A leading nationwide automotive service chain in Japan sought to improve customer trust by making vehicle maintenance more transparent. The company wanted every maintenance bay to be equipped with an IP camera capable of recording the entire service process—from vehicle arrival to departure—and allowing customers to remotely view their vehicle during servicing.
Milesight delivered a customized parking camera solution that combines real-time video streaming, intelligent vehicle occupancy detection, cloud integration, and remote device management. The solution not only provides customers with visual proof of the maintenance process, but also streamlines service operations and simplifies large-scale device maintenance across hundreds of service locations.
Challenges
Lack of Transparency During Vehicle Maintenance
Customers often cannot see what happens to their vehicles after handing over the keys, which can lead to disputes or complaints regarding potential damage during maintenance. The service provider needed a reliable way to provide visual evidence throughout the entire repair process while improving customer confidence.
Automatically Linking Each Vehicle to the Correct Camera
Each maintenance bay is equipped with its own camera, making manual video retrieval inefficient and prone to errors. The system needed to automatically associate the correct vehicle, maintenance bay, live video stream, and customer without requiring manual intervention.
Reliable Vehicle Detection in Complex Maintenance Scenarios
Traditional parking detection algorithms can be affected during vehicle maintenance when engine hoods, doors, or trunks remain open, mechanics move around the vehicle, equipment blocks the license plate, or the vehicle is lifted by a jack. These situations could interrupt occupancy detection and consequently stop video recording unexpectedly.
Efficient Management of Large-Scale Camera Deployments
With hundreds of service centers operating nationwide, maintaining camera health, firmware consistency, and system availability remotely was critical. The customer required centralized monitoring, remote maintenance, and automatic alerts whenever cameras went offline.
Solution
A Milesight Parking Camera is installed above every maintenance bay to monitor the entire vehicle servicing process. The camera continuously streams live video to the designated cloud server while intelligently detecting vehicle entry and exit events. Whenever a vehicle enters or leaves a maintenance bay, the camera automatically generates an event and uploads the corresponding metadata to the cloud. The backend system consolidates the vehicle information, event data, and live video stream, then synchronizes the information with the customer's mobile application. As a result, vehicle owners can conveniently monitor their own maintenance process in real time, significantly improving service transparency and customer experience.
Workflow
The solution consists of three user roles: Customer, Service Desk, and Administrator, enabling seamless collaboration throughout the entire maintenance workflow.
Customer
Service Desk
Administrator
Instant Access to Live Maintenance Video
Upon arrival, customers simply scan a unique QR code provided by the service desk using the mobile application to access their dedicated maintenance page.
Real-Time Video with Intelligent Access Control
The live video is available only while the vehicle is physically occupying the assigned maintenance bay. Vehicle entry and exit are automatically detected by the camera, ensuring customers can only watch the maintenance process during the actual service period. Live video is streamed from the camera to the cloud through RTMP, allowing customers to remotely monitor their vehicle in real time.
Business Information Registration
Service staff enter the customer's license plate number into the system, which automatically generates a unique QR code associated with that maintenance session.
Automatic Vehicle-to-Video Association
When the vehicle enters or leaves a maintenance bay, the camera detects the event and uploads the license plate information together with a unique Vehicle ID to the cloud via HTTP.
The backend automatically matches the detected license plate with the registration entered by the service desk, then binds the vehicle to the corresponding camera and RTMP live stream. The generated QR code is linked directly to the customer's dedicated live video, eliminating manual video assignment.
Centralized Data Management
Administrators can review all vehicle entry and exit records, maintenance status, and recorded maintenance videos through the management platform. Event recordings are automatically stored on the camera's SD card for convenient playback and auditing.
Remote Device Maintenance
Using the combination of UR32S Router, Milesight CMS, and the management application, administrators can remotely monitor device health, configure parameters, reboot cameras, and perform routine maintenance, ensuring stable operation across multiple service locations.
Solution Highlights
Customized AI Detection for Maintenance Workshops
The occupancy detection algorithm was specially optimized for vehicle maintenance scenarios to ensure stable detection even under complex workshop conditions.
Maintain vehicle occupancy detection when the hood, doors, or trunk are open.
Continue detecting vehicles even when mechanics, tools, or maintenance equipment partially block the vehicle or license plate.
Prevent occupancy switching when adjacent vehicles enter nearby parking bays.
Continue detecting vehicles even when they are lifted by hydraulic jacks during maintenance.
These optimizations ensure uninterrupted occupancy detection throughout the entire maintenance process.
Configurable Occupancy Confirmation
Vehicle appearance may change significantly during servicing, potentially interrupting occupancy detection and stopping RTMP streaming unexpectedly. To address this, the solution introduces configurable entry and exit confirmation durations. Vehicle status changes are triggered only after continuous detection for a predefined period, greatly improving detection stability and ensuring uninterrupted live streaming and recording.
Event-Based Recording and Smart Video Retrieval
Recording starts automatically when a vehicle occupies the maintenance bay and stops when the vehicle leaves. Videos are stored locally on the SD card and can be quickly retrieved based on occupancy events using Playback or Storage Explorer, making maintenance records easy to review whenever needed.
Rich Metadata for Intelligent Integration
Each vehicle is assigned a unique Vehicle ID, allowing the backend system to distinguish multiple visits by the same vehicle over time. The metadata also includes license plate coordinates, enabling the backend platform to automatically mask license plates before displaying or sharing images, providing enhanced privacy protection while preserving complete event records.
Bandwidth-Efficient Live Streaming
To reduce communication costs, the secondary and tertiary video streams support 720 × 480 resolution for RTMP transmission. This enables customers to watch live maintenance video while significantly reducing bandwidth consumption, making the solution suitable for large-scale deployments.
Enhanced CMS for Easier Device Management
Milesight CMS was customized to improve day-to-day operation efficiency. Administrators can perform batch firmware upgrades via URL, while the router discovery interface has been optimized with improved usability and an additional parking bay name column, simplifying large-scale device management.
Proactive Device Health Monitoring via UR32S
To improve system reliability, the UR32S router continuously monitors the online status of up to 100 cameras through periodic PING detection. Whenever a camera changes from online to offline or offline to online, the system automatically sends an email notification containing the camera IP address, device name, and MAC address, enabling maintenance personnel to respond quickly and minimize service interruptions.
Results
The solution delivers a smarter and more transparent vehicle maintenance experience by seamlessly connecting intelligent cameras, cloud services, and mobile applications.
Vehicle owners gain real-time visibility into the maintenance process through secure live video, enhancing customer confidence and reducing potential disputes. Automated event detection, intelligent workflow integration, and customized AI detection minimize manual intervention while ensuring continuous recording throughout the entire service process.
Designed for large-scale deployments, the solution combines efficient bandwidth utilization, intelligent metadata integration, and centralized remote management to help automotive service providers improve operational efficiency, simplify system maintenance, and elevate overall service quality.
