Ever wondered how a camera can pick out a face in the crowd or if that gym security camera is a watchful guardian or an intrusive eye? Discover the intricate dance between security and privacy in our neighborhoods, as host, Donna DiMaggio Berger, sits down with guest Louis DiGioia from IC Real Time. They shed light on the advanced technology that's safeguarding our communities, from the sharpness of high-resolution cameras to the stealth of thermal imaging. Dive into the heart of today's surveillance systems and find out just how much protection they can offer to your community association, without crossing the fine line into privacy infringement.
Donna and Louis dissect the nuances of surveillance in communal spaces and the crucial role of legal and insurance advice in protecting your association from potential liability. They also discuss the art of deterrence through smartly positioned signage and robust camera coverage, ensuring you're informed about the best practices for maintaining both security and peace of mind.
Zooming in on the future of surveillance, they navigate through the legalities and ethics of facial recognition technology. Donna and Louis also break down the storage puzzle, evaluating network video recorders against cloud-based solutions. For community associations eyeing a surveillance upgrade, this conversation is packed with insights you simply can't afford to miss.
Conversation Highlights Include:
Ever wondered how a camera can pick out a face in the crowd or if that gym security camera is a watchful guardian or an intrusive eye? Discover the intricate dance between security and privacy in our neighborhoods, as host, Donna DiMaggio Berger, sits down with guest Louis DiGioia from IC Real Time. They shed light on the advanced technology that's safeguarding our communities, from the sharpness of high-resolution cameras to the stealth of thermal imaging. Dive into the heart of today's surveillance systems and find out just how much protection they can offer to your community association, without crossing the fine line into privacy infringement.
Donna and Louis dissect the nuances of surveillance in communal spaces and the crucial role of legal and insurance advice in protecting your association from potential liability. They also discuss the art of deterrence through smartly positioned signage and robust camera coverage, ensuring you're informed about the best practices for maintaining both security and peace of mind.
Zooming in on the future of surveillance, they navigate through the legalities and ethics of facial recognition technology. Donna and Louis also break down the storage puzzle, evaluating network video recorders against cloud-based solutions. For community associations eyeing a surveillance upgrade, this conversation is packed with insights you simply can't afford to miss.
Conversation Highlights Include:
Hi everyone. I'm attorney Donna DiMaggio-Burger and this is Take it to the Board where we speak Kondo and HOA. Last weekend I was trying out a new to me brunch spot in Fort Lauderdale and I decided to check out the antique shop next door. When I got to the entrance, I noticed a large sticker announcing that the premises were being videotaped by today's guest, ic Real Time. I took it as a sign that today's episode is going to provide real value to many of our listeners.
Speaker 1:Years ago, it would have been highly unusual to see video cameras in most public places. Today they are everywhere and we've all become much more used to expecting them when we're out in public In a community association setting. These cameras don't just capture crimes. They also capture rules violations Think about that bad behavior in the jacuzzi at night traffic accidents, slip and falls and more. However, just because the goals may be worthy and the cameras may be more commonplace, that doesn't mean that most people are entirely comfortable with having their images captured on film and, at times, their voices as well. My guest today is Louis DeGioia from IC Real Time. Ic Real Time was founded in 2006 and is a leading digital surveillance manufacturer serving the residential, commercial, government and military security markets. Louis and I are going to discuss what is driving the growing desire for many communities to install cameras, the various uses and possible drawbacks of security cameras, and the top privacy concerns when it comes to installing these devices in your community. So, louis, welcome to take it to the board.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Don. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm very excited to have this conversation with you.
Speaker 1:Well, we are as well, so I want to start out with the questions my clients ask most often when installing video cameras in their communities, and that is always about privacy concerns, louis. So first of all, can you tell me what about the range these cameras have in terms of capturing clear images and clear audio?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. The range on what you're going to see when it comes to cameras will really depend on the specifics of the camera itself. We have cameras that will give you what I call clarifiable identification from as close as five feet away to as far as a mile away and I know that sounds like an exaggerated distance but when you get into some of the parameters of the technology that exist nowadays, with optical zoom, higher resolutions that are in the 8 and 12 megapixel range and counting, you really can capture a lot of detail at short and long distances.
Speaker 1:I assume the pricing varies, louis, depending on how clear you want that image to be correct.
