I require a camera which has to be installed on a 30 mtr pole which is located in open area and is vibrating due to heavy wind. The camera has to be Full HD with image stabilisation. Please suggest a better model in known brands which you have tested.
Image Stabilization For Camera On 30 Meter Pole
I suggest axis camera q1615
If you haven't seen it already, there's an excellent article named Camera Vibration Solutions which covers the pros and cons of different methods of image stabilization.
Are you able to help specify the pole for this application, or has it been selected already?
If you have any authority over pole selection, you can specify certain features that mitigate some of the harder to control aspects of wind buffeting, like guy wires and pole profile.
Thanks Matar & Luke. @ Brian , the client has already installed the poles. We have left out with the options of choosing the camera & software.
Any VMS having EIS in live view ?
We recently put up 10 of the Sony WR632 PTZs and they work wonderfully, customer is very happy. The pole mounting heights range in height from 65' to 85' and are a combination of wood 1" diameter (65') and metal light poles (85').
How much pole sway is occuring? Is it constant/steady, or only sometimes?
How far do you need to see with the camera? What level of detail do you need to resolve?
What is the pole made of?
This question has lead me to wonder if there are any common methods for measuring movement in semi-inaccessible locations such as the top of this 30m pole. For surveillance cameras, is it important to measure movement in x, y and z axes? If one can obtain measurements of camera movement, how can one then select a suitable image stabilisation technology that will be guaranteed to do the job such as electronic image stabilisation or a gyroscopic mount? I'm guessing the answers to these questions must have already been worked out for use on ships and oil rigs. I'd be very interested to learn what approach IPVM members take to measuring vibration and pole sway in particular. Thank you for any ideas.
The impact of vibration at the camera grows the farther away from the camera it is focused. Even a slight buffet of 1/8" at the camera mount can translate into several feet of movement hundreds of feet away in the target FoV.
Consider the example of athletes in the biathlon who struggle to calm their heart rates down before taking sharpshooting stages... even that little 'thump' of their heart can greatly impact movement of riflescope crosshairs at 100 yards.
This explains why you see (mechanical dampeners, not EIS) gyros and accelerometers rate their stabilizing ability to degrees or radians over a period of time, ie: 48°/sec.
Rather: the stabilizing effect can mitigate up to 48 degrees of movement from zero in one second. Vibrations down to 0.1° per second are countered, but anything with a higher frequency is too rapid to be addressed by the example mount.
Hi Brian, thank you for your very specific information. That is very helpful.
...common methods for measuring movement in semi-inaccessible locations such as the top of this 30m pole... If one can obtain measurements of camera movement...
The movement of the camera's image itself is the best judge of the motion of the pole. You just need to have a reference(s) in the FOV that you can use simple trig on to determine travel at the pole. If you can't see it in the image with the camera at MOD and MFL then it probably doesn't matter.
I would add that in some cases the best solution would be to stabilize the base to a greater degree if possible.
Hi Rukmini, using trig with reference points is a very good idea if a camera has already been mounted. Stabilization of the pole itself is most desirable if feasible.
However if there was not already a camera on top of the pole, I wonder how one would work out what kind of camera stabilization system would provide a stable image before committing to buy the camera? The cost of image stabilization, to counter pole sway, varies from nothing more than the cost of the camera to several thousand dollars for external mounts. If trial and error is used, then there will also be labor costs and probably the hire of a mobile crane or cherry picker to test cameras on top of the pole. These costs all add up which is why I was wondering if there was a way of determining pole sway from the ground. For example, I wonder if there is a fancy distance measurer which could track the movement at the top of the pole and provide distance measurements?
Some VMS already handling analytics engines, now integrate EIS, but like VMD or Analytic, this consume memory and CPU and I'm not sure that can work efficiently on high frequencies vibrations when you add latencies (200 to 800ms) due to H264 compression/transmision/decompression. Eis is effective when inside the camera, at the root. Next generation of anti vibration features are including gyrocopes to eliminate pole rotations as well as simple vibrations.
For creating a snapshots (not video) you could try www.mktimelapse.com.
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