Attempted car break-in 1-26-2019

Unfortunately, I spent yesterday running the wire for the new IR lights on the side drive and not the front.

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Thanks, yes it is a ranger. That was my dad’s truck. Shame it won’t fit in the garage.

Nope, stock V2 mounted on an upstairs window. 110 degree lens, iirc.

Thanks for sharing. It makes me want to install some motion sensor lights in the front of my house, and a larger one in the back. I see that is what hurried these two idiots along. My fear is the inadvertent activation of the light from wind or passing cars and lighting up my neighbors house across the street in the process.

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Cars very rarely set it off, so I wouldn’t worry about that. Wind blowing tree limbs did set off my side light, but I cut them back. Better to have the security. I have motion lights all around my house. Our police public education specialist has actually recommended people in our neighborhood cut their growth back, because it just give the bad guys cover.

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Do you know what make/model you have in the front, size of bulb.

Make/model? No, they came with the house 20 years ago. There are two, one on each side of the door and look like the replacement I ordered (below) for my back deck entrance. They all work basically the same so go with the style that fits your house and location. I went with 60 watt equivalent LED bulbs for the front and 100 watt equivalent LED for the back. The on and off burns out incandescent quickly and CFLs take too long to warm up. I think all brand fixtures are adjustable for sensitivity and duration of staying on after being triggered. Five minute duration works great for me because either coming on or going off triggers my camera and one of the two changes in light is captured even with the cool-down period.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00002NAMH/

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Thanks for the reply…I’ll look into this. In the video I thought it might have been flood lights.

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Not floods, just plain old LED light bulbs. Night mode makes them look much brighter than what we see. Although they still were not bright enough to see faces.

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I upgraded the lighting. :grin:

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Is your camera mounted outside of the window?

Yes. It is.

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Interesting. Given that we know that IR reflects off glass, I wonder if you add an external IR source for a camera that’s mounted behind a window, how much of the IR reflecting off objects outside will make it through the glass back to the camera.

Are you referring to the issue of cameras mounted inside and the onboard IR lights reflecting back? Applying that to light reflecting off objects like the truck and grass and then being viewed through glass? Hopefully, it works like lower spectrum light. We’ll soon find out.

Actually, I was going to test that, but can’t until v2.1 comes out. Maybe some of the beta testers can.

Yes, that’s basically what I’m asking. Glass, apparently, is opaque to the wavelength of IR that emanates from the camera and thus reflects back. If light from an external emitter bounces of an object then back to the window would presumably not reach the camera if it hasn’t changed wavelength.

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It depends.

It depends on two things: What are the specific wavelengths of IR light (infrared covers a fairly wide spectrum), and what type of glass and what coatings are on it?

Near infrared (NIR) and Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) will pass through most glass, though the amount will vary based on the glass and the specific wavelengths within those bands.

I suspect the V2’s 850nm will pass easier than the Pan’s 940nm. My external lamps are all 850nm.

Although, over at the physics forum:

Lower frequency should have an easier time getting through glass than that of visible light.
Yes, you’re are correct. Glass which is transparent to visible light is generally more transparent to near IR light. In the case of an IR remote control, there should be no problem unless there are some very specific impurities in the glass, or some type of antireflection coating. An instructive example of this is silica glass optical fiber which (when nearly pure) has a low loss wavelength of about 1550 nm, another local window at 1310 nm and is more transparent at 800 nm than at visible wavelengths. The fact that the typical wavelengths for optical communications in silica fiber are 800 nm, 1310 nm and 1550 nm (and not a visible wavelength) is a clear indication that you are correct.

Reference Why doesn't infrared radiation travel through glass

It looks like what coatings are on the glass is more of the issue.

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the general indoor LEDS you buy at stores like Meijer are roughly 850 lumens or a 60 watt equivalent for the old incandescent bulbs. I just discovered the other day ( although it is considerably more expensive) that menards has 10,000lumen led bulbs. basically a small mercury light. because that parking spot is rather large and neighbors are further away maybe look into that. I bet that would light up that area sufficiently. I’m planning on going this route for my back yard in the coming weeks.

The fixtures the bulbs I was referring to are in are just to light up the porch when we get out of our cars. 10,000 lumen might blind me. :smiley:

Here is what I’m doing with IR that people can’t even see:
image
It’s even lighting up the shrubs across the street. I’ll probably move this lamp to one edge of the house and get another to balance the light out. Doing this may eliminate most of my headlight false alarms too.

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thats a VERY good point about the headlight false alarms! I didn’t even think of it doing that.

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I finally put the IR light up out back and headlights that were lighting up some shrubs and triggering Events are now drowned out by the IR light.

So the answer is, in one test at least, a lot of the IR light makes it back through the glass to the camera. Here is an image of this camera behind glass with built in IR emitters on and reflecting back off the glass:

And here is a video with the built in emitters off, night mode on and and external source first on, then off, then back on:

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