Speaker 2:Well, it does. But so here's what's interesting. It all depends on the install parameters. I could take a run of the mill and I'll use a little bit of terminology that may not be familiar, but those that look into it will become familiar. But I take a four megapixel resolution camera and I hang it up on an eight foot Eve with what's known as a 2.8 millimeter fixed lens. The rule of thumb and video surveillance is that for every millimeter of lens you get about 10 feet of, again, clarifiable identification.
Speaker 2:So we run our products on a principle that is unique to, not the industry, but our terminology is to us, and we call it Dory, and it's detect, observe, recognize and identify. So detect I see something happening. Observe, watching what's happening. Recognize is okay, I can tell the difference between a person and a dog or a cat, and then identification is oh my gosh, that's Donna. Oh my gosh, that's Lewis.
Speaker 2:So when I talk about every millimeter of lens size, giving you 10 feet of a clarifiable identification, a 2.8 millimeter camera translates to 28 feet minus the mounting height. So if I'm up on an eight foot Eve, I still get about 20 feet. If I get up to a 16 foot second story Eve I'm now knocking myself down to a net of 12 feet and I have to start getting into those features of motorized lenses to augment the distance to where I want to get clarity and identification. And no, it does not, and I think driving your original point, it does not say, oh, this camera's gone from $200 to $1,200. It's more like this camera's gone from $200 to $250. But if you want to see a mile away now, we're going to get up to $1,200.
Speaker 1:I'm going to give you an example. So and it's an example that is actually happening in one of my client communities the association believes there's vandalism. They know there's vandalism taking place. They believe it might be somebody inside the community that's committing the vandalism. They come to you, lewis, and they say what kind of cameras should we install? We want to be able to identify who's committing the vandalism in the community.
Speaker 2:It's a great question and if they want to identify based on specific persons known to them, then my recommendation it's not about the camera, it's about the platform you sit on in terms of the network video recorder, and I'm going to recommend them into today's modern AI, our big buzzword everyone uses. But the AI technology that exists on that platform nowadays, through that network video recorder, actually allows you to preload a database of faces. Tag them with who that person is Now, at least someone that's known to you within the community. You're going to get a hit on their face Well, a hit on them, based on their face appearing in the camera and you having preloaded them into the database. If it's someone that hopped the fence in the middle of the night with a can of spray paint, you can get again. Now this goes back to what are we installing, where are we mounting it? You can certainly get a clarifiable identity in order to share that with local law enforcement.
Speaker 1:So you said AI, can, we can pre-tag our residents, let's say and then if we believe that there's a vandalism taking place, we can run through the tape and have it check for those faces. It's a facial recognition.
Speaker 2:Facial recognition database correct.
Speaker 1:How accurate is that, Louis?
Speaker 2:The believe it. As ridiculous as it may sound, it's over 99%. No one's going to say 100, because Murphy's law exists. Anything environmentally can alter an outcome in an effect, but it is 99% that you will get that accurate recognition of who that person is If they had a mask, as everyone got used to wearing during COVID. The technology, the algorithm, is that finite that it then goes with the facial features above the nose area towards the brow.
Speaker 1:Of course, we can't talk about how effective the facial recognition is without talking about privacy concerns, right, yeah? So I'm going to use the standard disclaimer, which is we're not giving legal advice, but I would urge every association that wants to do this to get a legal opinion in terms of, as you said, pre-tagging your residents. Where are they getting the imagery from? Do the residents know their images are being uploaded? I would assume in some communities that residents are in favor of this for security purposes, and I would assume that in other communities, they're going to be dead set against this kind of technology. What are you hearing from clients about this?
Speaker 2:That's a great question and this comes from my own HOA here in South Florida, where I reside, which is not a multi-unit dwelling but residential housing. They feel actually, that they are going to increase the value of the homes in the community by having this type of technology in place. I think that it's those that potentially have something to hide that do not want to voluntarily engage in this kind of security for their community. I think, from what I've been made to hear from neighbors and again, people within my own community, the fact of the matter is, if it's going to create a safety net, if it's going to give law enforcement a head start on who to look to or where to look and it may very well increase the property value which I'm not a real estate expert, so please don't take my word for that this is just all theoretical. Like gee, who wouldn't want to spend a little bit more money on a home or a dwelling in a multi-unit situation where you're guaranteed a level of protection that the next place may not offer?
