Begin outside the gate
Map how vehicles enter, queue, reach a dock, leave a trailer, and exit. A yard overview establishes movement, while a tighter lane or gate view may be needed for identifying detail. Asking one camera to cover an entire yard and read every plate usually produces neither result reliably.
Sun position, headlights, rain, snow, speed, and distance all affect capture. Test the difficult direction at the difficult time of day before treating a view as solved.
Pair receiving context with handoff detail
At a dock, one view can show the trailer and loading activity while another covers the point where goods enter the building. Continue coverage through staging, high-value storage, and the route to inventory. This creates a timeline instead of a collection of unrelated snapshots.
Do not mount directly in the path of doors, forklifts, or pallet stacks. Review how the building actually changes during peak receiving, not only how it looks during a quiet site visit.
Use height carefully inside the building
High mounting protects equipment and expands the field of view, but it reduces facial and item detail. Entrances, cages, counters, and other decision points often benefit from lower, tighter views paired with the ceiling overview.
Lighting transitions matter around dock doors and exterior exits. Wide dynamic range and careful aiming can help, but a camera cannot create detail that the lens, distance, and available light never captured.
Design playback before choosing storage
Name cameras by place and direction, synchronize time, and decide who investigates incidents. Estimate how long it takes a discrepancy to surface, then calculate storage from camera count, resolution, frame rate, compression, and recording mode.
During handover, ask the manager to find, play, and export a sample event without coaching. If that workflow is confusing on commissioning day, it will be worse under pressure three weeks later.
What one blind spot costs
At a Vaughan logistics hub, one blind spot in the main distribution bay was enough for high-value stock to keep going missing. Closing it took about 800 ft of Cat6 and 4K turret cameras with person detection, about 6 hours on site.
On a larger Mississauga warehouse, 24 cameras went up from scissor lifts over five days without stopping shipping.
From our jobs
Warehouse and logistics hub, Vaughan · About 800 ft of Cat6, inside and out
Closing a blind spot in a Vaughan distribution bay in one day
High-value stock kept going missing from one bay. 800 ft of new Cat6 and 4K turrets with person detection, about 6 hours on site.
How we did itWarehouse, Mississauga · 24 IP PoE cameras
24 cameras in a Mississauga warehouse that could not stop shipping
11 m steel rafters, live shipping lanes and ductwork in the way. Five days, no shutdown.
How we did itOfficial guidance used
These sources support the general planning information. Privacy, legal, and technical requirements still depend on the property, organization, equipment, and intended use.
Related questions
How many cameras does a warehouse need?
The count follows the site’s gates, doors, docks, yards, aisles, high-value zones, offices, and blind routes. Start with required incidents and views, then count cameras; package sizes are a poor substitute for a site plan.
Should warehouse cameras record continuously?
Continuous and event-based recording each have tradeoffs. The right choice depends on risk, activity, analytics reliability, retention, bandwidth, and storage. Critical views may justify different settings from low-traffic areas.
Can cameras see through warehouse darkness?
Infrared and low-light cameras can help, but range, reflective surfaces, dust, mounting, and changing obstructions still matter. Test night and lights-off conditions instead of relying only on a product range specification.