Parking Decks and Lots That Nobody Walks at Night

Nobody walks the deck at night. A parking structure is a large estate with almost nobody in it: cameras on every level, one bar at the entrance, and a team that cannot be on all of it at once.

Book a Demo License Plate Recognition

The Capability

Counting, the Barrier, and Everything After That

Occupancy is a counting problem. You mark off the area a camera should watch and say how many bays are inside it, and a lot-full event is raised the moment the vehicles in that area go over the total. Sign boards, gate policy and staffing all key off that one event. The same counter detects congestion on a road segment, and that is the whole of its job: it sees vehicles and counts them.

Identity is a different module. Plate recognition reads the plate and reports the vehicle’s make, model, color and type alongside it, and the fuller object-class taxonomy (cars, minivans, buses, light through heavy trucks, tractor-trailers, motorcycles, machinery, trailers) is a separate module again. The counter itself classifies nothing, and it is worth being precise about that before a specification says otherwise.

Entry control puts the two together. The entrance camera reads the plate of every vehicle arriving, checks it against the list of vehicles the facility allows in, and passes the result to your access-control device. A permitted plate raises the bar; an unknown vehicle raises an operator alert instead of opening anything. Every one of those decisions is on the record afterwards.

Coverage

What a Parking Operation Monitors

Occupancy and Lot Full

Vehicles counted inside the area a camera watches, and a lot-full event the moment they outnumber the bays. Sign boards, gate policy and staffing all key off the same event.

See Jam and Lot-Full Detection

Plate-Controlled Entry

The plate read at the bar, checked against the vehicles the facility allows in. A match opens; anything unrecognized alerts an operator instead.

See License Plate Recognition

Vehicle Attributes

Plate plus make, model, color and type, so a vehicle involved in an incident can be found again even when nobody wrote the plate down.

See License Plate Recognition

Weapon Detection

A firearm shown at a pedestrian entrance, in a stairwell, an elevator lobby or at a pay station, raised at the top priority. It is the one detector here that wants a GPU on the server.

See Weapon & Gunshot Detection

Camera Integrity

A sprayed, knocked or defocused camera raises its own alert. On an unlit deck a blind camera can otherwise go unnoticed for weeks.

See Camera Tamper Detection

Entry Control

How the Bar Actually Rises

Barrier control is not a black box. Four things have to be true at the entrance, and they are worth understanding before anyone signs for it.

  1. 01

    The Entrance Camera Can Read a Plate

    A camera aimed along the lane, with enough resolution on the plate where a vehicle actually stops. The wide camera that watches the deck is the wrong one for this job, and that is an optics and placement question rather than a software one. A site survey settles it.

    License Plate Recognition
  2. 02

    The Arrival Is Treated as a Request

    A vehicle pulling up to the bar is what triggers the check, so the plate is read on approach rather than after somebody presses a button. The camera has to see the whole vehicle, not a plate clipped by the edge of the frame.

  3. 03

    You Decide Who Is on the List

    Tenants, staff, contractors, deliveries: whoever the facility allows in goes on a vehicle list you maintain, and access to that list is granted by role like every other list on the platform.

  4. 04

    The Result Drives Your Barrier

    A permitted plate tells your access-control device to raise the bar. Anything unrecognized raises an operator alert and the bar stays down, which is the behavior you want at four in the morning.

Facts

What CarCount Does
Two things: congestion on a road segment, and a lot over capacity. Make, model, color and type come from CarTrack Pro; the object-class taxonomy comes from ObjectTrack Pro.
Fixed Cameras
CarCount runs on fixed cameras only. PTZ, mobile phone uploads and drone footage are not supported for it, which suits a garage anyway.
Existing Hardware
Any camera that supports ONVIF or streams RTSP with H.264 or H.265 on a static IP can be connected. Placement decides whether a plate is readable, which is what a site survey settles.

FAQ

Will the occupancy count tell us what kind of vehicles are in the lot?

No, and it is worth being exact about it. The counter behind occupancy, CarCount, sees vehicles as one class and counts them inside the area you mark off, which is precisely what a lot-full threshold and congestion detection need. Make, model, color and type come from CarTrack Pro alongside the plate, and the wider object-class taxonomy comes from ObjectTrack Pro. Classified counting is not a documented CarCount output, and we do not claim it.

Can the platform raise the barrier on its own?

It can drive the device that raises it. A plate read at the entrance is checked against your permitted-vehicle list and the result is sent to your access-control device, so the bar rises on a match and an unrecognized vehicle raises an operator alert instead. Sigur is documented as an access-control integration and Netping as an external device; beyond those, any system reachable over HTTP can be driven from an alarm.

Will it read plates in a dark garage?

That is a placement and optics question rather than a software one, and it is the first thing a site survey settles. Plate reading needs a camera aimed along the lane with enough resolution on the plate where the vehicle actually stops; the wide camera that watches the deck is the wrong one for the job. We publish no accuracy figure: it is benchmarked on your own cameras during the pilot and the measured numbers go into the contract.

Is plate recognition in a private facility lawful?

It depends on your jurisdiction and on the basis for your permitted-vehicle or flagged-vehicle list, and that is a question to settle with counsel before deployment. The platform supports it the same way it supports every privacy-sensitive action: the operator records the lawful grounds before the action runs, and the record is append-only and auditable. IREX also runs background checks on prospective clients and declines business it judges high-risk on data collection and security.

Who owns the data?

You do. Customers retain 100% ownership and control of their data, and IREX neither owns nor accesses customer video, events, logs, watchlists, or floor plans. On-premises deployment is the data-residency mechanism.

How do we start?

With a pilot: one site, three to five use cases, six to twelve weeks, and two or three measurable success criteria agreed in writing before it begins. Accuracy is benchmarked on your own cameras, and the measured numbers go into the contract.

Start at the Entrance

One entrance, one deck, and a week of your own traffic tells you more about parking analytics than any specification sheet.

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