figured these wide angle cameras just can't resolve plates. You've given me the first confirmation I was right on this.
One novel solution might be to have two front facing cameras, each with a 60-70 degree field of view, each barely overlapping in the center, and letting software stitch them together. Effectively doubling the resolution.
This exactly. Instead of relying on a single lens solution we could get much better results by using multi lens designs.
Another option, 2nd cam would be a 240 fps (preferably) Black & White cam with telephoto, although a slower fps would allow for higher res pictures. LPR cams are usually B&W and are proven to work. The characteristic of B&W cameras are more suited to License Plate Readers.
I've had some experience working with dual camera setups while researching for a project. Turns out you can use a Raspberry Pi computer and a set of specialty board that can allow it to use two cameras at once, either for stereo vision, or for extended fields of view; or in this case, for a much more detailed view off a section of the main (wide angle) image.
These can be loaded with quite advanced IMX477 image sensors, and use separate lenses (say, 140 degree fov as wide angle, 20 degree fov for zoom in); and use the computer to process the data of both and deliver near-real-time enhanced imagery.
A SBC and DIY camera setup sounds like it's going to be the only surefire way to get a no-compromises system at a reasonable price.
Is there a discord / website /whatever that has more details? Looking to mount ALPR for my street. Thanks!
I believe this solution proposal has not being developed just yet. It might be worth to start a github of some sort if people are interested enough.
Honestly, I have been in 4 accidents with a dashcam. Only one, was a hit an run, at night, and in the rain. So, anecdotally, this was only needed 25% of the time for myself. As expected the plate was unrecognizable between headlight blow out and the rain on the windshield. In the other cases, the only sufficiently needed information was the make, model, color, and the circumstances of the collision. While I wish there was a consumer level product that could assist in these incidents. I'm not sure if the additional expense is really needed. That premium would really be a luxury. Especially considering I have only ever run sub $100 dash cams. I still run two Yi Dash cams today. They are going on 7/8 years old and still perform the same.
I can't fathom spending $400 on a dashcam that gives me the same story as a $60 cam does, the Mid 2000s white Ford Escape failed to stop resulting in a collision and drove away. Of course my eyes told me the same story; but, it was nice to provide to the Highway Patrol and the insurance company to prove it wasn't an at fault collision. For what ever that was worth to my insurance rate.
FOUR accidents ? your problem isn't dash cam quality .
@@siriosstar4789 you're right, its driving in Florida.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is using aspheric lenses. They're typically used to subtly correct optics, like focal distances for glasses or correcting chromatic aberration in compound camera / telescope systems, but there is nothing preventing their manufacture to give telephoto-like capabilities toward the central region with a smooth transition to a wide angle-like toward the edges of the the image circle. It would require additional optics or post-processing to deal with not just further chromatic aberration but also make it sensible to view in software since otherwise you would have a very fisheye-like (-like; they are very different optically) view of the image. All in all, the custom manufacture and R&D required is likely more expensive than simply placing a second camera module, but thought I'd throw it out there.
Great work! I would hope this gets to the manufacturers because this is exactly what we need. You need to buy an HDMI reverse adapter lol. To answer your question though, I'd pay $200 for a 2k dashcam, then $100 - $150 for the license plate add on. That's if I knew it worked very well. It'd be nice to have options to add a rear onto that especially since 3 channel dash cams are out there. So yeah, $350 for a dashcam + license plate reader.
Yeah, the Motorola (really Vigilant) ALPR solution really is the best in the industry for license plate capture. I've seen the mobile one installed on patrol vehicles as well as the stationary ones they use for the radar trailers. They all run Linux under the hood and have a passively-cooled "VLP" box the cameras connect to for video processing. You're right that they do pulse the IR floodlights in low light to capture reflective license plates between regular video frames. That's why they've got a regular RGB camera and an IR-bandpass one.
Coming from digital cinema cameras, the outboard processing computer may have more to do with the clarity than one might think. Modern digicine cameras offer raw footage recording capabilities to be processed later, generally this is preferred unless storage or processing time (budget) is an issue.
These Linux boxes might not seem like much, but compared to a dinky processor (even a dedicated imaging chip) in a dashcam, they are likely far better at rendering plates in sharp detail.
I think the dashcam market is going to be stuck in compression town inevitably, but perhaps companies can devise some software to separately capture or parallel process the plate camera footage with dedicated algorithms like your hfr multi exposure examples.
