Project need
At this fuel station's two facing entrances, vehicle plates needed to be read accurately from a distance, while a data link also had to be established between the site and the management office 1-2 km away.
Solution implemented
A 12x optical zoom camera was installed at each entrance; the field panel next to each camera houses a UPS (uninterruptible power), a semi-industrial PC, a PoE switch, and a long-range wireless access point. Plate recognition (OCR) runs directly on this panel's PC in the field, not in the cloud or on a central server. The station's management office is 1-2 km away and has its own panel (PC + switch + access point), with a wireless bridge set up between the two points. Management connects from the office PC via remote desktop (RDP) to the PC inside the field panel to retrieve plate records and reports. Our take: running OCR in the field and only carrying the report/result to the center is the right architectural choice — it substantially cuts the bandwidth needed over that 1-2 km wireless link, since only small data travels instead of raw video.
Benefit delivered
All transit records remain accessible (via RDP, on demand) even without a continuous data line between the office and the field; the UPS also keeps recording uninterrupted during power outages.