Speaker 1:I have more than one community Lewis where we've had an unauthorized occupant, so it may be a tenant whose boyfriend or girlfriend has moved into. The unit has never been approved and the association has basically said this person is no longer welcome in the community for whatever reason. The incident that comes to my mind is the unauthorized occupant actually committed an assault inside the community. So that kind of technology in terms of being able to prove that the person entered the community would be helpful.
Speaker 2:A hundred percent it would be, and even if you don't have their face preloaded into a database. So again you can key in on the fact that this is so-and-so. The fact of the matter is, if you have the right level of video surveillance installed, you're going to get a good, clear look at their face. And if they're hanging around, if they're local to the scene and situation, again you're giving law enforcement a great head start on where to go and begin their investigation.
Speaker 1:I had an episode last season with a drone company and their images. Well, again, it depends on what they've loaded onto the drone, but some of them just look like body heat images. You just know it's a person.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure, we, you know. So we do offer a thermal technology. This gets into the higher end residential. But you know again, we service nationally. And when you get into certain scenarios where you've got a lot of acreage your house has woods around you we have a thermal technology that will pick up the variance in human body heat, as well as car engines, from up to eight tenths of a mile away. And, if I can paint the visual for anyone listening, if we're all in a certain age range, we've seen predator in the 1980s and what he saw when he had his mask on is a mirror image of what that thermal technology presents itself. And think of also even modern day, if you've watched any law enforcement helicopter tracking a stolen car or a suspect on the ground from the air. That's the type of thermal technology that exists, if you wanted to go that far, because you can set alerts to be sent to you real time when those body heat variants wind up occurring.
Speaker 1:So useful, I mean, I would imagine, from an association's perspective. Or even if I have cameras in my home, I don't need to see, I don't need to predator, look from you know a mile away. I need to see a person's face so I kind of potentially identify if I'm, you know, the subject of a crime.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and so I wouldn't recommend a thermal in that situation. I would do it from that first scenario you painted in your statement there, which is I you know what I'm on a lot of acreage. I need to know something's coming from a mile away. Maybe the best way that I can notice it is through a heat variance. But when someone comes up close to my property, right, I'm not predator, I don't want to look like see how he does. I want to get that, you know, just clear view of that image of that individual.
Speaker 1:I imagine when a board comes to you, lewis, and says look, we want to install cameras for the first time, or maybe they've got some cameras, they want to install additional cameras. Let's talk about areas where people feel most sensitive about being filmed. I said in the introduction that not everybody's entirely comfortable with being caught on camera. What I hear from clients mostly is the gym, the pool area, areas where people feel a little more vulnerable, either because of the activity or what they're wearing. What about you? Know what's your recommendation when it comes to installing cameras in those more sensitive comment areas?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think the first thing I recommend is from a legal standpoint. We talked to an expert like yourself about are there any liabilities that get created? Because, you put it very appropriately, people feel vulnerable. I don't, even if I'm comfortable in my own skin. I don't necessarily want to be videotaped every time I go to the pool in my bathing suit or, you know, in a tank top and gym shorts to the workout area or the workout room. So I would want to understand what's the liability to the community, to the HOA, in the event that there is going to be video observation in those common areas. I would also encourage, you know, from an insurance standpoint, it may be a best practice.
Speaker 2:I think it's in the interest of any community of people that are putting money into a you know, I'll just call it a common pity right, which is you know their fees and their reserves and all that stuff, and you know to not know whether or not so-and-so really slipped next to the pool and broke their arm because of something they did or because of something that was negligent on behalf of the community itself. So you know, that's really my canned response to people that do want to say look again. I don't necessarily want to be looked at every time I'm around the pool. My counter is how much money do you potentially want to save or wind up spending on lawsuits because you didn't have the right observation in place to prove or disprove a scenario that could occur?
Speaker 1:Well, it's a really good point because, I will tell you after the fact, we get so many slip and falls as you can imagine associations I can't think of many associations that haven't been on the receiving end of at least one slip and fall over the you know course of the last five years. So being able to go back and look at the video footage and say, was this person really here? Did they really slip the way they said they slipped? But this leads me into my next question, lewis, which is monitoring. So it's one thing to have these cameras up right and they're, you know, your eye in the sky looking but what are the monitoring obligations? How does that work? For instance, after the fact is one thing, but what if somebody's injured in the pool or in the gym or somewhere else and nobody's actually looking at the monitor? Is there an expectation that there's somebody watching out for me behind that camera?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what a great question, Donna. So now we're going to get back into a little bit. I won't go down the rabbit hole, but I'll give. I'll peel the layer back a little bit and we'll talk about some of the technology that exists. There are particular technologies. We have termed them IVS Intelligent Video Services.
