Commercial grade illuminators from Raytec, Illuminar and Axton work very well, but in many cases, costs more than the camera and this has been the barrier to adoption for many. I came across the Tri-Illuminator from Wrightwood Surveillance that works as well as the high end solutions for a fraction of the price and in a small well made package.
The Tri-Illuminator sells for under $60 including the power supply and contains three 2-watt quality LEDs. It’s powered by 12V (600 ma) and can be purchased with or without a 110V to 12V power adapter. Has about an 18″ pigtail with a 2.1mm jack which is a common size. It uses 8W of power and much brighter than any built in IR illuminator in a camera.
It feels like a quality piece in your hands and it’s very compact compared to the higher end illuminators I’ve used in the past. The light spread is about 60′ degrees and even. If you have a very wide angle lens on your camera, you may want to get two to get the wider coverage. For my typical 4 and 6mm lens cameras, the coverage was about right. This picture to show you size relative to my hand.
Here’s a problem area in my backyard. This is using a Hikvision ds-2cd3332-i with a built in IR LED that’s fairly bright, but you can see that the area on the left was not well lit and grainy.
I added the Tri-Illuminator about half way from the camera to the side fence to provide additional lighting in the dark area. First I tried a very low cost solution from Amazon, the IR3 from CMVision. You can see that it provides some light but despite it’s claims, the lighting angle was narrow with a hot spot in the center some call the flashlight effect. It didn’t solve the problem for me.
This is with the Tri-Illuminator. You can see that’s it’s much wider and brighter as well as being more evenly lit. The area has much less noise and the objects are crisp and clear.
About the same time, I had readers ask me what they can do brighten up a scene and reduce noise. There’s only so much that can be done in camera as built-in IR LEDs tend to be underpowered because of heat build-up in cameras as well as power restriction of PoE. So I recommended this solution to a customer and with his permission, he provided images from his home.
This is the “before” image. You can click on this image to see the original size. The image is not terrible, but does have noise and dark areas. You can see the IR from the camera was not very powerful as the landscape lighting is actually providing most of the light which is useless because the light shines on the ground, not on a suspect.
After adding the Tri-Illuminator, you can see crisp detail and the shadows from the bushes show that the IR LEDs are brighter than the landscape lights. There’s also a lot less noise and blur from noise reduction algorithms. Noise not only compromises detail, but also uses more network bandwidth and disk space on recordings.
Conclusion
If you are not happy with your night images, or getting motion blur due to having to set a longer exposure, having illuminators is essential. I’ve tried inexpensive illuminators in the past but have been disappointed because they are either too dim or have a flashlight effect like the IR3 from CMVision or they failed after a short time. It’s good to see a solution that’s not only effective and well made, but priced affordably.
You can get the Tri-Illuminator from Wrightwood Surveillance by clicking HERE.
How do people look passing through? I have a problem with my Hikvision cameras making everyone’s face white out or just too grainy despite all my efforts at changing settings and any motion at night leaves people and animals a ghostly blur. My IRs are casting shadows and some of them overlap so it would seem I am getting enough light.
My still images are almost as nice as yours there with the extra light, can you show someone walking through that light so we can see if it can capture details?
It’s great to see a good review on an affordable illuminator.
I too would be interested in seeing how it looks with motion video of a person walking through.
I hope this may be a good solution with poorly lit residential installations.
Personally I try to steer people toward good visible lighting (particularly with LED flood lights) but sometimes they just don’t want to do it and it is easier to get low voltage lighting like this installed.
My customers just don’t want to pay for Raytec. Hopefully this product covers it.
White light is best, but the problem is in side or back yards in home for example where the light may shine into a bedroom or neighbors house. Also, traditional light fixtures are not effective at directing light where you need it.
Will they work with cameras that already have IR? I just bought lorex system from BJ’s and I get same white out faces and red eyes at night. How do you power them? Also my lorex 1080p cameras appear to be trying to focus even thopugh they are fixed lenses.Is that normal? Thx.
