How do professional parking enforcement companies set up their ANPR hardware on site?
Hi everyone,
We have developed an in-house ANPR system for our company’s parking lot. It processes camera streams, reads license plates and creates entry and exit events. If the first installation works well, we may later deploy it at other parking sites.
We plan to mount the cameras on lamp posts, walls or underneath canopies, similar to installations used by professional private parking enforcement companies.
The software is working, but I am trying to understand the complete physical and network architecture used by professional parking companies. I have also attached a photo showing Dahua Power Boxes installed near the cameras.
I am particularly interested in hearing from people who have installed, configured or serviced ANPR systems for private parking operators. I would really appreciate an overview of how these systems are actually set up on site.
My main questions are:
- Do professional parking companies normally use an on-site edge PC for ANPR processing at all?
- If they do use an edge PC:
- Is there one PC per camera, one per entrance/exit or one for the entire parking lot?
- Is it installed directly near the camera?
- Is it placed inside a box attached to the lamp post, inside a larger outdoor cabinet or in a nearby building?
- How are the cameras connected to it?
- If they do not use an edge PC:
- Is ANPR performed directly inside the camera?
- Or are images/video sent through the internet to a central server?
- What continues working if the internet connection fails?
- What is the purpose of the Dahua Power Boxes shown in the attached photo?
- Are they only used for cable connections and power distribution?
- Or do they contain a power supply, PoE switch, surge protection, router or even an edge computer?
- Is each box associated with one camera?
- Where is the router normally located?
- Inside one of these Power Boxes?
- Inside a separate outdoor cabinet?
- Or inside a nearby building?
- Is there usually one router per camera or one router for the whole parking lot?
- Do these companies normally use 4G/5G as the main connection, or do they run LAN/fiber from a building? If cellular is used, where are the router and external antenna installed?
I would appreciate an explanation of a real installation, including where the camera, Power Box, PoE equipment, router and possible edge computer are physically located. This would be extremely helpful.
Thanks!