Speaker 2:This is the ability to get the camera installed, bring the view that that camera sees up on your monitor, and then go into the dashboard, the interface of the camera itself, and begin to set with your mouse custom areas of interest that you want to be alerted if somebody crosses into that area.
Speaker 2:So commonly these are referred to as trip wires and intrusion zones. So let's paint this pool hypothetical right when, oh my gosh, if I start, something happens to me in the water, who's going to know I'm in the water? I would draw an intrusion zone just around the edge of the pool that leads into the interior of the pool. Then there's going to be an alert sent to anyone who set up to monitor the system when someone's getting in and out of the swimming pool. So again, as long as people can let go of the notion that someone's watching me for the sake of watching me, they should actually take a little bit of comfort and peace of mind in knowing at least someone knows I got in the water and there may be now more app to be observant of me to make sure that everything's okay in the water.
Speaker 1:Can the technology get to the point where it can detect distress, human distress?
Speaker 2:Right now the only way to do that is through what's known as an environmental sensor Environment. I'm not going to say brand names on your podcast, but we are partnered with one of the leading environmental sensors in the country and they can sense words. So if keywords are programmed into the AI of the sensor, if any of those keywords are shouted, that will send a trigger to the video camera and push an alert to the person who monitors that system.
Speaker 1:That's fascinating. I'm assuming one of the keywords is help.
Speaker 2:Help. We're not going to get into school-related stuff, but certainly, you know, fight violence, other words that would want to trigger a camera to be alerted to the fact that something's happening in the scene. I don't want to sit here and profess to you or any of your listeners and especially knowing everyone's part of a community or an HOA or a condo association. I don't want to profess that these things have been hung up around swimming pools in multi-unit dwellings, but they are mountable somewhere and they do perform as advertised and they do integrate right into the IC Real-Time video surveillance system.
Speaker 1:Are there features, Lewis, in your cameras that allow users to easily disable or adjust settings for increased privacy?
Speaker 2:100%. You can go into the interfaces of the camera. You can mask what we call masking. You can mask off areas where the camera is still going to record. You're not going to create privacy concerns because alerts are being set off. Maybe an individual doesn't want it to be known every time they walk out to their garbage pail on Tuesday to take their trash out that type of situation. I think this could lead into a greater dialogue about what's known as the geospaces. The geospaces and you're probably way more familiar with this from a legal standpoint than I am but the geospaces is what the camera sees beyond what it was intended to see. So if I hang that camera up over my driveway, my intention is the protection and safety of my vehicles. Unintentionally. The geospaces beyond that the street, the neighbor's house across the way, etc. It's happenstance of just what's being recorded. Slash observed. Again, I don't know privacy laws, as you would in these scenarios, but I wouldn't be uncomfortable. I hung cameras around my home and, yeah, my neighbors were like, wow, we've never seen these types of cameras.
Speaker 1:Wow, Lewis, you have a fortress at your end. What?
Speaker 2:have you got in there? That's part of the commentary that came, for sure, but they hadn't seen it. And one of my neighbors was like, well wait, you can see my driveway, can't you? And I told them I can mask that off and not get that for any kind of alerts, but if something happened, if an incident happened in your driveway at two o'clock in the morning, you should take some comfort knowing you can point the law enforcement to my front door. I'm happy to share what my camera's captured if it means getting your property back or catching a suspect that may have committed a crime.
Speaker 1:You're assuming, lewis, that your neighbor's not the wrong door, moving a body out in the middle of the night to the trunk of their car. I think Hollywood's covered that as a plot point, but you know it's funny. We are getting a lot of complaints in our multifamily buildings about people installing the doorbell videos, the ring or the nest. And again, like you said, depending on the way the building is set up, it may not just capture people dropping packages at their door. It may go across the way and capture everybody coming and going from their neighbor's unit. So you know we're hearing about those complaints as well. And again, this is a conversation for boards to have with legal counsel about whether or not they want to pass a policy, whether or not they want to prove where installation should be allowed. But there are security concerns and we saw a lot during the pandemic because everybody was doing what Ordering food to their homes, ordering items to their homes. This time of year as well, you've got a lot of package deliveries and people want to have those cameras for security reasons.
