Miguel Lazatin, Senior Director of Marketing at Hanwha Vision America discusses the latest
trends in video surveillance technology.
The phrase “doing more with less” is usually associated with a challenging situation: tight budgets, fewer resources. However sometimes, as in the case of Hanwha Vision’s new SolidEDGE camera system, “doing more with less” is actually the main benefit of this new video surveillance technology.
SolidEDGE combines a dome camera, an embedded WAVE video management system (VMS) server and onboard Solid State Drive (SSD) storage into one system. “Less” really is the key word here: serverless device, painless setup and endless possibilities.
This type of solution is also a perfect micro-example of a larger trend that’s been occurring for several years: maximizing a company’s security spending by getting the most – or at least more – out of an initial technology investment.
Security and video surveillance are evolving beyond being simply tactical technologies and they will continue to emerge as key business drivers that can contribute to the long-term success of an organization.
Security and video surveillance devices are being tasked to do more than just monitor and protect. Comprehensive, intelligent video surveillance technologies are now regarded as 360-degree, total business transformation solutions.
Beyond protecting and monitoring, these solutions are increasingly incorporating on-board analytics to deliver data that can drive intelligent business decisions and enhance data collection and analytics.
Take multi-sensor camera technology as an example. With one device through one data connection, any facility can monitor and record several key areas with unique fields of view for each. Now add the power of analytics to those same cameras and you’re able to do people-counting, body temperature detection, object detection, license plate recognition, behavioral observations and any number of actionable business functions. That’s truly doing more with less.
Hospitals are complementing their cameras’ security monitoring performance with intelligent AI-based audio/video analytics, resulting in targeted object detection and classification, which saves time for hospital security teams by speeding up forensic searches.
In a casino, analytics can boost the already-strong security capabilities of a camera by helping casino operators understand guest behavior patterns, determine the busier and slower times of the day, which games are more regularly visited and more.
Managers may decide where to place staff depending on traffic. Digital imaging technology with AI capabilities helps with table monitoring and can also go as far as detecting unwanted vehicles through license plate recognition.
Data on potential scammers can also be shared with other gambling establishments and some technologies can even identify underage visitors, with staff notified to check the player’s ID. These advanced video analytics can also be used as investigative tools in the event of a security incident as well as being able to inform staff of a high-profile client arriving on the premises.
In a K-12 school, video surveillance technology that is already monitoring and protecting can combine AI with on-board audio and video surveillance analytics to help school administrators get a better handle on access control and monitoring of hallways, classrooms and exterior parking lots. For example, knowing which doors visitors use to access and exit the building is important when placing cameras.
If customers have cameras with facial recognition capabilities, then that type of data can also be shared with other educational facilities and some technologies can even identify certain unauthorized visitors prior to them gaining access.
Advanced video surveillance analytics can alert security when someone is trying to gain access to the premise and cameras’ built-in analytics can be used for people-counting to accurately track the volume of people entering or exiting a building, which helps administration personnel to monitor the population on any given day against their attendance records.
Continuing the “more with less” theme, the SolidEDGE system reverses a previous trend of needing a separate server, more wires and a larger installation footprint. Additionally, users had to deal with higher installation costs and a system that was hard to manage.
The concept with SolidEDGE is allowing smaller installations to operate self-contained systems, while fully realizing the potential of edge storage. People have talked about edge storage for years and cameras from Hanwha and others have had edge storage for a while now. However, users typically weren’t getting the full VMS experience; they had one camera through a web browser or client software.
The idea with SolidEDGE is to get rid of those issues and provide users with the full VMS experience, whether it’s a mobile app or a client, without needing a huge expensive server. The unique WAVE Sync allows easy cloud-based remote access and system expansion. In addition, SolidEDGE uses a rugged, industrialgrade SSD as opposed to more commonly used SD cards.
If a franchise has three or four locations, they can now connect them together and have a unified platform to view everything – again without needing big expensive servers to manage and maintain it.
Now it’s a plug and play system solution, as opposed to a group of disparate pieces and parts. If users want to change recording settings for one camera, they can.
The technology behind SolidEDGE also continues the industry’s shift to the cloud. For example, a user might have one video surveillance camera recording locally on the edge to an SD card that is either cloud accessible or simply throwing video surveillance to the cloud over time. The SolidEDGE solution is unique in that, while most systems are focusing on edge recording by itself or the cloud, Hanwha is doing both by putting the VMS on the edge.
Again, this saves the user time and costs and it’s easy for a “nontechnical” person to manage. It’s a user-friendly, consistent interface that can be managed just like any other WAVE system, without having to learn a whole new architecture or platform.
Who can use SolidEDGE? The potential applications can cover any type of organization, but it’s especially effective for smaller operations with multiple locations: coffee shops with one or a few sites throughout a city, gas stations or conveniences stores – any type of venue that might only need two or three video surveillance cameras now, but also needs the ability to quickly and easily expand when growth occurs.
Here’s a common scenario: a coffee shop with one location would have their main SolidEDGE camera at the register and then five more cameras – which could be of varying types and form factors – located throughout the building and connected to the primary edge recording device; maybe there’s one for the back door, delivery entrance or employee break area. However, they all act as one system and are all viewable through one dashboard in WAVE Sync.
Now, as that same shop grows and expands to multiple locations, SolidEDGE grows along with it.
Each shop can still have their one primary SolidEDGE video surveillance camera at the register and then for the additional cameras, the user can perform a “merge.” Through the cloud, the solution connects multiple sites together into one system. Depending on the use case, they could all be viewable through one pane of glass in the WAVE client, which has a cloud layout that can bring multiple servers into one layout view.
Doing more with less in video surveillance – it’s not always a bad thing.
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Miguel Lazatin is Senior Director of Marketing at Hanwha Vision America, responsible for brand strategy, product marketing, digital marketing, advertising and public relations. Miguel has a proven track record of success driving the growth of global electronics and security companies through effective product launch and market development strategies. Prior to joining Hanwha Vision, he held a range of product, sales and corporate marketing roles at Sony Electronics and Panasonic Security Systems. Miguel holds
an MBA from Boston University’s Graduate School of Management.
This article was originally published in the July edition of Security Journal Americas. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.