Parking Lot Security Cameras
A lot asks cameras to do three different jobs, and one camera cannot do all three. Noticing that someone is present, describing them well enough to identify them later, and reading a plate at a moving vehicle require different lenses, different mounting positions and different light. Deciding which job each view is for, before any hardware is priced, is what separates a system that produces usable evidence from one that produces a gray rectangle.
Assign a job to every view
- Detection. Wide coverage that shows activity and timing across a whole row. Useful for reconstructing what happened, not for saying who.
- Identification. A tight view at a choke point where people must pass at a known distance, sized for enough pixels across a face to matter.
- Plate capture. A dedicated camera per lane, aimed and exposed for a plate rather than a scene.
The common failure is buying one high-resolution camera and expecting it to serve all three. Resolution spread across a hundred feet of asphalt is not detail; it is arithmetic working against you.
Light decides half the specification
Existing pole lighting usually determines camera placement more than the property line does. A camera fighting a pole light in frame will expose for the lamp and lose everything else. Infrared reach on a data sheet is measured against a reflective target, so treat published distances as optimistic outdoors. Entrances need wide dynamic range handling for headlights sweeping into the lens, and parking decks around Cumberland and Perimeter add their own problem: low concrete ceilings, no daylight, and bright ramp openings that blow out every frame near them.
Getting power and pathway to the pole
This line item surprises people more than the cameras do. Options, roughly in order of cost:
- Conduit in existing pathway. Cheapest when the lot lighting circuit already has spare capacity and accessible handholes.
- Trenching or directional boring. Georgia red clay bores reasonably well, but restoring asphalt or a concrete drive lane is often the larger half of the bill.
- Licensed-exempt point-to-point radios. A practical alternative across a lot where line of sight is clear, though it needs local power at the far end.
- Solar and cellular. Right for construction staging and remote yards with no service at all, sized against actual winter sun hours rather than a summer average.
Switch power budget deserves the same attention. Heaters, blowers and pan-tilt-zoom cameras draw well past standard Power over Ethernet, so plan for 802.3at or the higher 802.3bt classes and leave headroom, since a switch running at its limit drops cameras when infrared illuminators come on at dusk.
Enclosures for Georgia conditions
Humidity here condenses inside housings that were sealed on a dry day, so gasket integrity and desiccant matter as much as the ingress rating stamped on the box. Sunshields help sensors that would otherwise cook on a south-facing pole. Vandal-resistant domes belong anywhere a camera sits within reach, which in a deck is most of them. Near Savannah and the coast, salt air argues for marine-grade hardware and stainless fasteners. And spring pollen coats dome bubbles across the state, which is why we set a cleaning interval at handover rather than waiting for the picture to go soft.
Surge protection and a verified ground at every pole are not optional. A lot camera is often the longest run of copper on a property, which makes it the path a nearby strike prefers.
Plate reading is a lane, not a lot
Plate recognition works when a camera owns a single lane, at a known angle, with shutter and exposure set for a reflective plate on a moving car. It fails when asked to cover an entrance and a walkway at the same time. Decide what happens with the resulting data, and for how long it is kept, while the system is being designed.
To plan lot coverage, pathway and lighting for a Georgia property, call KSEDCO at (888) 360-0035.