Speaker 2:And if I'm a neighbor that chooses not to install a door station, let's call it doorbell camera and we manufacture, you know, that line as well. If I'm a neighbor that doesn't want to install one, I don't see why I wouldn't take comfort in knowing that the person across the way does have one. And you know what? My front door is being watched, at no cost to myself. You know, I just think it's all in the kind of the eye of the beholder and what their particular reasons are to be comfortable or uncomfortable. I would always want to try and have a conversation with those residents in those communities to just try and express to them that, again, this is not about invasion of privacy, this is not about invasion of the geospACE, this is all very much about community and safety and creating a standard where everyone can be a little bit more comfortable, not only when their head hits the pillow at night but when they pull out of their driveway in the morning.
Speaker 1:Well you know, in Florida you also have a lot of people that are away from their residences for a significant period of time.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and a monitor. You know what better way to watch your residents with your own camera system? And again, in the absence of wanting to make that investment, isn't it nice to know that your neighbor may have something and your property inadvertently for lack of a better word is being watched on your behalf?
Speaker 1:So I want to talk about signage. So let's get back to the scenario where the association is installing these cameras on the common areas. What kind of signage do you recommend that they install so to allow people to know that they're being recorded?
Speaker 2:Exactly what you just said. I would get a sign that says this area is under the observation of video surveillance, or in so many words. And Home Depot sells them and they do, you know, 12 by 12s and they're made of the right kind of aluminum materials. So you know, and it's meant to be hung up outside, and I have one on my property. You know I make people aware when you're entering my property. You're under video surveillance both inside and out. It's just a way you know it's the right way to do it and that is the signage I would recommend.
Speaker 1:Now what if they're being recorded audio? Talk to us about the cameras. Everybody you know everybody assumes yes, I'm being filmed, but are my words being captured as well?
Speaker 2:Sure. So cameras do have built-in microphones. Cameras can capture conversation up to a certain distance. I know from professional and personal experience when you start to get to kind of that 12 foot plus range outside especially with any kind of environmental noise that comes into place from passing automobiles to the weather you know that audio becomes more subdued and a little bit more difficult to hear. There are opportunities to turn off any of those built-in microphones while still turning on audio detection features. Some of the technology and this has actually existed for years and it only continues to improve and enhance but some of the technology allows you to set decibel parameters if you want to pick up specific types of noises.
Speaker 2:And again, forgive the rabbit hole dive, but I had an install in South Los Angeles way back in 2018. And he needed cameras. He was a property owner and a landlord to section 8 housing in some certain areas that were high crime areas, and the problem was the police were always arriving a little bit too late from any of the foul play that occurred. So he wanted cameras set up that would pick up the decibel of a gunshot, and the moment that that decibel was picked up, it sent him his push notification through his mobile application so he could immediately get on the phone with local law enforcement and say hey, gunshot at this, address my property. So again, we can turn the mic off and not pick up the conversation. We can still turn the audio detection settings on and manipulate those decibels.
Speaker 1:That is really interesting. So in some of my communities, when you said the police getting there a little too late, far too often when we have an assault situation, whether it's a verbal assault or physical assault, when the police show up it's a he said, he said or he said, she said situation, and so we really benefit of audio recording and I apologize to cut you off.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, but that's. That's exactly. My point is, if we've got the audio, we can actually prove what happened, who made the threats, what, what the nature of the threats were In terms of the signage, then I would assume that you also recommend that you say not only are you, not only are you being filmed, but we're capturing audio as well.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, you're under video and audio surveillance. Absolutely. And again, you know I'm not the legal expert. I imagine if I hang that sign up I've got some coverage from from being held liable for having recorded somebody.
Speaker 1:You full well knew what you were engaging with because the sign was very prevalent, you know, when you were on the property this is a podcast, so since we're being heard all over the country and other parts of the world, I don't want to get into the two party versus one party consent because, you know, check it's different depending on your jurisdiction in terms of what you can do. I did want to ask you in terms of your encryption methods. So, let's say, we've captured the video. Now there's a question in terms of proof after the fact there was an assault or another criminal incident. Is there a certain way that you would recommend that you, that the client, transmit that video? I'm assuming it's not just forwarding the video by email? No, it's not.
