Smart Parking-Connectivity for CCTV Cameras, License Plate Recognition, Meters and Sensors
A Robustel Application Example
Application Example – Fast Facts
Industry
Transportation, Smart Cities, Parking & Curbside Management
Product(s)
R2120 (PoE PSE router for cameras), EG5120 (edge gateway for ANPR), R2010 (router for meters, gates, sensors)
Challenges
City and campus operators need a dependable way to connect and power curbside cameras, meters, and occupancy sensors across poles, lots, and garages. They must move evidence, payments, and telemetry to back-office systems securely, despite weather, vandalism, and uneven coverage.
Expected Outcomes
A stable network footprint that keeps imagery and transaction data flowing, with clear separation between public infrastructure and operations. Faster issue resolution, fewer site visits, and the analytics needed to improve turnover, enforcement, and customer experience.
Smart Parking — From curb to back office, make parking observable and predictable
Modern parking blends many moving parts: license-plate cameras, pay-by-plate meters, bay sensors, boom gates, and guidance signs. Each device tends to arrive with its own cabling, power, and cloud expectations. If the curb is noisy and the network is fragile, evidence goes missing, payments stall, and support teams spend their time firefighting instead of improving availability and turnover.
This deployment treats connectivity as a small, consistent building block. Cameras are powered and backhauled at the pole, meters and gates have their own secure path, and a compact edge gateway sits where it can add the most value—normalizing ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) results and reducing bandwidth before anything leaves the site. Operations see the whole estate in one place, and IT has the controls to keep it safe.
Business Challenges
Parking leaders told us the blockers weren’t exotic, but they were persistent. The goal was to remove day-to-day friction and give operations evidence they could rely on.
- Power and backhaul for cameras: Poles need clean Power over Ethernet (PoE) and a stable uplink so footage and ANPR hits are never stranded.
- Mixed assets, mixed vendors: Meters, sensors, and gates all have different interfaces and service models; the network must accommodate them without custom wiring every time.
- Revenue and dispute evidence: Missed uploads or gaps in plate reads lead to lost revenue and weak evidence in challenges.
- Security and privacy: Payment data and plate images must travel over controlled paths, with clear separation from public access and maintenance Wi-Fi.
- Support at scale: Rolling a truck for a configuration change is not sustainable. Staff need remote visibility, alerts, and a standard way to push fixes.
Solution Overview
We mapped devices to the right network role, then standardized power, paths, and control. The result is a repeatable kit for streets, surface lots, and garages.
- Cameras at the pole (R2120): The R2120 provides Power over Ethernet (PoE) with Power Sourcing Equipment (PSE) to run IP cameras and backhaul video and ANPR hits over cellular or Ethernet. VLANs and firewall rules keep camera traffic isolated.
- ANPR and local preprocessing (EG5120): The EG5120 runs RobustOS Pro (Debian-based) to host partner ANPR inference or pre-processing apps in containers. It filters and timestamps results, reduces bandwidth, and forwards compact JSON to the parking platform.
- Meters, gates, and sensors (R2010): The R2010 gives kiosks, boom gates, loop detectors, and occupancy sensors a secure uplink. It supports clean separation from camera networks and can present management access over VPN for accredited technicians.
- Operate from one console (RCMS): Templates roll out SSIDs, VLANs, and ACLs by zone; alerts highlight offline assets, low signal, or unusual data usage; Zero-Touch provisioning gets new sites online quickly.
- Secure remote work (RobustVPN): Least-privilege access for integrators and vendors when they need to diagnose a device—time-boxed and auditable.
Expected Customer Outcomes
What success looks like for the key stakeholders (Parking Operations Manager, City IT & Security, Enforcement and Compliance) and the secondary stakeholders (Systems Integrators, Field Installers, Managed Service Providers).
- Parking Operations Manager: Higher bay turnover with reliable occupancy and plate data; fewer “no read/no pay” disputes; clear reports to justify policy and pricing.
- City IT & Security: Segmented camera and meter networks; encrypted paths to the platform; change logs and role-based access aligned with policy.
- Enforcement and Compliance: Consistent ANPR evidence with time and location; quicker resolution of disputes; better audit trails during appeals.
- Systems Integrators: A repeatable build: mount, power, enroll, verify; remote updates for firmware and configuration without after-hours site work.
- Field Installers/MSPs: Less rework at the pole or kiosk; standard PoE for cameras; known test steps to hand over a site with confidence.
Featured Products
Robustel R2120 PoE PSE Router
Robustel EG5120 Edge Gateway
Robustel R2010 Router
RCMS Cloud Device Management
Talk to an Expert
Planning a pilot or scaling a district? Let’s align hardware, edge processing, and operations so your parking network stays available—and your evidence and revenue stay intact.