Over the past decade, Axis Communications, the inventors of the IP camera in mid-nineties that forever changed the video surveillance landscape, has continually pushed the boundaries of innovation in the brave new world of connected security devices. Not content with simply making incremental upgrades to their existing camera ranges, the company has placed a heavy emphasis on developing products outside the purview of video surveillance with the introduction of a variety of Internet of Things solutions, such as network radar detectors and IP-enabled speakers just to name a few.
At ISC West 2022 last week in Las Vegas, the company unveiled multiple products that expands beyond a traditional surveillance camera portfolio. Among the new product introductions include the AXIS Speed Monitor application, which can be combined with the company’s radar solution and one of their visual or thermal cameras to monitor traffic speeds in places like school zones. It can also be deployed to not only display speeds of passing drivers, but it can also be leveraged in conjunction with another newly launched product from the company, the AXIS D4100-E Network Strobe Siren, which uses a combination of lights and sounds to deter potential intruders, or in this case, alert the driver a speeding vehicle."This combination as a self-sufficient solution can monitor the speed of an incoming car and the camera will not only see, but also detect and measure the speed,” Fredrik Nilsson, Vice President for the Americas at Axis, explained during a press briefing at the show. “If someone is speeding, you can connect one of the strobes to flash a light warning that they are speeding. You also get the analytics of the speed of the cars outside of the school and you can adjust your different measures – speed bumps, guards, etc. – to make sure, in and around an area, people are not speeding without spending too much money. With this capability of partnership and edge processing capabilities, the world is opening up very quickly to all the things we can do.”
With the processing power that is now capable at the edge, Nilsson added that tech giants, such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, are also increasingly looking at ways to provide analytics offerings that go beyond traditional security applications. For example, the Port of Vancouver in Canada has partnered with Amazon to leverage surveillance cameras as part of an effort to streamline their operations.
“Before Deep Learning and great AI capabilities out on the edge, they basically had to sit in front of all of these monitors and figure out whether everything was going well in the harbor and make sure that the containers came to the right spot,” he added. “But now what they have implemented together with Amazon is this application here with existing cameras that monitor the trucks coming in with containers… and identify the number up on the container, finds out the metadata that shows on the video and then sends that metadata out to the operator. The benefit of this, of course, is improved operational efficiency by not having to have some people out there and the other is that is also can provide privacy because what you need to send is the metadata to the operator and not the video.”
Audio Solutions
In recent years, Axis has also made a big push into the IP audio market, launching a number of different speaker options to end-users that can not only be used for public address and mass notification, but for normal, everyday use cases, such as playing music and making announcements. At ISC West this year, the company unveiled AXIS Audio Manager Pro, an audio management software solution designed to help facilities manage up to 5,000 speakers and 100 zones.
“We look at (the audio market) like the IP video market was some 20 years ago. Obviously, almost everything was analog, but we knew that it would go IP and digital,” said Axis Co-Founder Martin Gren, who also spoke during last week’s press briefing at the show. “I think the same applies to speakers. Everyone at home, you have Wi-Fi speakers nowadays – either like a Sonos or Bluetooth – and for the professional market it is not a question of having the greatest audio quality, it is a question of actually hearing and hearing well. This is what we can solve with IP audio to make nice and smooth audio announcements in many of the larger facilities – airports, train stations, etc.”
Body-Worn Cameras
As a follow-up to its original body-worn camera that was launched a few years ago, Axis last week also debuted its new AXIS W101 solution, which adds greater GPS tracking capabilities to the unit and also marks the availability of the camera in a white casing, making it a better option for applications outside of law enforcement.
“One thing we realized and one thing that we thought would be a unique and, we proved to be right, was that we had an open system, and we can now integrate a wearable solution into any application,” explained Nilsson. “We have schools using body-wearable, we have retailers using body-wearable, and we have examples of hospitals using body-wearables.”
To learn more about these and other solutions unveiled during ISC West 2022, check out more of our show coverage here.
Joel Griffin is the Editor of SecurityInfoWatch.com and a veteran security journalist. You can reach him at [email protected].