Oh my... I hope some of the big dash cam manufacturers sees this and start make some new design. Great work
What about taking the dash cam that has the optional plug-in rear facing camera and using an HDMI cord between the main camera unit and the optional camera so that you can turn and face that rear facing camera towards the front?
Was thinking the same. An HDMI Extender (HDMI Female to HDMI Male) would probably work. There are some on Amazon that are as small as 15 cm (just under 6 inches).
@@beardo-baggins I was also thinking the same.
Phone cameras can do face or eye detection. You could do something similar with License Plates which could auto adjust exposure for that region. That tech exists today. I agree, two lenses would be ideal. The second camera wouldn't even have to take video, just photos with timestamps, it could even integrate it into the main video with a little intelligent mixing. There are a lot of options.
Loved this video.. obviously it's not geared towards the masses but definitely is something that enthusiasts are interested in.
I’d definitely buy one!
I think a lot could be done in post processing: there is plenty of ways to stack the multiple still frames from the video in order to get an enhanced image. Astrophotography leads the way in this field.
Other esoteric solutions may involve free-form optics that give you a higher focal length in the centre of the sensor, and "squish" the rest of the wide field of view to the outside area of the sensor.
Another solution would be using monochrome sensor, which would give you better resolution, better dynamic range and better low light performances; c-mos sensors could, in theory, shot with two different exposures at the same time, at the cost of having about 0.7 the native resolution.
love your dashcam videos, they truly are in a league of their own, no other channel comes even remotely close
always so impressed by the quality of every single one of your videos
An external IR blaster might help with the issues with the internal cabin cameras with IR modes.
UltraDash Z3 actually has the dual cams feature for $150...one wide angle and the other telephoto. Please review for the channel and keep up the great work!
It does! Someone else just mentioned it too. I got excited and bought one, lol. :) Time to check it out!
Apparently there needs to be someone that can produce a gimble mount IR laser to lock on to police license plate readers and saturate the CCD.
Get on this one now Uniden!!
How about a bright-AF IR wide angle LED mounted next to your plate. Just over expose the crap out of the image.
You can get covers for your plates that show your plate fine when looked at straight on but blurs your plate when viewed at an angle. Technically, they are illegal in many states because there are blanket laws about putting covers on your plates at all but since you can see the plate fine when viewed from head on...if you were pulled over, it looks normal from a cop behind you.
@@KG4JYS A police officer with a laser is doing that exact same thing as he or she sits on the highway detecting vehicle speed.
Ir lasers that would be powerful enough to do that would blind someone instantly. Pointing an invisible laser around Is not only illegal but immoral.
@@MrAgentEcho A) I never said anything about pointing it at anyone.
B) Since you seem to know what the power output from an IR laser to distort the capability of a CCD is, I would be curious to know what that would be, are we talking micro watt or straight watts of energy?
There are lasers in the visible spectrum that are used as cat toys, so I am curious to know what power rating is required?
Awesome review. I like this review and hopefully someone comes out a dash camera like this. Thanks Vortex!
These past couple videos have been some of the most helpful videos you’ve done. I think you are really on to something with multi-lens dash cams facing forward. I saw your video on the GoPro, are you going to review the new GoPro 11 Heroes that are coming out that are supposed to have better cooling & even higher res + frame rate? P.S. You have to remember heavy mark-up for government agencies like police departments because of paperwork & compliance costs, plus limited market. Mass marketing can drive price down by harnessing a larger audience. You should try to Zoom interviews manufacturers & engineers. I’d be curious to hear what they have to say. I don’t care about size of camera that much so long as I can mount it high on my windshield.
I'd pay a $1000 for a 3CH solution, 1 ultrawide for identifying the car make and model in the front, a secondary front-facing telephoto camera with night-time IR and active image stabilization and a tertiary rear facing camera for those fender bender incidents. We definitely have the compute horsepower to drive these, we really just need a brave manufacturer to put it all together in one package and sell it as a complete product.
By the way, I absolutely love your channel and your content. I was just nodding my head in agreement as you went about explaining how ALPR's work and I am like.. yup, that is exactly what needs to happen. Yup, this is the solution. I just hope we'll see a day where we can buy this as an actual product.
Commercial vehicles such as 18 wheelers would love to have this technology.
