Home License Plate Recognition Camera Installation

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  • I recently tested a Ubiquiti AI LPR camera and it seems works ok during daylight but not at nighttime. As I was searching, I found your Viewtron LPR-IP4 model was highly rated. Currently, the only spot I can mount my LPR camera is by my front door which is about 12 feet high, and the angle of view to a plate detection zone is not ideal for ALPR. The distance is roughly 50-60 feet away. What do you think the chances that your Viewtron LPR camera will work well both day and night license plate recognition? Here is a rough image of the view from the existing Ubiquity AI LPR is mounted and not working so well.

    home LPR camera install

    This is the advise that CCTV Camera Pros gave to this customer.

    The image that you shared that shows the angle of view from your house to the plate detection zone captures the exact challenge with LPR camera applications on a residential home. The vehicles are passing by the front of the house. The road is parallel to the front of the house where the LPR camera is mounted, and the house is typically set back 25 to 40 feet from the road.

    Automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) is difficult in these types of installations because it is impossible to install the camera at the ideal horizontal and vertical angle from the license plate detection zone. License plate capture (LPC) is much more realistic. In case you are not familiar with the difference between ALPR and LPC, this video and article explains it quite well. https://videos.cctvcamerapros.com/v/license-plate-capture.html

    How we recommend residential customers compensate for the angle and distance challenge to the plate zone is by angling our Viewtron LPR-IP4 camera as far down the street in the direction of the plate detection zone and use the motorized varifocal lens to zoom into the plate detection zone. This should be no greater than 100 feet away from where the camera is installed.

    You can see a video demo here of the Viewtron LPR camera mounted on my house where I apply this technique.
    https://videos.cctvcamerapros.com/v/lpr-camera-for-home.html

    The ALPR on the Viewtron camera does pick up a lot of the plates automatically, however, at these extreme angles it is not reliable. However, the license plate capture ability is very strong.

    Here is another tip. One of the other benefits of the ALPR software that is built into the Viewtron LPR-IP4 camera is that all of the ALPR events are bookmarked on the NVR. This makes it very easy to find them all. Instead of manually looking through hours and days of video when something significant occurs, you can jump right to all of the LPR events using the software on the NVR. Without the camera reliably detecting all of the plates, in the case when LPC was accurate but ALPR did not work, you lose this bookmarked event functionality.  By using a standard Viewtron AI security camera as an “overview camera” in conjunction with the LPR camera, you can set up car / vehicle detection on the overview camera to bookmark all of the events in which a vehicle entered the intrusion zone. We have found that a combo LPR camera / overview AI camera with vehicle intrusion detection makes for a great application.

    You can find the Viewtron LPR camera here.
    https://www.cctvcamerapros.com/LPR-Camera-p/lpr-ip4.htm

    You can use any of these cameras as an overview camera. They all support vehicle detection.
    https://www.cctvcamerapros.com/AI-security-cameras-s/1512.htm

    Both the LPR camera and AI overview camera will record to any of these Viewtron NVRs.

    https://www.cctvcamerapros.com/IP-Camera-NVRs-s/1472.htm

    Please let us know if we can help further. You can email us anytime at info@cctvcamerapros.net.