CCTV Planning Tool · 08 of 10

ANPR Feasibility Checker

Will your camera actually read the number plate? Pixel width, vehicle approach angle, shutter speed, and night-time IR lighting all need to line up. Check all four in one pass — and get a specific fix if any of them fails.

The four things that decide whether ANPR works

ANPR isn't magic — it's OCR on a small rectangle of pixels. If any of these four factors falls below threshold, the engine starts failing reads. Most field failures aren't software problems; they're physics problems.

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Plate-pixel width
Number of pixels across the plate face. Below ~70 px, OCR is unreliable; below 100 px, multi-character mistakes are common. Telephoto + high-res buys range.
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Approach angle (yaw)
Plate width on the sensor drops with cos(yaw). 30° loses 13%, 45° loses 29%, 60° loses 50%. The camera must look down the vehicle's lane of travel.
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Motion blur (shutter)
At 50 km/h with a slow shutter, the plate smears 3–4 px in one exposure and OCR fails. Required shutter ≈ 1 / (speed × PPM at plate). Faster vehicles need 1/500 or faster.
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Lighting + IR
Plates are retro-reflective: with the right IR illuminator and a narrow-band filter, you can read plates at night with headlight glare blocked out. Without that — backlit silhouettes kill reads.

Pick the use case

Each tier has its own pixel and angle thresholds. Pick the one that matches your deployment — the calculator below will grade your setup against the right targets.

Or start from a real scenario

These presets cover the common Indian deployments. Click any to load camera + geometry + lighting, then tweak.

Check your setup

Camera spec

Most ANPR uses 6–25 mm. Highways often use 25–50 mm tele lenses.

Geometry

ANPR cameras work best 2.5–4 m. Lower than the plate is fine for top-down approach; too high causes plate squint.
Angle between the lane direction and the camera's line-of-sight.

Vehicle behaviour

Faster shutter = less blur but needs more light. 1/500 minimum for highway speeds.

Plate & lighting

Feasibility verdict

FEASIBLE
Setup will deliver reliable ANPR reads
All four factors clear the threshold for this use case.
95 / 100
Plate-pixel sampling
Side-view geometry

Findings & fixes

Optimisation limits at current settings

Refine your plan with IndoAi's companion tools

ANPR feasibility is one piece of the deployment. The other planning tools nail the rest — pixel density, lens choice, coverage, total camera count, storage, and bandwidth.

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PPM Calculator
Pixel density at any distance — the foundation behind plate-pixel math.
Check PPM →
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Lens Selector
Pick the right telephoto focal length to hit ANPR plate-pixel targets.
Pick lenses →
😊
Face Rec Feasibility
Same physics, different target — for cameras that also need to identify drivers.
Check face rec →
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Storage Calculator
ANPR 24/7 + event clips: how much storage you actually need.
Plan storage →

Get this report as a PDF

A branded report with the feasibility verdict, four sub-scores, computed PPM and plate-pixel width, side-view geometry, blur calculation, findings with specific fixes, and the optimisation limits (max distance, required focal, required shutter). Useful for customer quotes, installer briefs, or internal sales.