I'm pretty sure you live close to me. I recognized the sheriff vehicles and most of the roads where the test footage was recorded. I like the video.
One method that I do to improve night time by using a second cheaper dash cam with the exposure comp settings set to their lowest setting. This allows the dash cam to use a higher shutter speed and lower ISO which improved license plate visibility as well as the distance at which they are visible.
After years of wondering I can now finally say my questions are answered - Thank you
For a higher performance LPR capture while on the move, we need a higher frame rate camera. Many of the purpose built LPR cameras see in the infrared, so headlights won't affect 'seeing' the license plates, and because plates are reflective, the cameras have IR emitters and are constantly sampling at different exposures (similar to photography and exposure bracketing).
The color/visible image is simply just for context; maybe the Axon dashcam/LPR cam relies on the visible image and does OCR against it.
Edit: jumped the gun, commented while I was still watching :)
Also check out DIY-ALPR, you can run an ALPR on a Raspberry Pi with a camera.
Several things came to mind.
12:45 - You would have to have a separate, tiny IR light with a flexible angle-cut lens that conforms to the windshield glass. The light will shine out, but stop the light from reflecting in the interior. Probably too much work, but it would fix that glare problem.
19:19 - You could buy (if they make them) a 1/2 inch or 1 inch MALE TO FEMALE cord/connector and simple twist the inner facing cam to face out the same as the main cam.
14:40 to 15:06 - Since ALPR and speed cameras need a reflective surface, I can use some cover or chemical and remove that reflective coating, rendering the systems useless, lol. evil grin
Covering the license plate is illegal in places. Steve Lehto from the Lehto’s Law CZcams channel recently had a video where the plate was only covered around the edges by a decorative frame, and IIRC there was a citation issued and it was upheld in court.
@Commercial Guy Last point you made... ' And get pulled over immediately for altered tag '. There's a law against doing anything that can hinder a cop's ability to do his job. Not worth it.
I would definitely like a second telephoto camera for license plates. Two cameras (wide & narrow) at the front, two at the rear (ditto), and one interior, for five channels in all.
Great detailed talk.
There are tons of dash cam reviewers on CZcams but you are the most detailed reviewer. Kudos to you.
Today I just decided to grab the Tinkware U1000 after much research. Needless to say I am not a fan of having to pay a premium price for a 4K dash cam. But I want a very reliable product while not draining and damaging my car's battery for the long term especially when the cam is operating under parking mode. Anyway, I digress a bit...
I think nowadays since folks have absolutely zero qualms about shelling out a cool $1000 just to own an iPhone, we have to ask ourselves how much we are willing to pay for a dash cam that can capture license plates under most conditions especially when accidents occurred?
What will the price be when we have to deal with insurance companies arguing back and forth about accident claims? Personally I think if it is at or near a $1000 and no more it will be a fair price to pay for the added important dash cam feature.
I believe most dash cam manufacturers are lazy. If they are making tons of money then they have no incentive to really innovate especially when we are just now, kind of, trying to get back to normal after the pandemic.
Lastly, I don't think this will be a huge technical challenge to put in a second telephoto len like the ones found in our smart phones for dash cams. What needs though is to spend some time and effort to implement AI on top of the hw so we can optimize various light conditions, object speeds, shutter & exposure settings for capturing the license plates. Of course nothing is perfect. AI most likely can help but it is not perfect. There is no fool proof magic bullet.
Maybe with the new Sony sensors on the horizon we can easily pair it with a low end, low cost, Nvidia graphic chip having optimized AI just for image processing, image tracking and nothing else. Together with the improved HWs we probably can make vast improvements in this area.
Have you tried the Viofo A119 V3? I think it is the best dashcam in the market as of now when it comes to capturing license plate zoomed in.
@@seekfactsnotfiction9056 Hi Hi. Thanks for the info.
Do you personally own the A119? Can you elaborate more why you feel this is the best option available for said task?
Thanks much!!!
Drive Safe. 🙂
Good video. I did not know that the regular dash cams were so poor in capturing license plate numbers. The license number is critical information and I regard this as a key requirement of any dash cam system that I would consider buying and I would be willing to pay a premium for such a capability.
Great video man thank you you’re helping push things forward
This is great research, I would not be surprised if next year you see some dual lens dash cams hit the market.
