I write a post about standards and interoperability from time to time, and I’m afraid its time again. To wit; one of our customers has asked for us to incorporate a temperature sensor into our application. Their idea is that they put this sensor into their freezer/refrigerator and if the inside starts to warm up, they will get an alarm from us. In addition, they can view video correlated to that event as well.

So, how do you connect a temperature sensor to a DVR? The brute force method, which this CTO was considering, involves a temperature sensor that delivers an analog voltage output, which is then connected to an Analog to Digitial converter (either inboard or outboard of the DVR), which is then polled at frequent intervals. This data would then be fed into the Envysion data collection system.

Enter now Darren Loher and Jeff Gannon (both frequent contributors to this blog) who suggested the Sensorhawk-2. This nifty little device integrates with multiple sensors and makes that data available over a network. The data it collects can be retrieved via a number of methods including SNMP and syslog (both standard protocols for information exchange).

How do you integrate this into a DVR? Well, since our systems already uses both SNMP and syslog, integration is a snap!

What’s the point? Open standards and interoperability win again!

Just imagine where our industry would be if cameras and recording units and control software all interoperated as easily! Traditional players in this industry take note!