this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2026
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Please do not call these devices license plate readers. They are surveillance tools with capabilities that far exceed that of normal license plate reading devices. It’s like calling an RPG a spear.
They are free electronic components and modules that can be used for your own projects. Just make sure they are completely erased and serial numbers removed before reusing.
Can you give examples of what parts can be repurposed? I would have assumed they were mostly proprietary.
https://www.cehrp.org/dissection-of-flock-safety-camera/
This article may be out of date, but it is quite clear that Flock just ordered a bunch of parts off AliBaba, slapped them together in an injection moulded enclosure, added some vibe-coded software and pumped them out after greasing some palms.
Interesting. Do they transmit full video streams or just the aggregated data taken from plates? Doesn't seem like there's a lot of processing power in those components.
I think I need to park my car behind one of these with my cell phone/wifi jammers running.
If you're handy with a soldering iron and know how to read a JTAG port, every chip on the pcb could be lifted and repurposed. Afaik a lot of them use miniature solar panels as power sources, which is absolutely repurposeable if you're comfortable crimping cables. This piece too far from my area of expertise to do more than just speculate on, but I have to assume they have optical components that could be repurposed by somebody with the right skillset too
Yeah, the solar panels are definitely usable. Probably not a lot of output, but definitely usable.