I'm glad I'm not the only one trying to figure out a way to be able to read license plates with an onboard camera. Telephoto lens is quite a good idea.
*Simple solution* :- Go with the Nextbase dashcam at 5m45s and just connect the small Telephoto-Cam with a *USB EXTENSION CABLE* !!! ... and locate it where you want with a windshield suction-cup mount, with either an adjustable holder or magnetic type using a small metal disc/washer stuck to back of the telephoto cam.
Been thinking about this problem myself. I'm an embedded software/hardware engineer and don't think it would be hard to have a 4 camera system. X2 facing front and x2 facing rear. The x2 cameras can be a wide angle stitched with a telephoto. Maybe a good idea for a kick starter? Could also incorporate some license plate reading and saving to a cloud where the data can be mined for when, for example, an amber alert is put out.
Well done sir. Always your insights are useful. Watching from Uganda 🇺🇬 East Africa
this is excellent proof of concept and where dashcam manufacturers should be going to and looking at!
Terrific video… you have the consumer perspective and desire nailed.
Why hasn’t the cam manufacturers thought and provided this yet?
Hi
Nice video I own a company that has been manufacturing ANPR or as you call them ALPR cameras for car since 1997 we have supplied the police and the armed services in the U.K we also specialised in capturing farsi (arabic licence plates) we looked at using dash cams for in car use and found that the Chinese made dash cams with "starlight" features which would capture licence plates in the dark very well. You may need to look into lens filters as well. However we had to modify the firmware in the cameras a little to capture cars at speed. I look forward to your next video.
Vortex you my friend are a genius! Love your content!
Makes me appreciate the included cameras in the tesla. The plates and cars are easily identified.
Teslas have the same issues.. plenty of reports on forums about plates garbled or not viewable, particularly at night.
And not to mention issues like blinker light bleed into repeater cameras in early 3s
Very good video! You threw a lot of great ideas out there. Out of the 5 or 6 dash cams I’ve ran since 2015, the best I had to capture plates was the DOD LS360W. It has a 140* FOV (I think that’s one of the key factors) a pretty good low light lens with an aperture of f/1.6, it’s 1080p and runs a Sony EXMOR sensor if I am not mistaken. I would run -1 EV and the results were pretty good. Even at night on the highway you could perfectly read the license plate of the vehicle next to you just as long as you momentarily match their speed or keep the speed differential to a minimum. The solder joint broke for the charging port so it’s out but I am thinking I am going to bust out the soldering iron and repair it.
Note: LE ought to need a reason to believe the person-in-question is *actually* driving the vehicle *before* initiating a stop. Otherwise, its tantamount to pulling vehicles over to examine their 'papers', which is expressly forbidden according the SCOTUS. At the very least, if an officer does initiate a stop, they must abandon it as soon as they determine its not the person they're interested in. As we all know, however, LEO's will do it anyway until they're penalized for doing so.
how can cops know before hand that the person they're interested in is indeed the one driving if they cannot stop to verify?
just doesn't make any sense or am i missing something here?
@@lordjaashin You're close but you're missing his point.
The police still cannot legally pull The vehicle over because they believe that the registered owner could be the one driving. However with how convoluted and overly complex driving laws have become over time they can just pull you over for any number of reasons if they follow you long enough... And that's what they usually do.
If they do pull you over simply because you popped on the plate reader, then you could possibly get it thrown out but they would have to testify that's why they told you over and most of them are not going to do that.
About the infrared, there's the reason license plate cameras are mounted outside, glass reflects infrared, to the point temperature cameras have a ton of trouble seeing through it.
you could just use a male/female HDMI cable extension in between your two cameras, that would allow you to mount the "rear" camera in a better position on the window for license plate capture. you could use the same to mount your IR camera externally so you are not getting IR reflection off of your windshield.
I run a 3-channel front, interior, and rear set up currently, but I could see myself getting a 2nd camera for telephoto front and telephoto rear setup. Capturing plates is very important.
I would totally be onboard with a dual front facing setup wide and telephoto. Blackvue with 2 cameras on opposite sides facing forward.
Enjoyed watching the video 😍
Use a short male to female HDMI extension cable?
BRILLIANT!!! I would have suggested taking the tiny camera apart, turning the connector over and reassembling the camera. Your suggestion is so much simpler!!!!
@@bernardowens1648 well, thank you very much. God bless.
Excellent video. Subscribed.
