Vehicle & Plate Detection from the Cameras You Already Have

One platform for traffic detection and license plate reading. Count vehicles, catch wrong-way drivers, flag emergency vehicles, spot parked vehicles, and read plates — using your existing surveillance cameras.

Works with WINK Media Router to add detection and plate reading to cameras you already have.

California license plate reading 8WINK22

What You Get

  • Vehicle Counting & Classification
  • Wrong-Way Driver Detection
  • Emergency Vehicle Alerts
  • Parked & Stopped Vehicle Detection
  • License Plate Recognition
  • Multi-Camera Vehicle Tracking
  • Hot List & Watch List Alerts
  • Journey Time & Route Analysis

Many Cameras, One System

A vehicle that passes one camera and then another tells you a lot more than either camera tells you alone. We tie the observations together.

Connect dozens or hundreds of cameras — intersections, highway corridors, toll plazas — into one place. Each camera can run a different detection profile: highway cameras watch speed and classification, intersection cameras watch pedestrians, toll cameras read plates.

When a vehicle leaves one camera's view and shows up on the next, the system stitches the two observations together. No special hardware, no manual calibration.

Run the heavy lifting at the edge for cameras that need instant alerts. Run it in the cloud for everything else. Mix both in the same deployment — you don't have to commit to one model.

Coverage compounds. The more cameras you point at the problem, the more useful the picture gets.

Where Did That Car Come From, and Where Did It Go?

Once we've read a plate at one camera and read it again at another, we know the route, the time it took, and the volume on that path. Multiply that across thousands of vehicles and you can answer real questions: which corridors are slowing down, where demand is shifting, which routes drivers actually pick. No GPS feeds, no probe data, no surveys — just the cameras you already operate.

The corridor travel times that come out of this can feed straight into 511 systems and dynamic message signs.

The Plate Is the Signature

No magic. We read the plate, attach an identifier to the vehicle, and track that identifier across every camera that sees it. Routes, dwell times, repeat visits, hot-list matches — they all come from that one observation, done well, at scale.

Built for Real-World Cameras, Not Lab Conditions

Most LPR products only work on dedicated, perfectly-mounted ALPR cameras — tight angle, controlled lighting, narrow field of view. Ours doesn't make that demand. Plug in the city cameras you already operate — pole-mounted, off-axis, glare-prone, IR at night, wide-area pan-and-tilt — and we'll catch what we can.

A Model Tuned to Your Cameras

This is why we get usable LPR out of cameras other vendors give up on: we train a model specifically for your camera makes and models, your optics, your lighting conditions, your mounting angles. We learn the way your install distorts plates and account for it. You'll have higher success on imperfect cameras than off-the-shelf ALPR products can deliver, because no one else is tuning to your exact equipment.

Turn Your Existing Network Into an LPR Mesh

That's the part that didn't used to be possible. Until now, building a region-wide LPR mesh meant installing dedicated ALPR cameras at every collection point — an expense most agencies could never justify. By making LPR work on the cameras you already have, every existing camera becomes a node in the mesh. Suddenly your whole city is the collection grid.

A Library of Pretrained Plate Models

Different regions have different plate formats. We maintain a large library of pretrained models covering plate formats from across the Americas, Europe, and Asia — and when your region or use case needs something different, we can quickly train a model with you using your own footage.

It Gets Better Over Time

This isn't a one-and-done install. We retrain the models against anonymized data from your deployment, so recognition on your specific cameras gets sharper as we go. You're not locked into the accuracy you bought on day one.

Hot Lists and Search

Load watch lists for stolen vehicles, AMBER alerts, or agency BOLOs and you get an alert the moment that plate shows up anywhere on the network. Search any plate at any time across the full history.

Defensible Data

Every detection, every alert, every operator action is logged. Source frames are preserved with each event so you can export a complete evidence package later. Operators can't delete or alter logs, and configurable retention rules handle the rest.

If your agency needs to answer "what did the system see, who looked at it, and when?" — the answer is in the audit trail.

Plays Nicely With What You Already Use

Detections show up in your ATMS, CAD, video wall, or message signs — not in a separate window your operators have to remember to check.

Push events through webhooks, REST API, email, or SMS. When a wrong-way driver triggers an alert, the right person gets paged on the right channel within seconds. Set up escalation chains so an unacknowledged alert moves up the ladder automatically.

If you run WINK Media Router, every camera already in the system can be turned on for analytics with one toggle. WINK Wall automatically pops up the relevant camera with the detection overlay so the operator doesn't have to hunt for it.

What It Watches For

A short list of the things people most often ask about. There's more — ask us.

Vehicle Counting & Classification

Count and classify all 13 FHWA vehicle types per lane and direction. Hourly, daily, and weekly volume reports for traffic studies and capacity planning.

Wrong-Way Driver Detection

Instant alerts when a vehicle is detected traveling against traffic. Critical for highway entrance ramps, divided arterials, and one-way street networks.

Emergency Vehicle Detection

Automatic identification of fire, EMS, and police vehicles. Route preemption signals to traffic management systems and clear the path automatically.

Parked & Stopped Vehicle Detection

Identify vehicles parked illegally, stopped on shoulders, or abandoned in travel lanes. Configurable dwell-time thresholds reduce false positives.

License Plate Recognition

Real-time plate capture from existing cameras with hot list alerts, plate search, and full chain-of-custody logging for evidentiary use.

Speed & Flow Analysis

Average speed estimation, queue length measurement, and traffic density tracking. Detect congestion as it forms, not after it's reported.

Pedestrian & Cyclist Detection

Identify vulnerable road users at intersections and on highways. Trigger warnings, signal extensions, or alerts when pedestrians enter unsafe zones.

Weather & Visibility

Detect rain, snow, fog, and reduced visibility conditions. Integrate with dynamic message signs and variable speed limit systems.

Multi-Camera Tracking

Follow vehicles across your entire camera network. Reconstruct travel paths, measure corridor times, and answer movement questions.

Who's Using This

State and Municipal DOTs

Centralized traffic intelligence across thousands of cameras. Real-time corridor monitoring, automated incident detection, and travel time data feeding 511 systems and dynamic message signs.

Law Enforcement

Plate recognition with hot list alerts for stolen vehicles, AMBER alerts, and BOLOs. Vehicle search across the camera network with full audit trails for investigations.

Toll Authorities

Plate-based tolling support, queue management, and vehicle classification for dynamic pricing. Reduce wait times and increase throughput at toll plazas.

Emergency Management

Real-time situational awareness during incidents. Automatic incident detection, evacuation route monitoring, and multi-agency coordination through video wall integration.

Curious to See It Run on Your Cameras?

A short demo with your team is the fastest way to find out if it fits.

Sales: sales@wink.co