AI Bullet Low Light
Low-cost colour at night for well-lit urban streets. The 5 MP sensor gives the AI digital-zoom headroom across the frame — one fixed camera covers a multi-lane scene without optical-zoom hardware. No IR: where ANPR needs IR illumination, choose an IR-equipped camera from the range; the CA-1000's 120 dB WDR and AI filtering still handle general plate work in lit environments.
Built for AI under street lighting.
Standard CCTV cameras drop to monochrome infrared at night. That's adequate for human reviewers, but for AI classification — vehicle make, type, colour, plate, person attributes — the camera needs to deliver colour at 3 a.m. just as it does at 3 p.m. Colour is the data the AI is trained on.
The CA-1000 is designed around that requirement. A 1/1.8″ back-illuminated sensor, F1.0 aperture and a soft white-light supplement deliver clean colour imagery at 0.001 lux — which is what a typical UK street looks like at 2 a.m. with the streetlights on. Same colour space, same level of detail, same classification accuracy throughout the 24-hour cycle.
A camera built around one job.
Feed SenseView and external AI a clean 5 MP colour stream of a multi-lane scene under street lighting. PoE or 12 V DC, single Cat5e tail, ONVIF Profile S / T / G to any modern VMS. No infrared, no IR-mode handover.
- Sensor
- 5 MP
- Lens
- 2.8 mm F1.0
- Min lux
- 0.001
- View angle
- 96°
- Weight
- 430 g
What the hardware does.
Colour at 0.001 lux under street lighting
0.001 lux is roughly the brightness of a UK residential street at 2 a.m. with the sodium or LED streetlights on. The CA-1000's F1.0 aperture, 1/1.8″ back-illuminated sensor and intelligent ISP produce clean colour at that level without dropping to infrared. A soft white-light supplement engages when ambient drops further.
The shot to the right is a real capture from the CA-1000 family taken at 2:30 a.m. under standard street lighting.
Coverage and lane visibility
The 96° horizontal field of view is the primary product-selection criterion for fixed-position deployments. At a typical 6 m lamp-column mounting height, the CA-1000 covers a four-lane carriageway. The 5 MP sensor lets the AI digital-zoom into individual lanes from the same frame — no optical-zoom hardware required.
Multi-stream output
The camera publishes simultaneous video streams over a single Cat5e tail. The main stream — 5 MP at 25 fps PAL — feeds the recorder for evidential archive. The sub-stream — 1080p at 25 fps — feeds SenseView or an external Nvidia AI box for inference. Recording quality and AI inference quality are decoupled; both run at full rate, neither compromises the other.
Three ways to deploy this camera.
The CA-1000 plays one of three roles in a NOW Wireless installation. Most deployments combine A with C; the camera is fully equipped for both.
Capture & stream
Camera publishes live video. Local storage on the camera SD card, central NVR, roadside cabinet, or cloud. No AI processing — just video capture and stream.
Smart events → SenseView
Camera generates on-board smart events (line cross, intrusion, classification) which SenseView consumes directly. Lower bandwidth than full video streaming.
Video → AI box → SenseView
Full video stream to an Nvidia-based AI box in the roadside cabinet, control room, or cloud. The AI box runs the inference and feeds SenseView. Full feature set available.
What the AI platform adds.
The camera delivers clean colour video. SenseView turns that video stream into classified, queryable, evidential data — running at the edge on a NOW Wireless AI box, or centrally on the SenseView server. The CA-1000 is built to feed these workflows.
Traffic
- Counting and classification — vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians on roads, cycleways and pavements
- ANPR with DVLA cross-reference — type, licence, MOT, emissions, fuel, weight, year, engine
- Journey times and tracking — Bluetooth + ANPR, journey-time, start/end, Anywhere-to-Anywhere
- Turn analysis, desire lines, junction analysis
- Virtual loops — overhead detectors replacing in-road inductive loops without roadworks
- Queue detection with UTC/UTMC alert outputs
- Pedestrian-crossing automation — predictive activation
- Cross-city tracking — passive Bluetooth Digital Signatures + ANPR
Security
- Centralised CCTV management — multi-camera split-screen, PTZ control
- Multi-tier storage — on-camera SD, control-room NVR, cloud
- Facial recognition — face capture, identification, automated action
- Anti-social-behaviour and intrusion alerts
- Line crossing, region entry / exit, loitering, object-left / object-removed
Parking
- Free-space mapping — indoor and outdoor lots
- Indoor parking management — AI + camera, ANPR registration with time and plate
- On-street parking — illegal parking, paid-stay overstays, ANPR-driven enforcement
- Integration — forwards data to existing parking management systems
Cross-cutting capabilities
Real-time API and CSV export · DVLA cross-reference · GDPR-compliant data hashing · IoT integration via LoRa, Wi-Fi, Mesh or Ethernet · Air quality (NO₂, particles) and weather data sources · Google Journey Time integration (subscription required)
Typical applications.
Where the CA-1000 fits, mapped to the three buyer groups.