Speaker 2:So in the case of the majority of your video surveillance platforms that are out there, they record a video in some kind of proprietary format that requires you to have their mobile application, their desktop software, pc or Mac and you'll have to grab that video in that native format and then you'll just have to make converted into an MPEG for in order to share it, you know, with, with a local enforcement or whomever you wanted to share it to you know. When you say encryption, I think of encryption standards to protect the integrity of the video and the system. That could be a different commentary from what I think you were driving at with this question.
Speaker 1:No, definitely. So we talked about signage and we've talked about the cameras. I'm not sure and I want to ask you this question that the signage should be located directly below or above the camera, because doesn't that make it an easy target for somebody to just knock out your camera?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's a great point to bring up. I mean, I would just put the signage somewhere where they can see it. Now, at that point, when they're aware there are cameras, they're going to be looking up, you know, and if they see a camera, you know cameras, depending on the housing. But when you go with something that's called a vandal dome, which is the surveillance eyeball itself situated behind an acrylic housing the domes and again not unique to ICER Real Time, but I'm giving folks some industry standards to help them out you want to look for something that has what's called an IK10 Joule rating and that IK10 rating speaks to how many pounds of pressure per square inch it takes to crack that housing and hurt the camera. It takes a lot With IK10, I believe it's upwards of 250 pounds of pressure per square inch.
Speaker 1:That was going to be my question. That was one of the questions. How vulnerable are your cameras to being vandalized?
Speaker 2:They're more vulnerable to being knocked out of their orientation than they are to cracking that vandal dome housing and we always recommend a minimum eight foot mounting height. I ideally tell people private residential if you have a second floor, go up under that eve at 16 feet. If you have a single story house, just get it tucked right up under that. That's soffit and at least you know you're at a solid eight, nine foot mounting height. Now someone's got to come along with a ladder, you know even a six foot baseball bat that has to s motion to knock your cam. Have they're going to do dance before they disrupt the camera at all? And and have time for that, if you' crime, you know you're lo out relatively quickly.
Speaker 1:W know we have a six month here in florida. What's y recommending? That they tak before a storm, or is there prep them for a storm.
Speaker 2:It' I never want to use trag so I'm very careful here. I can tell you that, being based company and our roo since 2006,. We have insta beachfront, you know, nor west Um. We had a lot of clients over on the west through the tragedy. They over the past couple of y of the storm surge coming right in the middle of th winds. They didn't budge everything. Unfortunately, the cameras are IP 67 and wants to Google that Tho when they're reading very are outdoor weather ratin best practices that I wil company seasoned or othe to um silicone waterproof around the outside of the to just enhance the integ to take the cameras down. A whole lot of storm.
Speaker 1:I w what kind of resources do basis for your customers regulations in terms of, in terms of potential te that's a.
Speaker 2:It's a great qu keep in mind is we do not that is set up to sell to um homeowner Um. We sell Um and our typical client um and we vet them all B company someone that's g and current, you know, in fire alarm, burglar video etc. Um. So we do send all out to the installing par unfortunately put the oni are sharing with their co the good news. Anybody ca software suites. There's the board. We happen to the companion app, the c. We post field impact noti these types of updates tha.
Speaker 2:That is where someone can consumer see what's happe with IC real time Um the of our offerings we do s are ultimately spending. We actually offer a life live tech support in house. These are our employees b and Arizona office. So if time zone person you get up until 8 30 at night B IC real time tech support, it very clearly Press on partner, press two. If you press two, you wind up wi on the phone and there are around here. We hold our strategically the end c in in less than three min most days and they're on. Who will help them with is how do I download this? I get this snapshot my m from the house. I need to back on my mobile device. Happy to help them, they who are installing partner and and and our livelihood than happy to give them th and and then, and just to t aware, we also offer trai you're installing partner customer success team. You can have a video conferen of our success trainers, an how to use the mobile app software. Everything to m it takes to manage the s to know.
