Hi all,
Earlier in the year I posted about some joy riders trying to take my corsa so on the advice of the forum I bought and stuck on a disklok but my luck seems to be out as the car has been shunted while parked on the road in front of the house and the bumper is cracked open and this happened over the last bank holiday W-end that I was away. I came back to find the damage and a note on the windscreen, a scribbled name and a mobile no. and my fears were realised as the no. does not work and I am on TPFT :-/
I can only guess that it happened during the day and he tried to appear honest to any onlookers, but as I intend to scrap the car at the end of the year I am not so angry but this is the 2nd time it has been hit while parked outside my house in 4 yrs and it is a quiet residential road.
So before I get a newer car I am seriously thinking of getting some sort of CCTV camera to point onto the road to catch a no. plate next time it happens and I wonder if anyone has done this?
Do I need a special camera with say a certain no. of fps to catch a no. plate clearly? and are there any commercially produced systems for this purpose?
Any advice is much appreciated.
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a camera that records the date and time is use ful for evidence.
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You can get standalone DVR recorders, or DVR cards for PCs on ebay and get a cheap PC to run the card and software.
The problem, is, you have to choose a lens which will show the numberplate but not be too zoomed-in so as to only cover a small area. Cameras with fixed lenses are not always optimal.
I use a card off ebay, and a copy of some software called PICO 2000.
It is 60fps with 4 channels so that makes it 15fps, this is how the cards are normally sold, the total FPS rather than for each channel.
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My dad uses a very professional camera setup that is concealed in the front of his house and linked to a DVR time lapse thingy to do all of the recording, even that struggles to catch numberplates if they get too far away.
If I were you, I would speak to a proper security company that specialise in CCTV, don't even think about buying one of those cameras from Argos, they're just no where near as good.
Incidentally we had to get the concealed system after the first camera was stolen! In typical fashion, the elderly time lapse VCR we were using wasn't recording at the time... :-)
Blue
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Make sure your next car has a towbar fitted - that puts people off shunting the rear!
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slowdown avenue said "a camera that records the date and time is use ful for evidence".
It's vital - camera or software - because otherwise you're going to have to view the CCTV every day so as to be able to say when what happened happened.
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If the camera is in the house will it only show the side view of the car that hit yours ?
Can you get a concealed camera inside the windscreen, front & back, that will record the numberplate ? The latest lenses are very small and easy to disguise.
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Ashok is the fps per channel always equal to the total fps divided between the total no. of channels available or the no. of channels actually used with a camera? and is this limited by the lens used?
Hillman I intend to put it on a swivel joint so I should be able to attach it to the outside of the house and angle it down the road.
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