Eric
What happens at night is the scene is dark and cameras are not able to adjust exposure to a relatively small white object like a face or license plate in the overall scene, so it’s white and overblown. By lighting up more of the area, the exposure will be set for the brighter objects so it won’t be as affected. For a long time people thought license plates were white and overblown because the IR reflected off it, but I can tell you I use expensive IR illuminators for license plate capture and because the scene and car are lit up, the plates are readable and not overexposed, so you can see the car and the plate number. The alternative is to darken the exposure, for example by setting a max exposure that’s shorter, like 1/90 or even 1/200 that makes the scene look too dark, but that passing face will have more detail. In the case of a license plate, you may not see the car, but you’ll see the plate number, a trade off for not having enough illumination.
Is it possible to power these from a PoE switch, with a PoE splitter, then run a longer DC plug extension cable from the PoE splitter, so the splitter can be left inside the house, and the DC power cable can be run to the outside of the house?
My main issue is with Fog, and Rain, Spider webs every day, need to come up with some solution for this.
I have mine mounted outside with a wire running through the wall and attached to a 12V power brick inside the house. They sell extension cords for this purpose that plug into the 2.1mm hack on the camera and to the power brick on the other side, no splicing needed. In theory you can take 2 wires from an Ethernet cable and run 12V through it, but the wire is so thin, it would have to be a fairly short run, maybe 10-20′. You don’t have to mount this near the camera and I would avoid that. Let the IR built into the camera do it’s thing and mount this off 30-45 degrees of center from the camera so it provides more detail in the shadows of someone’s face.
As for fog & rain, having the light off center from the camera’s line of sight means it won’t reflect back to the lens, so should do better although there’s only so much you can do in these situations. As for spider webs, should totally help as having the light away from the camera means the spiders won’t spin webs in front of the lens (assuming you turn camera IR LEDs off).
But the reason why I am suggesting/asking about using a PoE splitter, is that the voltage put over the Ethernet cables is higher, so it can go for a longer run then if 12 volts were put over it. Because PoE does somewhere around 48v over the wire, then the splitter can output 12 or 5 volts to the intended device. I don’t want to have a whole string of power bricks everywhere. Just want to use my existing equipment to power the Illumination. But nellysecurity has a 18 port 12v DC security power supply distribution panel box that can do it also, but I was just trying to see if anyone tried using a PoE spliter for a Ethernet line that already had power over it.
http://www.nellyssecurity.com/power-supplies/12v-dc-power-supplies/18-port-12v-dc-security-camera-power-supply-distribution-panel-box-14-amps-total-44.html
There are PoE Illuminators. Axton makes a nice small one that splits the power with a camera, meaning you plug the camera into the illuminator, the illuminator into PoE and it powers both. 12 VDC power panels are typical for analog cameras. I don’t know of a transformer that takes 48V and converts it to 12VDC, but possible.
Here is a device that takes 48 volts DC and converts it to 12 volts dc.
Not 48 Volts AC converted to 12 volts DC. PoE is just DC to DC, but carries over the Ethernet cable at high voltage so there is less loss.
http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/?model=TL-POE10R
Care to provide the link to the Axton device your talking about?
I believe it’s this one – http://axtontech.com/product/at-6e-s-poe-infrared-illuminator-850-nm/ They demoed it at a trade show.
Are they very noticeable at night? The typical IR illuminator has a red glow, but I’ve never been sure how much that would actually catch someone’s eye.
Yes, the IR LED’s have a red glow, brighter than what most cameras have internally.
I guess that im not making my self clear.
So you have a PoE switch. The Ethernet cable has power over it at 48VDC so it can go the full 100m length.
You then connect a PoE splitter, that can pull the power out of the Ethernet line. This device: (http://www.tp-link.com/en/products/details/?model=TL-POE10R), it has a selectible power output port, from taking the power from the ethernet, at 12 vdc,9vdc, or 5vdc. I select the 12vdc output, and plug the iluminator into this power output from the PoE splitter. Then illuminator has power. There will not be any camera connect to this Ethernet cable, just an illuminator. The cmaera would be connected to a different PoE injected Ethernet line.
Does this make since, or sound possible?
I have my 2 side garage door lights on all night. They are each 100 watt cfl bulbs at 5000k so they are super bright. Am i better just having them on than getting more IR lights?. Also I have Lorex LNB3153 2MP 1080p cameras but they just dont look as clear as your videos do on youtube. I was looking to get 1 20xPtz auto tracking camera for side of my house. Can I get Hikvision to work with my Lorex LNR100 DVR? Or some other brand? Thx.
CFL’s are not good for night IR lighting. LEDs or incandescent of the same lumens would be much brighter.
