If your community has a license-plate camera at the gate, the plates on your unit's Vehicles list are how the camera recognises your car. Here is what it does with them — and what it does not.
When your car arrives
- The camera reads the plate and the system first checks it against security's watch lists. Those checks always come before anything else.
- It then looks for a match on the plate number among the registered vehicles of active residents. The match is by number only and ignores letter case; plates are stored in capitals when you add them. If the matched plate is on that unit's Do Not Allow list, the gate does not open automatically: the guard is alerted and a denied-entry incident is recorded.
- If the gate has automatic opening for resident vehicles turned on, the gate opens for you — after any short delay your community has configured. If not, the read is simply logged as your vehicle and you enter the way you normally do.
The “Vehicle entry” notification
Some communities send a notification each time a registered plate enters: “Vehicle with plate ABC1234 has entered”. You get it only if your community has turned this on and your own vehicle entry preference is on (it is on by default). It is most useful for spotting a car being driven when you are not in it. Turn it off in your notification preferences if you would rather not have it.
What is not logged
Resident plates are not tracked on the way out: outbound cameras only close visitor visits, so there is no exit record or departure notice for your own car.
When you remove a vehicle
Removing a vehicle from your list does more than stop future matches. Past camera reads of that plate are re-labelled from resident to unknown — the plate history stays, but the record of whose car it was is gone. If you are handing a car to someone else, remove it as soon as the keys change hands.
Good to know
- Your car is matched by plate number alone — there is no state field on a registered vehicle. Visitor passes do carry a state, because two visitors' plates can collide.
- Only vehicles on your list are recognised as yours; a rental or a friend's car is an unknown plate until you add it.
- On the web, the Vehicles page lets you add, Edit, and remove vehicles and shows an Active badge on each.
Related
See “Add a vehicle / license plate to your unit” to register a car, and “Why didn't my license plate open the gate?” when a read does not match.