Love your informative videos
Very interesting discussion.
Interesting stuff! Some thoughts
1. Motion blur isn't actually a big deal. There are highly effective software libraries that can pretty much get rid of it.
2. There are 'Super Resolution' software libraries that can take a number of frames that have been deblurred, rotated, deskewed, scaled, etc., and generate a final image that is *MUCH* clearer than any of the originals. As videos will take at least 30 frames a second, that gives the system lots of images to process.
3. Running cameras off of something like a Raspberry Pi or Jetson Nano can allow real-time image upgrading and *FULL* camera control.
4. You can buy high-wattage IR LED sets that will light everything up to 50m away--already in a mountable enclosure that you can put on your bumper/etc.--for less than twenty bucks.
Great content 👍.Iit is surprising dashcam manufacturers haven't themselves put such a dashcam on the market. .
Really nice video ! thanks a lot, i am going to experiment with a extra telephoto lens on my 622GW , perhaps with a extension cable to flip it around, and mount it in another way to keep it steady. Again thank you this might be a really big change for the dashcam company.
You’ve just been describing a modern smartphone. Multi lens, IR/LiDAR, GPS, Motion detect, image stabilization, ML image enhancement , HDR, multi-stitching, WiFi/BT/5G, large storage, fast, processing, standby battery, large screen, ETC. If one came in a durable heat resistant body, $1000 sounds about right.
If people are already willing to pay upwards of $850 for an Escort Redline 360C, I’m sure there’s a market for more expensive dash cams. Not to mention custom installed solutions like Radenso RCM that are already over $2K. However, if dash cam companies decide that they don’t think that these can become a mass market option, I could see them upping the price to compensate. So they may just end up doing the equivalent of radar detector companies of the single front camera being the regular(windshield mount detector) and the premium 2 front camera model(custom installed).
About 15-20 years ago, I was really keen on D-TEG and it’s GPS playback abilities. Also multi-channel cameras.
Today I’m trying to find weatherproof 1-2” cameras I can sync record as a dash cam system
Thanks been trying to record racers on my street, now I know what to buy.
Nice video man great effort!!!! My opinion is a second front facing camera with HDR ability combining multiple exposures to determine all details. Most photograph cameras do this now
Interesting! Some additional points:
1) License plates are typically retroreflective, which is why the IR illumination is so close to the camera lens. Using headlights does not take advantage of the retroreflectivity as much.
2) TeslaCam only records one of the three forward-facing cameras, so it would be useful if they would record the narrow angle camera too.
Looking for a solution to mount at home on my street, this video provided valuable technical aspects, thanks!
For the idea of using a indoor IR cam through the windshield: Polarization filters are available to minimise the reflections.
I mounted an IR light outside to eliminate the glare from the windshield and disabled the ones on the unit itself.
I was just tinkering around with a cheapy dash-cam to see if I could improve it at all, while running my trusty Viofo to do the real work.
It actually improved them both, and the Viofo doesn't even have any IR lights built in, so I think the sensor is just able to use the additional light even though the unit isn't designed for it.
If someone is serious about solving this problem (consumer or manufacturer), I think it's an easy decision to make. We're all getting out of our "comfort zones" or at least moving beyond plug-n-play when we start hard-wiring these things in to clean it up, semi-permanently mounting them instead of using suction cups, setting up apps and VLC players to decode, transfer and remote save files. . . . so, popping the hood and bolting a little box behind the grill should still be considered a DIY-able install for most people, as long as they can follow wiring instructions.
Sure, it might be tough for manufacturers to green light something that makes the casual owner quickly flip the page to an easier option, but if the right marketing was in place, highlighting a clearly superior product, I know it would sell. (at least one)
So a couple people mentioned that license plates being retro-reflective and while that's correct no one's really pointed out the actual problem causing the wash outed license plate. Something that's retro reflective is something that always sends light directly back to the source of the light no matter what angle it comes from. Any beam of light that hits a retro reflective surface basically does a 180 turn and continues on it's way. We left some retroreflectors on the moon for this exact reason. From anyplace on earth you can fire a laser at one of these and it'll come right back. Scientist use it for science stuff.But they can do it from anywhere because the beam always is reflected back at the source.
So the lower you mount the camera, the closer it is to being in line with the light shooting out from the headlights, which is now reflecting back (retro-reflecting) off the license plate and into the camera.
