One of the biggest trends in the video surveillance market in recent years has been the proliferation of body-worn surveillance cameras, which has been primarily driven by efforts to equip law enforcement officers with the technology in the wake of several high-profile police-involved shootings. Many within the private security sector have also expressed interest in deploying body cameras as way of extending their surveillance resources while also providing organizations with greater liability protections in the event of a lawsuit.
However, body-worn camera rollouts have also experienced numerous challenges. Similar to their fixed counterparts, body cameras require adequate bandwidth to be able to send live video streams over the network along with a plethora of storage space to retain recorded footage for whatever pre-determined length is required – be it 30 days, 90 days or even years in some cases depending on the incident. Beyond technical considerations, there’s also privacy concerns related to the use of body cameras, particularly as it concerns issues around continuous recording and if law enforcement and/or security officers should have the option to decide when and when not to record.
Roader, a Holland-based startup launched by entrepreneurs Sjoerd Pitstra and Joost Godee in the wake of the now infamous meteor explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 have developed a wearable camera they believe can be used by consumers as well as security officers – and potentially law enforcement – for a wide variety of applications. According to Pitstra, the company’s CEO, the Roader Time Machine Camera, which is being launched this week at CES 2018 in Las Vegas, the initial motivation behind the camera’s invention was to help people share more of the images and video clips that they are currently gathering with their smartphones on social media.
“There are a lot of things happening around us that are not recorded because we are always late in grabbing our phone and activating the camera. We developed a technology where it is possible to grab just a few seconds back just to make sure that those things that happen around you can be recorded,” Pitstra says.
The camera is able to accomplish this by continuously buffering video footage, enabling the user to choose what event’s they want to record and save. And although the camera is constantly buffering, it only captures and saves 10 seconds of footage before and after the user presses the record button. The clip is then transferred wirelessly via Bluetooth to the Roader mobile app, which is compatible with both the iOS and Android operating systems. Of course, for applications like security, Pitstra says they could go back much further in the past than 10 seconds.
In addition, the camera features 16 GB of internal storage with an option for 32 GB. It also records video in two resolutions simultaneously: 640 x 640p at 30 frames-per-second (fps) and 1088 x 1088p at 30 fps. When a clip is sent to the mobile app, the camera automatically sends the lower resolution format to save time while the HD version is saved for when the user is ready to transfer it. The camera can also operate for six to seven hours on a single charge.
Despite their primary focus on consumers and social media sharing, Roader has been in talks with guard services firms in the European Union about possibly leveraging the Time Machine Camera for various guard deployments.
“We have pitched this product to the security guard industry and what they like about it is you’re not recording all the time,” Pitstra explains. “With body cams you’re recording the whole time the camera is active, but with our camera, you just focus on the important moments.”
Pitstra emphasizes, however, that the Time Machine Camera is not a body camera along the lines of those currently used by law enforcement and that they have no desire to compete in that space. “They record all the time, they record huge amounts of video which are really boring 99 percent of the time. We only focus on those things that matter where you, in effect, narrate your own video story by just pressing the record button on the camera and grabbing those 10 seconds back,” Pitstra says.
Pitstra also envisions the camera serving as a dashboard video solution for automobiles as it features a car mode that can be activated when it is placed in a windshield holder. “What it will do then is basically transfer in a loop recording method where it looks in clips of three minutes just like any other dashcam but we add to that the same functionality where you can capture just the moments you would like to share,” he says.
The Time Machine Camera will be available later this spring for $199. For more information about Roader, visit www.roader.com or drop by booth #51522 in the Holland StartUp Pavilion at CES 2018.
About the Author:
Joel Griffin is the Editor-in-Chief of SecurityInfoWatch.com and a veteran security journalist. You can reach him at [email protected].
