How do those cameras perform in low light (outdoor street lights)? Can you be more specific on a model number? Have you ever tried using vitamin D with these cameras?
Also, congrats on getting multiple homeowners to agree on not only having the cameras installed on their property, but agreeing to use their own internet access to make this work (I had to pull teeth for years to get our gated community to get cameras at the front gate!).
Low light performance is alright. I have several aimed at areas that are streetlit and I can make out a figure walking down the street, and perhaps determine their gender. Due to distance I can not ID them, but I can see if they're there. In an area with no streetlighting, since they are not IR, performance is bad. In my neighborhood since streetlights exist everywhere they do alright at night. Less grainy than the analog IR cams we formerly used.
As for getting neighbors to participate, the congrats are only partly deserved. This is a neighborhood of 160 homes. About 10 participate in the camera program to varying degrees. Since they're somewhat spread out this gives us a decent view of what is going on around the neighborhood at night. It was all started after one bad night of vandalism where 10 homes and 4 or 5 cars were spray painted. That got enough people ticked off to get the ball rolling on this. Had I decided to start it out of the blue nobody would have been onboard.
As for internet connections...only one of the 10 participating homes is linked in via their ISP. All other cameras in the system run on our own private neighborhood wireless camera network. I do networking for a living so I basically put up a sector radio site on my roof, with commercial grade radio panels aiming out at the various sections of the neighborhood. There is also a secondary relay tower with a powerful omnidirectional antenna on it that covers a portion of the neighborhood my rooftop can't reach. With this almost anywhere in the neighborhood we want to put a camera we put a small, directional panel wireless network device facing either a sector radio on my roof or the omni tower, whichever is closer.
At the end of the day we have our own camera network that the ISP can't say or do anything about, and that we can do firmware updates and stuff over WAY faster than an internet connection. I am able to pull a 30fps 720 HD stream from an aircam from all the way across the neighborhood on our private network. With how terrible the DSL provider out here is that is nigh impossible over homeowner internet connections.
While wireless will be wireless, using weatherproof, commercial grade wireless gear kicks most problems in the butt. Outages are rare (it goes out less than the local ISP, hehe), and bandwidth back to the main server ranges between 20 and 100mbps. VASTLY superior to the 1 or 2mbps upstream speeds available through the ISP out here.
Where exactly do you have your AirCams located so you can read license plates?
Right now the AirCams we have are located on homes. During daylight hours I can sometimes read the plates on vehicles parked in someone's driveway from these cameras. I have a few camera sites on mailboxes but presently none have AirCams. Our two plate cam sites are presently very well aimed, low angle, high optical zoom lenses. I'm interested to drop an AirCam alongside one to see how it performs. It has no optical zoom, but it is higher res than our present plate cams.
I never promised the world of these things when compared to other devices available..but when you consider price they pretty much outperform any other IP camera you'll find for at least one or two hundred bucks above them. If you need commercial grade plate capture, or multi-megapixel resolution, then by golly, there are better products for that.
If my other street level cameras on my mailbox weren't hanging in there so well I'd be mounting an AirCam to the mailbox right now. Though not designed for it, I feel it would have some success in plate capture at close range. If you're wanting to read a plate from a building side mount or something, though, no. Aircamis not for you.
AirCam is not the endall. I just get a bit excited about them because they are revolutionizing budget camera systems like that in my neighborhood. Formerly a few hundred bucks got neighbors 2 to 4 $30 analog cams and an IP converter. Quality was 320, framerate was 3fps, and nighttime was black and white only. Now we set up neighbor homes with AirCams and have widescreen, HD resolution at 30fps. Not bank-level CCTV stuff i'm sure, but god dang if it hasnt vastly improved our security out here VS our old equipment.
AirCam is not the best IP cam I've ever used, but it is probably the best $100 cam by a mile.