I emailed Wrightwood Survalance about what the LED life hour rating is. And he is still unable to get back to me, and it has been over a week. He also will not provide the manufactures information, probably due to the fact we would just purchase directly.
I have done a lot of research on illumination, and there are a couple of good ones out there. The problem is, is that their LED’s are only rated for 10,000 hours, with environment conditions likely to see 5,000-8,000 hours. So 2 years of use if used for 12 hours a day. To me this will not work, and need something that lasts at least 50,000.
I did find one that has 48 LED’s, but the coverage, and usefulness is unknown. But the LED’s are rated for 100,000 hours. This will give 22.8 years of expected life if operated for 12 hours, and not counting environmental conditions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL7CGZcRZvQ
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0067S8IZ8/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
It would be beneficial if you could do reviews on more Illuminators in the future. Of if anyone has experience with good coverage, and long lasting LED’s i guess just leave a comment to get in contact with me.
I tried dozens of IR illuminators found on Amazon and eBay over the years and they are all junk. I never got one to last more than 6 months. I seriously doubt the illuminator you are showing me will put out 1/4th the light output of the Tri-Illuminator. One of the ones in the video was tested at the same time and it’s in the review, the IR3, you can see it spotlights in the center, more than say 15 degrees out it’s worthless. Are they bright, yes, but is the lights spread evenly is the issue. It’s easy to make an IR illuminator go 100′ in the center like a flashlight for the sake of a spec, it’s much harder to make one that illuminates evenly. If the person doing the YouTube could take a few extra minutes and go out to the advertised lighting angle, for example, if it’s rated 60 degrees, go out to the edge of 60 degrees and report back what he finds. It’s the problem with the built in illuminators in most cameras, they have sweet spot in the center, go out to the edge of the picture and not so good.
As for being rated for 100,000hrs, just marking BS. I looked at the specs for the actual LED from OSRAM, their high power OSLON Black Series and not one mention in the spec sheet from the LED manufacturer for rated operating hours. I think it’s just marketing hype figuring nobody will question it. It’s like buying 80,000 miles tires that barely last 30,000 miles. When I ask, they say we never warrantied it to last 80,000 miles from normal wear and tear, just warrantied it from defects if it lasted 80,000 miles. But the perception is you can drive those tires for 80,000 miles before needing replacement. Your perception is that $10 IR light will last 22 years, but I doubt it will last 1 year. BTW, got 100,000 rated LED’s can lights for my house at Home Depot. In a year, 2 out of 10 went out. Too bad for me because they didn’t carry that style anymore. So much for even 10,000 hours.
As for the manufacturer, honestly do not know. It’s made for them by a manufacturer in China to their specs much in the same way when you buy an iPhone or iPad it’s not made by Apple, but a 3rd party manufacturer in China.
Thoughts on how this would compare to a CmVision IR110?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ZX1M88/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I have one coupled with my E33, but noise it still prominent beyond 25′…. and used 24 watts in the process.
thanks
Have not tried it, only their smaller illuminator. I found with my ACTi 32, when I put a similar style larger illuminator in my driveway that has a street light across the street, it didn’t seem to provide much benefit. In my side yard where it’s much darker it made a big difference. So could just be the area. If you can put white lights, like porch or security lights, that may have a bigger impact.
I have this one, it really lights up the night out where it is posted, but after a few months it already had some lines of lights burn out. They say I can send it back and they will fix it, but no mention of who is paying postage. It wasn’t that cheap either. Since we don’t need any IR all summer (Alaska) I forgot about it and never sent it in, now that it is dark again I don’t want to take it down, it is still providing quite a bit of light.
I have pictures, but don’t know how to post them here.
I got two of these and they work great, but I saw this on Amazon and wondered if this is something you have looked at or tested?
http://smile.amazon.com/CMVision-IR3-WideAngle-Degree-Illuminator/dp/B008GTAPSO/ref=sr_1_96?ie=UTF8&qid=1420739725&sr=8-96&keywords=hikvision
CMVision IR3 WideAngle 60-80 Degree 3pc Power LED IR Array Illuminator
Actually I did and made note of it with a picture in the review. Awesome price, lousy illuminator.
Looks like Wrightwood is all sold out. I wish I would of got more than two. Any idea where we can get these other than from Wrightwood? I need 2 more
They should have them in soon. Email them and ask.