In retail, the Point of Sale (POS) system is one of the most important and useful data system for their entire business. Being able to interface this with video is obviously extremely valuable.  But it isn’t exactly easy to get value without a relatively deep integration.

Beware that a lot of vendor’s POS integration is simply a text overlay on top of video. I suppose that counts for something, but that does not make the POS data searchable or reportable. Without being searchable and reportable, the resulting “deluge” of data makes POS integration not very useful

Another difficulty is that the POS market is very fragmented. Radiant and Micros seems to be among the dominant vendors in quick service retail, but collectively still only hold a small percentage of the market for quick service retail. Other retail segments use entirely different POS vendors. Even within a particular POS vendor, there are often several versions of their products, including simply different versions of code that change the data they output.

Further, each customer often will customize their implementation of their POS in ways that require at least some customization if you want to do reporting. With rich capabilities in one’s video system to interface with POS, adapting to these customizations is not a major ordeal.

In addition, there are a few technical details like

1. time synchronization between the POS system and the Video system,

2. updates to IP addresses, firewalls, network routing and so on between the video and POS systems

3. software upgrades on the POS system and the video system and maintaining compatibility.

4. Security rules, concerns and issues

5. Interdepartmental issues related to resolving and keeping resolved all the above when there is a separate network provider, video provider, POS provider and IT deparment.
Once you’ve integrated however, there are big benefits to the customer.  Is all that work worth a 10-20% increase in profitability?  You bet it is.

With a good software framework, integration is quite a bit easier. It’s taken Envysion 4 years to get where we are with POS integration.  We have that framework and are continually building upon it.

A few more issues are looked at over at John Honovich’s blog.    The Retail Solutions online magazine ponders that even more integration is valuable or is perhaps wasting video intelligence?  Integration is hard, but when you have the right data and reports, it’s extremely valuable.

Envysion recently introduced support for ACTi IP cameras.  In particular our customers are demanding a mid to low priced camera that offers megapixel resolution.

Our customers needed a reliable, high resolution camera option at the lowest possible price.  ACTi’s megapixel cameras supply good quality images that exceed our customer’s requirements.  Our customers also like the several flavors of dome cameras which ACTi offers in megapixel resolutions.

We liked the easy integration with ACTi‘s software and the near ubiquitous Power over Ethernet support.   For software integration, all we really need is the RTSP protocol for video transmission and a simple web interface that we can create scripts to auto-provision from our Hybrid NVR’s.  We also received excellent support from their development team.

Thanks ACTi!

Remember those images where if you “defocus” your eyes just right you can see a 3D image jumping out at you on the page?  These “stereograms”

A new imaging chip from Stanford University uses a similar principle to capture an image which includes depth information.  It sounds like they are looking at digital photography, but one can also imagine this technology trickling it’s way into surveillance video.

The recent election seems like a lifetime ago.  For those who are glad it’s over, check out this interesting use of video from North Carolina.  Apparently one guy was tired of having his yard sign tampered with, so he rigged it with a current from his electronic dog fence, and trained a camera on the scene to see what happened.  Well, it was a neighbor (eight year old boy no less).

My guess is that the two neighbors involved won’t be breaking bread together this coming Thursday.

Can’t we all just get along?

DARPA (The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has originated several technologies that have become widely use outside of military applications, including the communications protocol used by the Internet itself.

The DARPA project called VIRAT is a relatively new project for a video analytics search engine.  This type of research could very well lead to video that is as searchable as the Internet is today.  Video surveillance today could be considered similar to the technology available on the Internet before there were “Web sites” and browsers.

But there is one big difference, producing and searching for relevant data from video analytics is a very different problem from searching documents containing text created by people.  Video analytics seems a bit like speech analytics.  If you have a very specific scenario and have finely tuned your equipment and software for that scenario, one can get some results.

VIRAT is targeted to analyze live and archived video from high resolution aerial video for objects and those objects activity.

You can read the solicitation with a lot of details about the project here at the Federal Business Opportunities website.  You can also see that just in the last month, three projects were awarded for a total about about $19M. to BAE Systems, Kitware and Lockheed.

It’s early days though.  For comparison, consider that the IP protocol was started by DARPA in the early 1970′s; it was 1995 before the World Wide Web began.

Congratulations to Timesight who recently received $4.5M in new funding.   It looks like they’ve recently launched a Video storage appliance which implements “Video Lifecycle Management (VLM)”.

It seems that VLM boils down to reducing the frame rate and resolution of stored video images over time.  Ie: the older a video is, the lower the quality.  The idea of course being that older video is less likely to contain valuable information and therefore can be compressed more and more as it gets older and older.

This is a very reasonable thing to do and is a valuable cost reduction.  In fact, I go as far to say that long term storage of large number of Megapixel video feeds is not feasible from a cost perspective in most use cases without video management like this.  Mega-pixel cameras are a particularly good use case for this technology becaues they have a lot of room for reducing quality while still retaining a usable image.  I wouldn’t be suprised if this method becomes industry standard best practice for storing megapixel resolution video surveillance.

Another thing that stands out to me about Timesight’s storage appliance is that this VLM process is something that  traditional network based storage systems (Network Appliance, etc…) don’t do.

I also found it interesting that the CEO of Timesight, Charles Foley, used to run Tacit networks which was bought by Packeteer (now owned by BlueCoat), a notable and successful network/telecom equipment company.

Good luck Timesight!

Cognitive dissonance is among my favorite topics in the field of psychology.  Why?  I think this relates to two things:  It is very simple to understand, and it is extremely powerful. 

Cognitive dissonance describes the stress that develops when we hold two ideas that are inconsistent.  The theory of cognitive dissonance purports that we all have a fundamental drive to reduce this stress, which may include minimizing, denying, or avoiding contradictory evidence.  As a natural extension, we also tend to seek input that is consistent with our beliefs (confirmation bias).

Cognitive dissonance, of course, impacts us in all aspects of our lives, including our business dealings.  Are the employees we hire outstanding model citizens, simply because we are great judges of character?  Or rather, do we have low regard for some of our employees?  Is it not appropriate to challenge our beliefs with potentially contradictory evidence?

Video, when properly utilized, can help to confirm, or abandon, these pre-conceptions.  Our employees, and customers, will be the beneficiaries.

I frequently talk about using data to enhance the usefulness of video, but what about a video composed entirely of data?  Radiohead’s House of Cards video is just that, a video created completely from data.

Radiohead used similar technology that Google uses in Google Earth to capture 3-D models of buildings.

Would 3D video capture be of any interest? Although perhaps many years away from commercialization, it seems such technology could greatly improve intelligent video / video analytics. I think we’re getting a bit closer to virtual reality one step at a time. Hmmmm. If this doesn’t spark a little imagination for you, perhaps I am a bit Too White and Nerdy