Automatic license plate recognition occurs when a light sensor that continually captures video detects motion as a vehicle is driven through a gate. The light sensor detects the vehicle and license plate in the video stream captured by the light sensor. An algorithm associated with the video stream of the light sensor is trained to detect license plates. The light sensor starts executing the recognition algorithm when it detects motion. Recognition of characters in the license plate is based upon an aggregation of several captured video frames in which a license plate is detected.