Of course Lorex has been unhelpful LOL. And of course plates cannot be read with those cameras LOL as they are probably 2.8 or 3.6mm focal lengths or maybe varifocal up to 12mm or so and you need much more OPTICAL zoom. Digital zooming after the fact only works in the movies and on TV.
You can get a camera such as the
5241-Z12E that you can setup to manually read plates, but you could not get an ANPR camera that automatically reads plates and logs them. That NVR wouldn't be able compatible with an ANPR camera.
See the LPR section
Licence Plate Reader cameras
ipcamtalk.com
Regarding a camera for plates (
LPR) - keep in mind that this is a
camera dedicated to plates and not an overview camera also. It is as much an art as it is a science.
You will need two cameras. For LPR we need to OPTICALLY zoom in tight to make the plate as large as possible. For most of us, all you see is the not much more than a vehicle in the entire frame. Now maybe in the right location during the day it might be able to see some other things, but not at night.
At night, we have to run a very fast shutter speed (1/2,000) and in B/W with IR and the image will be black. All you will see are head/tail lights and the plate. Some people can get away with color if they have enough street lights, but most of us cannot. Here is a representative sample of plates I get at night of vehicles traveling about 45MPH at 175 feet from my 2MP 5241-Z12E camera (that is all that is needed for plates):
My neighbor has the Lorex system and this camera is compatible with Lorex NVR (they are both made by Dahua).