If you look at all the images you had of the ALPR on the cop car at 12:14 you can see how they have them mounted. Up as high as they could be and also at an angle. That's about as out of the return path as it can get and also out of the path of headlights from cars in oncoming traffic and any light that might be traveling back to it's source after hitting any of the hundreds of other retro-reflective surfaces on the road. The only light that's coming back at the camera lens is going to be from the IR lights bouncing off the license plate straight back to the camera.
Anyway I hope that made sense. It's insanely early.
As you were discussing the telephoto aspects, I wondered if attaching one of the many cellphone "telephoto" add on lenses that are available to a standard dash camera.
A person would need to run two cameras then, but it might be a cheap and easy "mod" if you already have an older dash camera sitting around.
I’m a photographer. This idea, as you said, was already implemented in police and modern cellphones. I would strictly go with a 2nd cam that’s IR only for plate capture. The 2nd cam is not expensive. Look into the Pi or Arduino microprocessor hobby realm, extra cam can be had for 2.00
One very simple thing to increase sensitivity of a second camera is to have it be black and white. The Bayer color filter reduces the light coming into each pixel. Remove that and remove the IR Filter and the Low light performance of the camera increases. Pity no one is making a dual camera like that.
Curious if the ir from a laser jammer could be harnessed as external ir headlights for helping with license plate capture ( with firmware and maybe some form of pairing between camera and laser systems
You can also get a short HDMI extension cable - plug that small Telephoto camera In that way & just FLIP the cable, so that it points forward.
Great video! Hopefully manufacturers take this into accout and come out with better products
Wow 😮wow
Thank you 🙏 for the lessons 😊😊🎉🎉❤
Engineers from Dash camps, they need to watch your videos to learn some lessons. New ideas. 😊😊😊
You can get hdmi extension cables that would work with that add on camera and you could flip it and just need a way to mount it.
As an owner of a dr900x-2ch+, I think that $7-800 for the same system, with an additional license plate capture lense, would be my target price. Maybe 850 if they can prove to have really good low light performance too.
A dashcam can prove that the accident was not my fault, but it's still my insurance premiums at risk unless we can determine who's insurance the claim should be submitted to
What you need is a iPhone or mobile phone with multiple rear cameras (front dash cam) one that’s wide HDR good in low light, one telephoto HDR, and one front facing cam for in car or rear view. Plus it has all the sensors your want for g forces, has LTE connectivity, WiFi, Bluetooth, live streaming, 500GB of storage, 4K for all cameras, uses hardware to encode hvac / h265 codec. Has a large built in battery for park recording. If you took out the screen from a phone, you could make the dash cam pretty small. About the size of a black view if you left out the big battery. Ideally I’d take the camera bits out of a phone, make a 3D printed housing for them that’s tiny. Run a extension to the main board in the phone. Put the phone in a box in the glovebox. Make a custom app that could record from all cams at the same time and had all the features you’d want. It would be mostly plugging into apis that already exist. Could easily use it to instantly upload video clips to a server. Could use as a in car hot spot. Use it with CarPlay. That would be ideal. I bet you could make a camera module and plug it into CarPlay via a lightning y adapter and have your regular phone be the recorder. Have it input metadata from the car into recordings via CarPlay. Or just make a app that acts as a remote for the dashcam phone that works in CarPlay that manages start stop, lets you see what the cameras are seeing, configure settings. You could open the remote app using your regular phone that’s connected to CarPlay and see love views from the cameras including the plate reader, and allow you yo review old recordings.
One step further, use apples image recognition in the app to identify objects (red car, lady holding monkey) and use their image to text functionality for the license plate. So you’d just have to program the app to use all these built in features. Take snapshot. Save raw image. Hdr. Send to apple api for OCR, load back into app add text to list that is in a plate format. You wouldn’t have to develop or adapt any existing programming libraries that did all that. You could sell the software the app and accessories like holders, camera pod for adding remote cameras so they don’t have to have their phone in the windshield. But that’d work. Making it just the app. Phone mounted on windshield. And use CarPlay for control and still maintain full use of the phone to play music answer calls. Use Siri. Phones from the last few years have the processing power tye gpu power to do all this. I’m just curious if apples sdk let’s developers access more than one camera at the same time, and if the lightning port would be capable of supporting external cameras. Or would you need a external box to encode them and then send to the phone.
