dwellingLIVE utilizes LPR in a community setting to assist gate house personnel in identifying repeat visitors. Specialized cameras use infrared lighting to allow pictures to be taken at any time of the day or night. Here’s an example of a picture taken in bright sunlight. Notice how the reflective nature of the plate background causes the numbers and letters to stand out. Specialized software translates the small plate image (often referred to as a ‘plate patch’) into computer-readable characters.

Some states such as California and Arizona allow for special characters to be included in a license plate. These include hands, hearts and stars. the software can be taught to recognize these shapes or ignore them completely.

dwellingLIVE’s LPR system can even be utilized at unmanned gates. After the license plate is read, the system will look up the plate number in a ‘white list’ – a list of all license plates that are allowed access into and out of the community. When a match is made to the white list, an electronic relay is activated to automatically open the gate or barrier arm.

dwellingLIVE improving the quality of living – one community at a time!

About Avondale Golf Club Association
Avondale Golf Club is a gated enclave of 305 residences – one the first private golf clubs in Palm Desert, California. Its members come from all over the United States and Canada, to be at the hub of desert living – in close proximity of the deserts’ best shopping, restaurants and attractions.

Business need
Looking for a solution that would tie together Visitor Management, Access Control, and a Community Website, Avondale turned to dwellingLIVE’s suite of services. Being part of a private golf club, Avondale also required the ability to manage non-residents (mostly golf club members) alongside residents.

Solution
dwellingLIVE took on the challenge by adding a Members feature that allowed Avondale management and security staff to manage the guests, transponders, and vehicles for club members similar to how resident information is managed. Management can also set up different features and access levels for club members so that they have a limited view of the community website.

Benefits
Through the dwellingLIVE solution, HOA and security staff are able to manage the multitude of service vendors, golf club members and their guests, who pass through its gates every day. Gate Attendants can pay more attention to the job of customer service than to shuffling paperwork, making telephone calls and collecting information from visitors as they enter the community. A high level of service is provided to and for residents and non-residents alike.

Not only can homeowners view a history of access card use, with a few simple mouse clicks homeowners are also able to turn on access notifications that will alert them each time an access card or transponder is used. Users are able to specify which emails and phone numbers should receive the notifications and for what time period of use.

As an example, parents can give an access card to their child and set it to notify them via email and SMS text message whenever the card is used after 10:00 pm. If that card ends up being used at 11:00 pm at the pool, for instance, both parents would receive emails and SMS text messages alerting them to the time, date, and location the card was used.

If your community is not currently using dwellingLIVE’s Access Control solution with the powerful Virtual Chaperon feature, maybe it’s time you ask your association why.

Okay, so one judge’s decision may not comfort some people out there who still think IP addresses are some kind of sacred piece of information that shouldn’t be stored or tracked. As such, perhaps it’d be best to explain what an IP address really is, since it’s often misrepresented. Some like to claim that an IP address is a computer’s social security number – which isn’t exactly accurate. You see, an IP address really only identifies a network. For instance, at the dwellingLIVE corporate office, we have a single IP address that is shared by dozens of computers via a router. Furthermore, many networks may get different IP addresses each time they turn on their computer depending on their internet service provider (ISP). Combine those facts with the reality that an IP address isn’t connected to your name, address, phone, email, or any other personally identifiable information and hopefully you’ll start to see that storing IP addresses shouldn’t be scary.

So why exactly do many websites store and track their visitors’ IP addresses? Well, probably the primary reason is for reporting and visitor stats. By connecting an IP address with basic Web traffic stats, website operators can view various trends in traffic (such as what browsers people use, screen resolutions, popular pages, etc.). It may seem trivial to have that information, but it allows Web developers to determine how best to present their site to their visitors as well as how to go about testing new features and services.

Another big reason websites keep track of IP addresses, is to use them to help battle against potentially malicious website visitors. An example is that if a “bot” tries to bring down a Web server by visiting it thousands of times a minute, site operators and react by blocking that bot’s IP address so that it won’t be able to access the site any longer. Another example is that if a person misuses the site in some way (such as uploading files or posting content that violate the site’s terms of use, or access anther user’s account that they shouldn’t have) then the site operator can block the IP address as well as submit it to local authorities if required.

Hopefully that clears things up a bit and sheds some light onto the reasoning behind tracking IP addresses. Also, if you’d like dwellingLIVE’s IP address, you’re more than happy to look it up for yourself any time. Just head over to a tool like http://www.lookupserver.com/, and enter in “dwellinglive.com” (without quotes) and you’ll get the current IP address of our server.