Most gated-estate camera conversations start with a housing argument — dome versus turret versus bullet — before anyone has worked out how many cameras the property actually needs or where the coverage gaps will be. That's a layout and math exercise, not a product pick, and it should happen before any camera gets ordered.
Start with zones, not a camera count
A useful way to approach a gated property is to break it into distinct coverage zones and treat each one differently, because they ask the cameras to do different jobs:
- Perimeter line — fence lines and tree lines where the job is detecting a presence, not identifying a face.
- Gate and driveway — where the job is identification: readable plates, confirmed faces, vehicle type.
- House envelope — entries, pool, and service areas where overlap matters more than range.
Each zone has a different answer to "what does this camera need to resolve," and that answer should drive the hardware choice before anyone debates housings.
Let IR range and field of view set the spacing
Camera spacing on a long perimeter or driveway is really a function of two published numbers: infrared range and field of view. UniFi's current G6 Pro bullet, for example, is specified with wide and tele fields of view (H: 113.8°, V: 61.9°, D: 134° wide; H: 45.5°, V: 25.8°, D: 52° tele) and IR night vision rated at 60 m (196 ft), per UniFi Bullet Security Cameras. The G6 Pro Dome carries the same wide/tele field-of-view figures with a 40 m (131 ft) IR rating, according to the same manufacturer data on UniFi Dome & Turret Security Cameras. A camera rated for 60 m of usable night detection can't be expected to carry identification-quality detail all the way to that distance — IR range describes how far the sensor can see something at all in the dark, not how far it can read a plate or a face. On a driveway with low light, that distinction should set how far apart cameras get mounted, not a round number pulled from habit.
When a dedicated LPR camera is worth it
Ubiquiti's dedicated license-plate camera is a narrower-purpose unit: a 4K camera with 3x optical zoom and long-range IR tuned specifically for plates on vehicles moving up to 90 km/h, and the vendor's own setup notes say the unit is optimized to capture reflective or non-reflective plates at night — meaning a second camera is needed nearby to capture other vehicle or occupant detail in the dark, per the Camera AI LPR product page. That single caveat is the whole argument for pairing a dedicated LPR unit with a wide context camera at the same gate rather than asking one camera to do both jobs. A wide-angle dome or bullet covering the same approach can confirm who's in the vehicle and what else is happening at the gate while the LPR unit does the plate read. Ask your integrator whether a given gate actually needs both, or whether a single G6 Pro-class camera with on-device recognition is sufficient for the traffic volume and lighting at that entrance.
Size the NVR to the camera count you land on
Once zone-by-zone coverage settles the camera count, storage and recording capacity follow from it, not the other way around. Ubiquiti's current NVR lineup scales from an entry-level recorder up through the Enterprise NVR Core, which supports up to 300 4K cameras (or 500 Full HD) on a single 16-bay unit with hot-swappable power supplies and RAID protection, according to Ubiquiti's NVR product listing. A gated estate with a dozen or two cameras across perimeter, gate, driveway, and house will land well inside the mid-tier recorders in that lineup; a multi-building estate with outbuildings and long sightlines can grow into the larger units without a camera-by-camera migration, since the same software and AI run across the whole product line. Retention targets — how many days of footage the system needs to hold at full resolution before older recordings compress — should be set in writing during design, not discovered later when a drive fills up.
What the documentation should include
A camera count on a napkin isn't a deliverable. Before cabling starts, the design package should include a camera schedule (model, mounting location, height, and field-of-view direction for every unit) and a coverage map overlaid on the site plan showing zone boundaries and any gaps that were accepted rather than solved. That documentation is what lets a future integrator, insurer, or buyer understand what the system actually covers without re-walking the property. Cave Group designs, installs, and documents this kind of estate camera layout as part of the broader security upgrade process — cameras, access control, live monitoring, and UL-listed alarm monitoring specified and handed over together.
For the layered monitoring decisions that sit on top of a finished camera layout — live-guard response versus central-station alarm dispatch — see The Complete Luxury Security Stack.