Deer camera for cars?

Reliable automobile sensing almost always seems to be done by buried sensors. I've had my X10 Hawkeyes detect moving cars from 50 feet away - but not reliable. Many cars scooted by undetected for reasons I never bothered to ascertain. Maybe only well-warmed up cars triggered the PIR. I'd look toward putting the sensor about a foot off the ground and very close to the roadway. A car's exhaust system and engine will be the warmest parts and they're down below. Try keeping the sensor pointed north so that you minimize direct sunlight exposure.

What kind of sensor is it?

-- Bobby G.

PIR, "1.3 Megapixel". I had the sensor low and the cars warm, but my Saturn was never able to trigger it. I did get ONE shot of the rear of my wife's Caravan, presumably trigerred by the exhaust.

Still not sure what you're using in the way of PIR but the battery-powered Hawkeyes from X-10 would be certain to detect warm vehicles from 10 feet away.

offers a wide variety of driveway sensors and alerts. Perhaps the manuals for their PIR models might give better ideas about placing the sensor you have to maximize detection.

A good outdoor PIR has a lot of features that take into account the ultimate location and environment of the unit. Here are some specs for the outdoor PIR that I use, which so far has not been triggered by squirrels or cars - just people::

Show me where you have the detector set now, with C being where I would place it - it should be close enough that car would fill the entire field-of-view of the sensor.

'_' = 10 feet

C _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Roadway _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

What's the ambient temperature at the sensor? Is it possible the deer trigger the unit only after multiple "counts?" If that's the case, it's going to be difficult to trigger on a car unless it stops to munch on your shrubs. You might be able to tell by looking at the existing deer pictures to see if they are just entering the frame or already dead center when the camera trips.

-- Bobby G.

I probably need a sensor triggered by cars.

- - - - - - - - - - - - | trigger the unit only after multiple "counts?" If that's the case, it's

There is about a 5 second lag between trip and shoot, that's why I put it on a curve. But it's not that I am getting an empty picture of the road after the car passed, the camera is not getting tripped and am getting no pictures. I might have gotten one picture of an MT road when I drove by with my window down, I'll have to experiment more. Ambient temp is chilly, that should help. Turning on the headlights did not help.

Deer move slow, cars don't. The sensor in the trail camera isn't designed to detect the much larger and usually much faster-moving target that an auto would represent.

Better choice might be to use a video camera setup that uses motion detection. Given how large disk drives are these days it wouldn't be too much data.

What are you trying to monitor?

I'd go for an IR beam across the roadway about 3' up. A car passing is guaranteed to interrupt it. It will be hard to keep them aligned without setting posts into the ground. Again, nose around Smarthome - they sell sensors that look like PIRs as part of some of their remote driveway kits.

I would try to place the camera so that the bottom part of the car spends the longest time possible in front of the sensor. That's probably looking at the rear of the car, unfortunately. I would say the second best spot, based on how my Hawkeyes detect cars, alongside the road, close by so that all the exhaust parts pass by the detector. Probably down at ground level pointed up. Another idea is to put it way down the road so that the PIR is looking at the tailpipe of the car as it the car enters the zone have the camera. Or is the camera not separable from the PIR?

All I can say at this point is that I know that X-10 Hawkeyes will track cars with the usual X-10 hit or miss results at 50' and that it was not one, but two that behaved that way. IIRC, the X-10 PIRs are way too sensitive for many applications and don't have any kind of pulse counter to delay triggering and reduce falsing.

-- Bobby G.

That's a sad fact of life for deer, too.

Trying to monitor cars going thru my gate, which might be open or closed. Area has no electricity, which is why I'm trying the trail deer camera. What would work better? I prefer longer range to keep the camera out of sight (and theft).