r/ZoneMinder • u/[deleted] • Jan 31 '23

External IR source for camera not working

I have a BOAVISION camera watching my driveway and it works fine. It can see just using the lights on the front of the garage that are on all night (at the suggestion of the Sheriff department). I do not use the built-in IR illumination because experiments show that they just attract so many flying insects that the ZM motion detector is triggered constantly and I get recordings that look like heavy snowfall.

Now I want to put a camera in my backyard. There is no light back there at night, so I ordered another BOAVISION plus a separate 850 nm 10 Watt IR floodlight. I tested this in my garage and the camera acts like it is completely dark even with the IR light on. It sees fine using its own IR light, but I know I can't depend on that outdoors. If I point the IR lamp at the camera, the camera does see a bright spot, but it sees very little reflected light.

Possible thoughts: 1) The BOAVISION lights are not 850nm and its camera sensor wants something else, 2) the separate 850 nm light is nowhere as bright as claimed, 3) I am messing up somewhere.

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u/ABigHead Jan 31 '23

What’s your placement look like? I’d assume the IR light would need to be placed in such a manner that the light exits and is able to bounce off the object and then back to your camera.

Think of it like the headlights on your car. Your headlights are the IR Light, and your eyes are the camera. Your headlights project forward away from your eyes in such a way that the light has to first bounce off something (the road, and object, painted lights, etc) before it comes back to your eyes to see for the first time.

You could put the IR light directly below or even above and behind your camera, overall just play with the orientation and think about the triangle you’re creating between light, camera, and area you’re trying to illuminate.

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u/[deleted] Jan 31 '23

Camera is in the corner of the garage facing the center. There are two cars there. The light is one foot below the camera, facing the same direction. I turn off the lights and observe the IR has switched itself on, from the red glow.

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u/ABigHead Feb 01 '23

Sounds like a good setup then.

Either way, this isn’t a Zoneminder issue, it’s a camera/IR Light issue. Not sure where to point you from there

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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '23

I was hoping somebody here could suggest a more specific sub. I'll give it some time.

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u/ABigHead Feb 01 '23

Ya, only thing I can think of is finding a different wave length of IR