What do security cameras have in common with smartphones? And why might security experts soon only need smart cameras to do their job? Find answers here.
What do security cameras have in common with smartphones? And why might security experts soon only need smart cameras to do their job? Find answers here.
When asked where the surveillance technology is heading, we refer to the development of smartphones from the early days of mobile phones to today's all-in-one devices. Security cameras have more in common with smartphones than you might think. Accordingly,
IoT cameras will develop in a similar direction; they already have similar capabilities today!
Smartphones as role model
“The world before smartphones was cold and unforgiving. People waited in lines for minutes on end without entertainment. Bar arguments ended in fisticuffs or someone finally exclaiming “I guess we’ll never know!” Ignoring friends and relatives at the dinner table required ingenuity and imagination. They truly were dark times.” - sciencenode.org
When phones became mobile phones and eventually smartphones, they stopped being just phones. They also became cameras, computers, calculators, game consoles, navigators, flashlights, translators, digital wallets and much more. With these superpowers smartphones have fundamentally changed our lives.
Unlike the first mobile phone, the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x from 1973, smartphones today are equipped with powerful processors and huge data storage, which enable them to run complex applications. Particularly the ability to process large amounts of data has improved massively in recent decades.
Users can download software for their smartphones from App Stores, which offer millions of apps for a wide range of private and professional applications. These apps provide smartphones with almost unlimited capabilities and make them true all-rounders in a connected world.
It only takes 5 minutes to install another app and thus another capability on a smartphone. At Security and Safety Things we see this principle of device enablement through software as a blueprint for many other digital devices on the Internet of Things, particularly...
… for a new generation of smart cameras
Like smartphones, security cameras once began as “dumb” devices that could essentially perform only one function: capture video and forward it to surveillance systems where video information is processed.
In comparison, modern cameras today are much more advanced: Equipped with powerful processors and connected to the Internet, they are ready to perform a wide range of functions related to video, helping make private and business life easier. Applications that were once located in data centers or in the cloud are now performed directly in the cameras (edge computing).
5 features you would not expect from a camera
Security cameras in IoT can help optimize security, safety and operations in private and business life. The key to achieving this is in apps developed to make cameras smarter. It is also essential that the cameras can communicate with other systems in IoT. Here are some examples of video applications that will be very common in the near future.
- Improve operations in commercial buildings
- Detect fire before it occurs and cause damage
- Help retailers to sell more in their stores
- Detect theft while staff has lost track
- Protecting people and machines from accidents at work
With every app that is developed for IoT cameras, thousands of devices around the world may become smarter within 5 minutes. Seen in this light, security professionals may at some point not need any other equipment except cameras.
Discover more about what cameras can do for you and what you can do with cameras
here.