I’ve had many conversations lately with partners and prospects regarding IP camera capabilities and more specifically, the merits of Megapixel and PTZ cameras. While each camera type has its own unique set of pros and cons, it’s easy to get caught up in cutting edge technology that’s available versus what’s actually necessary.

The necessity of a PTZ camera is largely determined by the presence of a live operator to control the camera. There are several environments where this is particularly handy, such as high-end retailers, big-box retailers, banks, casinos and airports. This gives LP and security personnel the ability to track suspects and zoom in for better detail using live video.

However, what happens to the larger field of view when zooming in on a narrow square-foot of view? If there’s a commotion on one end of a jewelry display which draws the close attention of the camera, the other end of the display is not only out of view, but not being recorded either. Organized crime rings have figured this out. Further, without a live operator, a PTZ camera defaults to a stationary fixed-view camera.

For the rest of the pack who do not have live operators on PTZ controls, Megapixel cameras offer some unique advantages. First is the clarity of the higher resolution. Second is the wide field of view. These advantages offer a superior coverage area and digital zoom capability without compromising clarity. In many instances, Megapixel cameras offer superb coverage and clarity without taking any eye off the bigger picture and without the need for live operation.

In most cases, standard re or hi-res analog cameras will be plenty of technology. Sure there’s better, just be sure you’re getting what’s necessary and appropriate for your situation.

NPR had a very interesting episode today about A New Way To Patrol The Texas Border The basic idea is that folks who are so inclined can log onto a web site and watch video over the Internet of certain border crossings. If they see suspicious behavior, they can press a button on the page and generate an incident report to the local sheriff who may/may not take action to investigate.

So, who is interested in applying this to loss prevention? With MVaaS, it is trivial to authorize third parties to watch video on your behalf. I could see a system where volunteers could register to watch for certain kinds of transactions and if they find one, submit it to the store owner/operator. Maybe everytime you find a valid incident, you get a free sub/burger/pizza/whatever?

Thoughts?

The Unix Epoch which is the standard of time for unix (linux) systems all over the known universe will have a unique moment in a few days. The measure of time on a linux system is in seconds since the epoch, which was January 1, 1970, UTC. Since the measure is simply the number of seconds elapsed, it is very convenient for many different applications.

The exciting (at least for some of us) part is that on Friday the 13th, at 4:31:30PM MST, the value of unix time will be “1234567890″.

Truly cool!

This week marks Envysion’s 3rd anniversary in its current form.  Three years ago a handful of us started the company with some seed money from our investors, a shell of a struggling legacy company and an idea for a new business model.

I am very proud of the team and the accomplishments that we’ve made together over the past few years.  We’ve taken a concept and translated it into a hardened service that is delivering tremendous value for our customers.  We’ve created a whole new category, Managed Video as a Service, that customers, competitors and analysts alike have all recognized as an exciting new segment.  We’ve added channel partners that are actively promoting our service and are growing our customer base with major national brands in restaurant, retail and hospitality segments.  We continue to add new capabilities that leverage our SaaS model and continue to differentiate our service.

While the macro-economic climate is tough for everyone these days, I believe that year 4 is going to be the breakout year for Envysion as we take advantage of the market opportunity created by customers needing to do more with less people and resources and by competitors that continue to cut back on development and fall further behind in the technology race.

Look for some good announcements from us on the product, customer and partner fronts over the next few weeks.  We’re just getting started…

An old-skool RFC for those of you who remember such things…I present to you RFC 968 by Vint Cerf.

Twas the night before start-up and all through the net,
     not a packet was moving; no bit nor octet.
The engineers rattled their cards in despair,
     hoping a bad chip would blow with a flare.
The salesmen were nestled all snug in their beds,
     while visions of data nets danced in their heads.
And I with my datascope tracings and dumps
     prepared for some pretty bad bruises and lumps.
When out in the hall there arose such a clatter,
     I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter.

There stood at the threshold with PC in tow,
     An ARPANET hacker, all ready to go.
I could see from the creases that covered his brow,
     he’d conquer the crisis confronting him now.
More rapid than eagles, he checked each alarm
     and scrutinized each for its potential harm.

On LAPB, on OSI, X.25!
     TCP, SNA, V.35!

His eyes were afire with the strength of his gaze;
     no bug could hide long; not for hours or days.
A wink of his eye and a twitch of his head,
     soon gave me to know I had little to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
     fixing a net that had gone plumb berserk;
And laying a finger on one suspect line,
     he entered a patch and the net came up fine!

