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  #1  
Old June 20th 17, 02:22 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
AMuzi
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Default bike theft news

http://ktla.com/2017/06/19/video-cap...bicycle-store/

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Andrew Muzi
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Open every day since 1 April, 1971

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  #2  
Old June 20th 17, 03:02 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
[email protected]
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Default bike theft news

On Tuesday, June 20, 2017 at 6:22:21 AM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
http://ktla.com/2017/06/19/video-cap...bicycle-store/


One would think that the police would have some clues.
  #3  
Old June 20th 17, 04:27 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
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On 6/20/2017 9:22 AM, AMuzi wrote:
http://ktla.com/2017/06/19/video-cap...bicycle-store/


Motion-activated lights indoors would make that surveillance camera a
lot more useful!

Also, about the fake customer ride-away mentioned in the video: ISTR
having to leave my driver's license when test riding a bike. (It may
have depended on whether I was with my wife, whether I arrived on foot
or by car, etc.) Andrew, what's your policy on that?

Anyway, hope the perp gets caught. Around here, he'd probably be an
addict desperate for cash.

--
- Frank Krygowski
  #4  
Old June 20th 17, 05:03 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Emanuel Berg[_2_]
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Default bike theft news

A couple of weeks ago I went by a bike shop
that I had previously stopped by its window to
admire a bike at some 80 000 SEK, which is
~($9104, £7208, or €8184).

There was a rent-a-cop car there and I didn't
take notice until I saw someone had thrown
a paving stone (?) thru one of the windows.

First I thought it was some kids doing their
routine but then it hit me it was the same
window that used to sport the bike! There was
no fence so just smash and grab.

Here is a Swedish forum thread [1] with
a photo. What kind of bike is it?

It says they busted the guy!

They also say, pathetically, "the bike is
worthless to the thief as he doesn't have the
charger to the battery".

[1] https://happyride.se/forum/read.php/1/3162334/3166769

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underground experts united
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  #5  
Old June 21st 17, 01:10 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Joerg[_2_]
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Default bike theft news

On 2017-06-20 06:22, AMuzi wrote:
http://ktla.com/2017/06/19/video-cap...bicycle-store/


Why is it that most surveillance capture is of such poor quality as in
the videos shown here? Do we need to dunk the designers of those
"systems" into a moat? That has helped in medieval times when bakers
were selling substandard rolls.

It is ridiculous to ask anyone "Call if you recognize this guy" when all
you can see is a fuzzy blob. Even the rather web cams I use for online
conferencing are WAY better than that inadequate "surveillance system"
that this store has. None of mine has cost more than $20. That store
owner should have all that video stuff ripped it out and get something
decent. Now. They should have made that decision two weeks ago when the
previous theft happened and the perp is totally unrecognizable.

Most thieves have a long rap sheet but finding them in the police
database requires pristine video capture. In this day and age that is a
piece of cake. It even was in the mid 80's. I designed a CCD camera back
then which took crystal-clear computer-controlled shots so I really do
not understand why shop owners put up with such junk. This is where the
state-of-the-art stands, where you can zoom into every facial or
clothing detail:

https://www.security-camera-warehous...urity-cameras/

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/
  #6  
Old June 21st 17, 03:49 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Jeff Liebermann
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Default bike theft news

On Tue, 20 Jun 2017 11:27:27 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

Motion-activated lights indoors would make that surveillance camera a
lot more useful!


Not really. The problem with aiming a motion activated surveillance
camera through a window is that everyone that passes by sets off the
motion detector. The better DVR (digital video recorders) have
programmable zones. The viewing area is chopped into small
rectangular zones, each of which can be set to detect motion or ignore
motion. This helps, but is far from perfect. Something like this:
http://surveillance.aver.com/Images/Shared/IMD%20revised.jpg
where only the door areas detect motion.

The big problem with camera placement is the field of view usually
ends up many times wider than a person's head. My guess(tm) is the
camera field of view at the window was probably 20 times the width of
a person's head. If the camera was a better quality 1920x1080, the
persons head would be only:
1920 / 20 = 96
pixels wide. Try to identify someone from a photo where the person's
face is only 96 pixels across. Here's me at 660 pixels across:
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/jeffl/slides/jeffl-07.html
and at 96 pixels across, expanded to the same image size:
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/jeffl/jeffl-07-96.jpg
96 pixels across actually looks fairly good, but only under ideal
conditions. Add to that the distortion caused by positioning the
camera at about 45 degrees downtilt near the ceiling, marginal night
time lighting, and a possible disguise.

Also, the same camera would easily produce a recognizable face photo
if the field of view was reduced to perhaps 5 times the width of a
person's head, but then the field of view at the front window would be
too small to be useful and require multiple cameras to cover the
entire window.

Incidentally, my favorite mistake is to put cameras on the ceiling,
which usually produce great a video of the top of the burglars head,
hat, or hoodie.



--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
  #7  
Old June 21st 17, 05:11 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
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Posts: 10,538
Default bike theft news

On 6/20/2017 10:49 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Tue, 20 Jun 2017 11:27:27 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

Motion-activated lights indoors would make that surveillance camera a
lot more useful!


Not really. The problem with aiming a motion activated surveillance
camera through a window is that everyone that passes by sets off the
motion detector.


What I had in mind was a motion detector controlling a light, not
(necessarily) controlling the camera. The idea is to illuminate the
face of someone coming into the shop. Recording that illuminated image
is a separate issue.

