IP Cameras Nab Red Light Runners In Bulgaria

  • Feb 04, 2009

Anyone who speeds past a red light in Sofia, the metropolitan capitol of Bulgaria, may find themselves facing irrefutable evidence of their traffic violation in the form of a crisp, clear image from an Arecont Vision AV3130 megapixel IP camera.

Sectron Ltd., a provider of turn key security and communications systems in Bulgaria, has installed 26 Arecont Vision AV3130 cameras to expand and enhance a system to catch traffic violators in Sofia, the largest city in Bulgaria with a population of 1.4 million.

“The superior image clarity provided by Arecont Vision’s megapixel technology made their products the obvious choice for our circumstances,” said Ilia Yashmakov of Sectron Ltd. “The clear benefit of megapixel technology is that it enables future expansion of our system -- which will also include additional Arecont Vision cameras.”

Capturing a legible license number on a vehicle as it speeds past, the AV3130 3/1.3 megapixel full motion progressive scan IP camera provides up to 15 FPS in color, 3 megapixel mode and 30 FPS in black-and-white 1.3 megapixel mode. It uses massively-parallel MegaVideo image processing architecture and is capable of sustaining more than 6 billion operations per second.

“The installation in Sofia is a great example of how the image clarity benefits of IP megapixel technology can transform an existing application by making it even better,” said Steven Sarfati, senior vice president of sales at Arecont Vision.

ViDiCore KG, Arecont Vision's German manufacturer's representative firm, provided the Arecont Vision megapixel cameras as an upgrade for the project.

The Red Light Violations system in Sofia originally began two years ago, but initially did not use megapixel cameras, which were introduced during an expansion phase. A special Automatic Number Plate Recognition camera “reads” the license plate of a car driving past and registers the number as a violation if the car passes while the traffic light is red.

A software system called Talon from Appian Technology employs a neural network recognition engine to determine the characters in the license number. The Arecont Vision camera provides irrefutable evidence of the infraction by capturing three pictures and a short video showing a general view of how the violation occurred, with the objective of clearly showing the violator's license plate number to prove that the number read by the ANPR camera is correct.

“The Arecont Vision megapixel cameras used provide more than 10 times the resolution of an analog camera, which greatly increases the likelihood that the license number will be clear in the video,” Yashmakov said. “This has immensely boosted the effectiveness of the system, and the cost is comparable to analog cameras.

“Based on the success in Sofia, Bulgaria, future installations of Arecont Vision megapixel camera technology are anticipated in Sofia and surrounding cities, although additional deployments are totally dependent upon the availability of funding.”

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