Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America. The city of Buenos Aires is an autonomous district, and the separate province of Buenos Aires is the largest and most populous province in Argentina.
The local governments in Argentina needed a portable mobile solution to monitor and document speed limit violations. In a unique integrated solution, Arecont Vision 5-megapixel cameras are used in conjunction with a radar speed gun. The camera’s small size and excellent performance provided the perfect imaging solution for this specialised law enforcement application.
The system consists of a radar speed gun, a central processing unit (CPU) module, an Arecont Vision AV5115 5-megapixel camera and a laptop computer for programming and monitoring. The CPU controls and administers all functions of the system. The Arecont Vision camera connects to the CPU through an Ethernet connection, and the radar pistol communicates with the CPU via an RS-232 port. When measuring a vehicle’s speed, the CPU analyses whether the speed is in excess of the speed limit. If it is, the Arecont Vision camera takes a high-resolution digital image of the vehicle for license plate identification and fine processing. The information is then correlated to Argentina’s vehicle registration database and the speed, operator’s name, speed limit and location are superimposed on the picture and saved in memory on an SD card housed in the unit. A single SD card can store more than 1,000 files. Local monitoring is performed using a laptop computer, which is connected using a Wi-Fi network. The system also communicates via Wi-Fi to a desktop computer for remote monitoring.
The AV5115 camera is part of Arecont Vision’s MegaVideo® Compact series of IP cameras. It features H.264/MJPEG dual encoding and up to 32-times the resolution of a VGA camera. Forty of the radar/video speed gun units were built, and the first units have been working uninterrupted since 2009.
The handheld radar speed gun system was designed and installed by Dyna Group, Buenos Aires, a customer-oriented company providing high-quality technical and environmental engineering services to its clients. Dyna Group specified the Arecont Vision camera for the radar speed gun application in Buenos Aires.
The high resolution of the Arecont Vision camera provides clear images for identification and the ability to read license plates. Megapixel-quality images include greater detail at an affordable price. Value drives the market, and less-expensive systems with higher resolution and better system performance provide the best value. During the design phase, several solutions were tried, but the Arecont Vision camera was chosen as the preferred solution because of performance, small size and easy operation. The system has been well received because of the high-resolution of the images and the small size of the complete device.
Better images ensure more revenue from speeding fines, which yields return on investment (ROI) for the new system. The radar/video guns have more than paid for themselves based on increased safety and collection of speeding fines. In one block in Buenos Aires, for example, 98 vehicles in one hour were each fined up to $480 for speeding violations. In another example, there were approximately 200 tickets issued in a single four-hour shift. Residents can request police to provide speed controls in their neighbourhoods based on concerns about the safety of pedestrians.