Traffic
- Junction overview — multi-lane approach coverage at lit signalled junctions
- Counting and classification of vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians on lit high streets
- Virtual loops and stop-line detection where street lighting is present
- General ANPR — rear-plate reads and daytime plate work in lit environments
Security
- Town-centre CCTV — colour identification under street lighting, including 2 a.m.
- Public-realm monitoring — high streets, squares, transit forecourts
- Council CCTV operator coverage — operators see in colour after dark
- Residential and estate monitoring — vehicle and occupant identification on lit roads
Parking
- Car-park entrance and exit monitoring — vehicle and driver ID in colour
- On-street parking — illegal parking and paid-stay overstays on lit streets
- Free-space mapping — outdoor lots and on-street bays under street lighting
- ANPR-driven access in well-lit car-park entrances
Full technical specification.
The complete specification — sensor, optics, video pipeline, network, storage, power, environmental and mechanical. Use this in place of a separate datasheet.
Imaging
- Image sensor
- 1/1.8″ progressive-scan back-illuminated CMOS
- Resolution
- 5 MP / 3K (2880 × 1620)
- Frame rate
- 25 fps PAL (main); 25 fps (sub)
- Min. illumination
- 0.001 lux @ F1.0 colour; 0 lux with white-light supplement
- Shutter time
- 1/3 s to 1/100 000 s
- Day / night
- ICR (mechanical) — no IR mode change
- WDR
- 120 dB true WDR
- 3D DNR
- Yes
- BLC / HLC / Defog
- Yes
- White balance
- Auto / Manual / Indoor / Outdoor
- Image rotation
- 0° / 90° / 180° / 270°
- Illumination
- Soft white-light supplement (no infrared)
Lens
- Focal length
- 2.8 mm fixed
- Aperture
- F1.0
- Sensor format
- 1/1.8″
- Horizontal FoV
- 96°
- Vertical FoV
- ≈ 53°
- Diagonal FoV
- ≈ 108°
- IR cut filter
- Mechanical ICR
- Lens mount
- Integrated
Coverage at mount heights
- 4 m mount
- ≈ 9 m wide · 3 urban lanes
- 6 m mount
- ≈ 13 m wide · 4-lane carriageway
- 8 m mount
- ≈ 18 m wide · 5 motorway lanes
- Coverage assumption
- Level ground plane, horizontal mount, 96° H-FoV
Video
- Compression
- H.265+ / H.265 / H.264+ / H.264 / MJPEG
- Smart codec
- Yes
- Bitrate
- 32 Kbps to 16 Mbps, CBR / VBR
- Streams
- Multi-stream — main 5 MP @ 25 fps, sub 1080p @ 25 fps, tertiary 720p
- ROI
- Configurable zones, per-stream
- Privacy masking
- Up to 8 zones
Audio
- Microphone
- Built-in, omnidirectional
- Audio compression
- G.711 / G.722
- Audio bitrate
- 64 Kbps
- External audio I/O
- Not fitted on this model
AI & events (on-camera)
- On-camera VCA
- Not currently supported — may happen later
- AI inference
- Performed by SenseView or external Nvidia AI box (deployment mode B or C)
- Event streaming
- Standard ONVIF event channels
Network
- Interface
- 1 × RJ45 10/100 Mbps
- Protocols
- TCP/IP · ICMP · HTTP · HTTPS · FTP · DHCP · DNS · DDNS · RTP · RTSP · RTCP · NTP · SMTP · IGMP · 802.1X · QoS · IPv4 · IPv6
- ONVIF
- Profile S, T, G
- API
- RTSP streaming · ONVIF · REST
- Authentication
- Digest · basic
- Encryption
- HTTPS · SSL/TLS · AES
Storage
- On-camera
- microSD slot, up to 256 GB
- External
- NAS via NFS / SMB
- NVR
- Standard NVR over ONVIF
- SenseView
- Control-room or cloud storage tier
Power
- PoE
- 802.3af Class 0 (max 12.95 W)
- DC input
- 12 V DC ± 10%
- Typical consumption
- ≈ 6 W (without supplement); ≈ 8 W (supplement on)
- NW inline adapter
- Optional 24 V Passive PoE → 12 V DC for long cable runs
Environmental
- Operating temperature
- −30 °C to +60 °C
- Storage temperature
- −40 °C to +70 °C
- Operating humidity
- 0 – 95 % (non-condensing)
- Weather rating
- IP67
- Impact rating
- Not certified (aluminium housing — see range page for IK-rated options)
Mechanical
- Dimensions
- 161.1 × 65.2 × 68.4 mm
- Weight
- 430 g
- Housing
- Aluminium alloy with sun-shield
- Colour
- White
- Mounting
- Pendant · wall · ceiling — standard 3-bolt mount
- Cable
- Single integrated tail — Cat5e + DC
Compliance & certifications
- CE
- EMC · LVD · RoHS
- FCC
- Class A
- IEC
- 62676 (CCTV systems)
- Procurement
- NDAA compliance — see V20 spec sheet
Ready to specify the CA-1000?
Talk to our technical team about coverage planning, SenseView integration and mixed-camera deployment design.