--
- Frank Krygowski
  #8  
Old June 21st 17, 10:59 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Duane[_4_]
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Posts: 1,546
Default bike theft news

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Tue, 20 Jun 2017 11:27:27 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

Motion-activated lights indoors would make that surveillance camera a
lot more useful!


Not really. The problem with aiming a motion activated surveillance
camera through a window is that everyone that passes by sets off the
motion detector. The better DVR (digital video recorders) have
programmable zones. The viewing area is chopped into small
rectangular zones, each of which can be set to detect motion or ignore
motion. This helps, but is far from perfect. Something like this:
http://surveillance.aver.com/Images/Shared/IMD%20revised.jpg
where only the door areas detect motion.

The big problem with camera placement is the field of view usually
ends up many times wider than a person's head. My guess(tm) is the
camera field of view at the window was probably 20 times the width of
a person's head. If the camera was a better quality 1920x1080, the
persons head would be only:
1920 / 20 = 96
pixels wide. Try to identify someone from a photo where the person's
face is only 96 pixels across. Here's me at 660 pixels across:
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/jeffl/slides/jeffl-07.html
and at 96 pixels across, expanded to the same image size:
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/jeffl/jeffl-07-96.jpg
96 pixels across actually looks fairly good, but only under ideal
conditions. Add to that the distortion caused by positioning the
camera at about 45 degrees downtilt near the ceiling, marginal night
time lighting, and a possible disguise.

Also, the same camera would easily produce a recognizable face photo
if the field of view was reduced to perhaps 5 times the width of a
person's head, but then the field of view at the front window would be
too small to be useful and require multiple cameras to cover the
entire window.

Incidentally, my favorite mistake is to put cameras on the ceiling,
which usually produce great a video of the top of the burglars head,
hat, or hoodie.




You can have glass break sensors turn the lights on.

--
duane
  #9  
Old June 21st 17, 11:37 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
[email protected]
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Posts: 6,374
Default bike theft news

Turn cam 180
  #10  
Old June 21st 17, 12:42 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Jeff Liebermann
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Posts: 4,018
Default bike theft news

On Wed, 21 Jun 2017 00:11:12 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 6/20/2017 10:49 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Tue, 20 Jun 2017 11:27:27 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

Motion-activated lights indoors would make that surveillance camera a
lot more useful!


Not really. The problem with aiming a motion activated surveillance
camera through a window is that everyone that passes by sets off the
motion detector.


What I had in mind was a motion detector controlling a light, not
(necessarily) controlling the camera.


Ummm... if the shop is dark, how is the camera going to see the
burglar so that the motion detector will work? Either the camera runs
on infrared, which produces some rather low resolution b&w pictures,
or it runs on something else, like window breakage detector, RF
doppler detector, or perhaps a trip wire.

Most cameras and DVR's have a nifty feature. In low light, the
cameras switch from color to b&w, where they are more sensitive. The
motion detector actually works better in b&w. If motion is detected,
it turns on the light and everything is now in color. Just one
problem. It takes about 5 seconds to switch from b&w to color. Longer
to go the other direction, but that's not important here. What
happens is during that 5 seconds, the DVR sees a washed out image
caused by too much light and a sensitive b&w camera mode. When the
color finally comes on, it takes a while for the auto-aperture and
auto-focus to kick in. My guess(tm) is loose another 2 seconds. Seven
seconds is a long time for catching a smash and grab burglar.

The idea is to illuminate the
face of someone coming into the shop. Recording that illuminated image
is a separate issue.


I setup one store with a cheap conventional digital camera and a
strobe. The camera was in machine gun mode taking about 1 frame per
second. The strobe did a much better job of catching a photo of the
burglar, but also was great for temporarily blinding the burglar. In
two out of 4 attempted smash and grab burglaries, the thief was so
startled that he ran away empty handed. This would have been an ideal
scheme, except there's a problem. False triggering of the motion
detector just wastes some bytes on an SD card or hard disk in the DVR.
No problem there. However, if the flash goes off during business
hours, or zaps a passerby through the storefront window, it's a
problem. The big worry is that some passerby will do a slip and fall
act, claiming that they were flash blinded by the camera system.

Full disclosu I don't normally do security camera systems. One of
my friends works for a security company that offers camera
installation and monitoring. He was clueless about cameras, so he
asked my help, resulting in the clueless helping the clueless. We
proceeded to repeat all the basic mistakes, until we found someone
with many years of experience, who offered to educate us in trade for
me fixing his computer nightmare and a few goodies. We both learned
quite a bit and discovered that many of the cheap DVR's don't work
very well. For example, one such device can feed video back to a
computer via the internet. Nice feature, but if while you're watching
the store, the recorded video turns to low resolution crap due to
insufficient CPU horsepower. All of the smartphone apps I tried have
bugs or are useless. One took so long to boot up, that if there were
a power glitch, the burglary would be over before the DVR started
recording. I got to play with some rather high priced DVR's and soon
discovered the difference between cheap junk from eBay and overpriced
quality equipment. I put an end to my security camera sideline about
2 years ago, when I ran into medical issues that made running cables a
bit of a risk.

4:40AM and I can't sleep. My time share cat and the resident mouse
have made some kind of non-aggression pact. The mouse gnaws on
something in the wall, while the cat does nothing.



--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D
http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
 




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