Hmmmm check this out... FLOCK Safety LPR

Dec 6, 2014
4,180
17,364
South Dakota
Madison South Dakota installed several of these self-contained and self-powered units..

What do you suppose this hardware is like?

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Has been discussed before:



 
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Has been discussed before:



Pretty amazing how much money they are getting for equipment that can't reliably get plate pics at night.
 
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As someone told me, it's essentially a trail cam with solar power and a cellular modem attached. It has to be mounted very close to the road. The infrared illumination wavelength is 850nm, which is creating a lot of problems with several states using 3M's license plate printing process, as the reflectivity between the lettering and the background is almost identical under 850nm IR. There's almost no contrast.

Flock Safety has claimed they fixed the IR contrast issue in software. What I've heard is that their software updates have provided some marginal improvements, but the cameras still miss a lot of plates.
 
New Jersey has gone to the crappy 3M plates, too. I see lots of them on the road now. I may turn in my old plates for a set of the new ones, there are some advantages to them :rofl:
 
New Jersey has gone to the crappy 3M plates, too. I see lots of them on the road now. I may turn in my old plates for a set of the new ones, there are some advantages to them :rofl:
The 3M process is completely capable of producing plates that are visible under 850nm infrared light, but it requires making some intelligent design choices, which seem to be entirely missing with the people managing the process in most states.
 
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The story grabbed my attention since I just received my z12 the other day. In the story-- they said they were spending $25k on the cams, trying out 25 of them and KEEPING 10. I wonder if they told the voters there it was going to be a YEARLY expense... :wtf:
 
The story grabbed my attention since I just received my z12 the other day. In the story-- they said they were spending $25k on the cams, trying out 25 of them and KEEPING 10. I wonder if they told the voters there it was going to be a YEARLY expense... :wtf:
$25,000 per year is much less than the cost of a single additional officer. Properly located, they'll be far more effective than that extra officer, too. Plus Flock Safety handles all the maintenance and repair.

In the bigger picture, it's money well spent.