Sectron Ltd., a provider of turnkey security and communications systems in Bulgaria, hasinstalled 26 Arecont Vision AV3130 cameras to expand and enhance a system to catchtraffic violators in Sofia, the largest city in Bulgaria with a population of 1.4 million.
“The superior image clarity provided by Arecont Vision’s megapixel technology madetheir products the obvious choice for our circumstances,” stated Ilia Yashmakov ofSectron Ltd. “The clear benefit of megapixel technology is that it enables futureexpansion of our system – which will also include additional Arecont Vision cameras.”
Capturing a legible license number on a vehicle as it speeds past, the AV3130 3/1.3megapixel full motion progressive scan IP camera provides up to 15 frames per secondin color 3 MP mode and 30 frames per second in black-and-white 1.3 MP mode. It usesmassively-parallel MegaVideo® image processing architecture and is capable ofsustaining more than 6 billion operations per second for unsurpassed resolution,performance and value.
“The installation in Sofia is a great example of how the image clarity benefits of IPmegapixel technology can transform an existing application by making it even better,”said Steven Sarfati, Senior Vice President of Sales, at Arecont Vision.
ViDiCore KG, Arecont Vision's German manufacturer's representative firm, provided theArecont Vision megapixel cameras as an upgrade for the project. The Red LightViolations system in Sofia originally began two years ago, but initially did not usemegapixel cameras, which were introduced during an expansion phase. A specialANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) camera “reads” the license plate of a cardriving past and registers the number as a violation if the car passes while the trafficlight is red. A software system called Talon from Appian Technology employs a neuralnetwork recognition engine to determine the characters in the license number. TheArecont Vision camera provides irrefutable evidence of the infraction by capturingthree pictures and a short video showing a general view of how the violation occurred,with the objective of clearly showing the violator's license plate number to prove thatthe number read by the ANPR camera is correct.
“The Arecont Vision megapixel cameras used provide more than 10 times the resolutionof an analog camera, which greatly increases the likelihood that the license numberwill be clear in the video,” continued Mr. Yashmakov. “This has immensely boosted theeffectiveness of the system, and the cost is comparable to analog cameras.
Based on the success in Sofia, Bulgaria, future installations of Arecont Vision megapixelcamera technology are anticipated in Sofia and surrounding cities, although additionaldeployments are totally dependent upon the availability of funding,” concluded Mr.Yashmakov.
Anyone who speeds past a red light in Sofia, 
