VISCAM 1000 Systems
24
System Set-Up
Continuous Light Intensity
(Traffic Safety Mode): Continuous light setting is only applicable for the white and
blue light versions of the TNL-50. The purpose of this light is to make the flash pulse less disturbing for
oncoming traffic. It has no influence on the image illumination.
Flash Intensity
: These settings control the brightness of the TNL-50 when the camera is triggered. This is
typically only used during night when the ambient light level gets below a certain threshold. It makes it
possible to identify the vehicles at night as well as make the license plates readable.
The TNL-50 Flash intensity is very high compared to older flash units so the license plates can easily be
overexposed at night if the Flash Intensity is set too high. Both the distance between the TNL-50 and the
optical axis of the camera - as well as the overall distance from the flash unit to the vehicle will strongly
influence the brightness of the license plate at night. If the license plate gets completely washed out
(completely saturated so the letters and numbers become unreadable) then there are two basic options to
solve this via the flash unit itself: either lower the intensity of the TNL-50 or to move the TNL-50 further away
from the camera (this however only applies if the license plates are retro-reflective!)
Another option is to change the exposure settings inside the camera and thereby lower the cameras gain so the
license plates are less bright in the image. This will also improve the overall image quality since the noise level
in the images will be reduced when the gain is lowered. But typically this also makes the overall brightness of
the images darker so the vehicles become less visible in the images at night.
4.8
LED-1000 Embedded Illuminator Setup
The LED-1000 Embedded Illuminator is primarily used by the VISCAM 1000 to provide sufficient light for the
built-in Vehicle Detector trigger system, so the camera will be able to trigger during night time when the
ambient light is insufficient to light up the vehicles. The LED-1000 is also utilized during the daytime to make
the retro-reflective license plates stand out when they are in shadow condition. The brighter license plates
will enhance the contrast and the readability leading to higher ALPR performance.
The LED-1000 illuminator has two usage models similar to the TNL-50 flash unit: Traffic Safety (Continuous
Light) and Triggered Flash Mode.
Traffic Safety (Continuous Light):
The flash is constantly on at a specified brightness configurable in the LED-300/1000 Light Settings window.
Right click on the camera symbol and select Advanced Settings –> Configure LED-1000 Light Settings.
A dialog box will open and the settings for the LED-1000 light can be controlled from here:
Figure 26.
LED-1000 Light Settings dialog box
When selecting light intensity settings, those settings are automatically saved in the I/O Board and become the
default settings next time the system is powered on. When selecting a “custom” setting, the SET button must
be selected for the value to take effect.