The packets flowed neatly and protocols matched;
     the hosts interfaced and shift-registers latched.
He tested the system from Gateway to PAD;
     not one bit was dropped; no checksum was bad.
At last he was finished and wearily sighed
     and turned to explain why the system had died.

I twisted my fingers and counted to ten;
     an off-by-one index had done it again…

When dealing with video surveillance from across the globe, figuring out what time it is can be a complicated thing, or at least hurt your brain a little bit.   Can’t we just run everything in metric time?  Oh, on second thought, I’m not sure that’s any easier.

At Envysion, when you search for video and events, our application automatically converts whatever time you’re searching for to the localtime of the location.  This applies even if one searches across multiple locations.  ie:  Searching for 5pm (not matter where you are), returns results from 5pm EST, 5pm CST and so on.  We hope this makes it a little easier for those who operate across multiple time zones.

-Darren

“Thanks to the city being under Mensa’s control, the trains are running on metric time.” – Principle Skinner, “The Simpsons“

A benefit of Managed-Video-As-A-Service is that it can scale to a large number of locations. One of the reasons MVaaS scales so well is that it borrows architectural elements from telecommunications network management principles. One of these principles is to collect data and monitor network elements.

Note the graph above. This is a screenshot from one of Envysion’s NOC tools that monitors the collection of point-of-sale data. At Envysion, we know, at any point of time, which DVR locations are correctly receiving point-of-sale data (i.e., working) and which are not. Note the anomoly in the above chart where red and yellow mean “not working” (each x-axis tick represents 6 hours and the y-axis represents number of DVRs).

One might normally be alarmed to see a massive spike in DVRs that haven’t collected point-of-sale data for 12+ hours…until you remember “oh that’s right, its Thanksgiving day” and almost all these stores are closed! Closed store == no transactions to collect.

There will be two more days in the next 31 days with graphs that look similar to the one above — anyone care to guess which days those will be?

Why is collecting this data important? It’s important because with this data we can immediately respond if point-of-sale data collection stops. This data is a critical enabler of our customer’s ROI. They expect it to be present every day and we work very hard to make it so.

Someday, providing telemetry and visualization such as the example above will be as common as CIF resolution in the video industry. It will be normal for a customer to ask a prospective video supplier “what percentage of sites have delivered POS data over the last 30 days?” In the mean time, here at Envysion, we will quietly keep raising the bar.

I decided, Sunday morning, to finally solve a Rubik’s cube. Afterall, it has only been 28 years since it was introduced by Ideal Toys. (Oh, and by solve, I don’t mean to disassemble the cube). No, I’ve gone and learned the cube notation and now I think in terms of R’U'R and the like.

I’ve never really tried to solve it. I’ve certainly spent time spinning it around casually. But this time, I virtually pulled out my trusty Wikipedia and started following the cross/top corner/middle edge algorithm documented here.

So yesterday afternoon, while I was re-reading step 3 “Middle edge pieces” for about the 17th time, my wife casually says “so, how come you’re cheating?”

I was astonished at audacity of that comment. Me? Cheating? “Why no”, I said, “I’m simply learning a tactic (I actually said alorithm) to solve the cube”.

“Oh, you’re cheating alright, because you’ve looked up the answer on the Internet”. I tried to argue that if it takes me an hour to get through one step, it isn’t exactly “looking up the answer”…to no avail.

Who knows, maybe I’m just slow. I am determined to solve it however. And I am officially at step 4, “solve remaining edge pieces”.

Here is an interesting link on youtube that explains how to set up an IP camera. It describes how to take an Axis camera that has the standard factory defaults and configure it to be available from the public Internet. This includes the steps necessary to configure an IP address on the camera, port forwarding on your access router and dynamic DNS.

All in all, there are about a dozen steps necessary to configure the camera. While not a daunting task for technically sharp person, it is definitely complex and error prone. Over the next few posts, I’ll look at some of the reasons why it is difficult to do and what our Industry could do to simplify this process.

Cisco announced they are investing $100M in product development, service and support for businesses with fewer than 100 employees.  Part of this investment includes the formation of a new business unit called the small business technology group.  You can see this groups new website at “Cisco Services of Small Business”. There you can find a link that helps you find Cisco powered service providers.

It’s not clear to me if this is simply repackaging and re-organizing of existing products.   Cisco merged channel partner programs between Linksys and Cisco brands very recently and perhaps this is related to that activity.     (As an engineer, it always amazes me how much one can spend simply changing the part numbers for products.  )

The announcement does claim that new Cisco Small Business products are scheduled to be available in December 2008 and will be focused on video surveillance, data storage and wireless office communications.