Member Discussion

Multiple IR Illuminators For A Single Camera

Has anyone attending the class deployed a series of IR illuminators to improve the depth range of a single camera? I want to see people approaching down a long driveway towards a house, and want to get an early IR view of them approaching at night so my recognition software can pick them up and trigger an alert. Then another IR illuminator at or near the camera can be used for recognition, perhaps without having to be so bright as to wash out the facial details at close range. So, assuming I have the desire to run a wire down a fence line to the second illuminator, does anyone see a reason it won't work? I realize I have the cost of a second illuminator, but that's not prohibitive and if thermal is $2000+ with no recognition, this seems like a better bet.

Stephen, IR illuminators are a little like invisible (to the human eye) spot lights. So you could certainly mount them at different locations, much like street lamps are mounted every X feet/meters.

How far away do you want to see - 50m, 100m, 500m?

Driveway has a line of sight of 120m from camera mounting point. Idea is to detect human at 100m+ and recognize features when closer.

Ok, that's beyond the range of any integrated IR camera I know of. The two IR illuminator approach will provide good quality images. My main question / concern would be how wide the cameras' FoV will be at 120m. Even with a lot of light, if the FoV is too wide, it will be very hard to make out even an outline of people.

I will often position the illuminator to illuminate an area that is closest to it, but have the camera covering that area located elsewhere. The effectiveness of illumination of a subject is dependent on the distance between the illuminator and the object of interest, not the distance between the subject and the camera.

For example if I was wanting to gather video of an outdoor yard and have two cameras mounted in opposite corners of the building I would aim the cameras crossing each other to get full coverage of the yard in the FOV. However the IR while mounted beside cameras would be aimed at the area closest to the IR. This also solves the issues of glare when the IR is trying to cover both areas near and far you point out, but it also solves the issue of glare from precipitation and also picking up glare from the other IR if that illuminator is in the FOV. This also has the benefit of requiring less power for the IR.

I hope I explained that properly.