Appian Technology PLC

The Sidewinder Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) Camera has been designed to read non – retro reflective number plates at night. Non – retro reflective license plates present a particular challenge to license plate recognition systems as they cannot be illuminated by traditional low power pulsed illuminators.

The Sidewinder overcomes this problem and is designed to be used with high powered flood IR sources. The Sidewinder has an integrated band pass interference filter to match the wavelength of the illuminator and exclude extraneous illumination effects such as vehicle headlights, street lighting, and produce crisp clear images for ANPR engines to process.

The Sidewinder can be used as a standalone ANPR system or fixed between COBRA or STINGER ANPR cameras and their mounts comprising one fully operational ANPR solution. The combined unit provides unmatched capabilities to read all types of mixed retro and non retro reflective number plates. This is a particular problem in the UAE and other countries where mixed plate formats are used. In this scenario, the Sidewinder camera captures monochrome images for the recognition engine to process while the donor Cobra camera provides matching colour overview or contextual images from its colour module. At the same time the Cobra uses its integral pulsed IR source and monochrome camera to process the retrorefective plates.

The Sidewinder camera is sealed within 6 mm aluminium milled case and is totally waterproof. The casing is manufactured from T06601 aerospace grade aluminium for an extremely tough and durable finish. 

The camera has an 18x optical zoom capability which means the same camera can be used for different bore sight distances - without the requirment for costly relensing. All camera settings can be interrogated, controlled and changed from a computer through a simple Graphics user interface (GUI), allowing easy set up, maintenance and fault find.

KEY FEATURES:

Suitable for non retro-reflective ANPR recognition

Flexible integration with other ANPR cameras

High reliability

Waterproof camera

18 x zoom capability

10 metres capture distance