Or heck just have a small DVR brain be mounted somewhere hidden and have cameras mounted up including a 3 in one camera.
I don’t know why there aren’t more dash cams that work like a DVR or NVR. I had one several years ago that did this. Was great. Just had a tiny camera in the front and back and the recording processing box went in my glovebox which also had a AC vent so it kept the thing cool as well. I hate having a big ugly camera on the windshield. Also having the DVR in a locked glove box makes it a lot harder to be stolen. Heck these days if people can see anything in your car that might be of value, like a expensive camera sitting in the windshield they’re gonnna smash the window and take it.
Speaking of, also if your dashcam iphone got stolen, you could track it, and remotely wipe it and disable it from being used again. Even track it via BTLE when the battery dies or power gets shut off.
Very nice work. As a lil tip, you coulda try using a HDMI flexible female to female extension cable, paired with a mcable and you'd have a better clarity, "native" 1080p upsampled with the possibility of having both cameras facing forward. Of course, theres quite a bunch cables to organize plus gotta also mount properly the camera, but you'd have pretty much what you were hoping to get from this video.
Stereo cameras possible combination.
48MP wide + 2MP telephoto. At night the 2MP telephoto can keep its higher shutter speed thanks to it's bigger pixels. The 48MP would keep the overall wide view and help the telephoto with HDR stacking.
48MP left + 48MP right. Like a 360 camera but in a 120° view. Much more resolution for a smaller FOV and quad Bayer filtering for lowlight.
We are striving for high resolutions such as 4k for more detail and to get the plates.. 1080p is more than enough for the main wide angle camera to gather the large view details and use the 4k sensor with the telephoto lens to get the fine details (plates etc) that seems like the win win way to do it.
With all of this new technology being placed into the dash cams, the price will absolutely go up, along with the size of the cameras, unless of course we are now going to have a remote located processor/storage box with cameras being wired to them.
Viofo, hire this guy as your new CEO. I'm not kidding.
Dashcam manufacturers should listen to your proposals if they wanna make a dashcam that is useful to consumers!
@Vortex Radar, I wonder if you could open the the rear camera and reverse the connector so you can plug it in "facing forwards"
LOL. You did a better job than the manufacturers!
I think people will pay more money if the option exists. I have plenty of friends, most making less money than me, that go out and spend $1200 on an iPhone or flagship Android every two years without even batting an eye. In fact, sometimes, the more expensive it is, the more demand there is. Not for me, but for many people. Funny thing is, I've been looking at borescopes lately and they aren't very expensive yet some of them have THREE cameras. Although, I'm guessing those cameras aren't nearly as expensive. Anyway, good job on the video.
Comma Three is a device that you can use as a dashcam that has dual cameras on the front and even a camera facing you as well.
Mount IR lights outside the cab of the car. They could be part of headlights or the running lights. The IR-sensitive camera could still be mounted inside the cab.
I'd love an lpr addition.
Just wonder if an active filter that can move between the lenses to block most of the light and basically keep just the (near) IR at night. How well would that work?
A secondary dash cam that took a high resolution photo every half second or so could be a handy tool.
Dear ALP manufacturers, hook our guy up please
What software do you use to zoom in and clear up the license plates on your video? A still or a moving car? I just got a dash cam and the Vantrue app doesn’t have those features. Do you use iMovie or Final Cut Pro to do that, or what other software?
So, if we were willing to spend the money now, is there a recommendation for a second (dedicated) camera, available on the consumer market, to specifically capture license plates?
I do think that the switching exposure every other frame would absolutely be the cheapest solution since a simple software update could enable this feature in basically any dashcam, and then the user would be able to choose the best frame without having the added cost of another separate camera
Might not play well with video compression. If so the camera could encode the two exposures into separate video streams.
Hi I recall a recent video that you published like 2 months ago with the external cameras mounted on the two front side doors to show blind spots, these cameras are outside the car and will most likely take care of the front windshield glare you mentioned for the night UV vision. Just and idea maybe this can be the solution to night glare from windshield, to have a small camer installed outside perhaps in the grill area for weather protection and better visibility
Doubletake on the iPhone will record both cameras together, either Ultrawide, wide(nomral), tele or selfie, you pick any two. Haven't played around with it as a dash cam, but an idea.
The Vantrue N2 Pro allows you to rotate the internal view camera toward the windshield