Speaker 1:I need that for system too. I actually t husband Can we look at? Is a dog that really likes, really really likes We'l dog? It is, so maybe we'll. Um, I want to talk a little and you're installing part. Have you heard from your I that a lot of their commun with local law enforcement to kind of map out a vide plan in terms of how many kind, what resolution loc that, yeah, I mean for t, the business and the comm format.
Speaker 2:I won't say names with you offline to show we there was a community as a community on the eas island that was a gated homes and local law enforc Just do a surge of things. Corner of the country, uh, increase of crime, a vandal and things of that nature. Our install partner, creat, actually held an online w available to all the resi, real time Um it's produc and service offerings. So like that, with the install up to when, including creat and all of the marketing m, we're helping out the ri that question was is beca?
Speaker 1:They don't know what they true, even when it comes t, but I imagine, for instance, are all your cameras stand, or is that an add, an opti kind of add that? So that about the audio, is that?
Speaker 2:as well. So audio is not night visions on every mod, a couple of varying levels. Believe it or not. It was Sony, specifically for vide a, what we call an image c, starvis and again anyw keywords and do a little down the rabbit hole. Bu was what gave birth to 2 nickname. Is starlight. Bec required to keep the cam mode is basically what yo moonlight, let alone any, you have in the scene S seven color Traditionall it traditionally. What ha your traditional irs whi black and white view were. That is some there was su. The closer the person got, more white washout got c. This was the IR bouncing got closer. So something we're going back about, a called smart IR and smart a detector built into the as an object got closer, infrared output in order and that back splash. So my nose right up in front and I would just maintain black and white image.
Speaker 1:I fixed cameras versus cam right.
Speaker 2:Well, there's a cu, like I described earlier, called a motorized lens. You back to that rule of 10 feet of clarifiable I fixed lens cameras. 2.8 mil way is 50 feet. At the ed parking lot entrances 50, the first camera at my m, no problem, I'm 16 ft in the net of 12 ft. Clarifi, do I do? Well, you get a. You. You situate that len by zooming in to augment that far entry point. So y identifications, you get horizontal field of view that object from far away.
Speaker 2:Talking about cameras that down, these are known as zoom, these are now geti of video surveillance wh with a PTZ like set it on. So in other words, I could hang one up. I have a vast property in front of me, a parking lot, a common area or whatever. I want my PTZ camera to go onto five different points of touring and I want it to stay there up to a maximum of 300 seconds to get specific. But every time it hits its maximum it stays on that spot. Now I set it up further with those IVS rules I described earlier and if something crosses into the scene that trips one of my rules, now my PTZ camera zooms all the way in and from a screen perspective. That object is basically six inches in front of my face, be it a person or a vehicle, and the camera follows it. It locks in on it and follows it until that object either leaves the scene or a time expiration of 300 seconds occurs. Then it resets itself back to its touring pattern. It was on.
Speaker 1:I imagine you go to these industry trade shows right All the time.
Speaker 2:They wouldn't talk. If you can't guess.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you do a great job, but who's the leader in video camera tech in the world?
Speaker 2:So it's a great question. From a technology standpoint, we're really all the same. Really, what it comes down to is a quality of the component that you're installing. Nowadays, with certain Eastern Asian manufacturing resources, there's a concern about where the camera's being fabricated, what kind of security protocols do they pass, certain government accolades, et cetera. So the variances lie there in the fabrication. In terms of the technology, again, it's what someone engineers, our engineers at our factory in South Korea are ultimately going to get their hands on, because nothing's really patented and proprietary in the world of video surveillance other than maybe some keywords or acronyms and things of that nature.
Speaker 2:But I could sit here and tell you that there are definitely brands that fit certain installs better than others. We're not the brand to install at the airport, on the outside of the airport. We are the brand to install residentially speaking, because we've been doing it for 17 years and we've done it again. For privacy matters, I can't sit here and say names, but people you can think of at the top of the A list of celebrity, sports, business people they all have IC Real Time camera systems. I'll give you one great example If you go to Atlantis in the Bahamas, next time anyone listening goes to Atlantis in the Bahamas. Just look up and you'll see the name on the side of the camera.
Speaker 1:I imagine casinos really want to have high tech news.
Speaker 2:We fit into that. We have a humongous presence in a couple of medical industries and unfortunately hate to say it. But prisons, military, we fit the bill for all of those.
Speaker 1:I was just trying to figure out if there was a leader in the video camera tech market, whether it was China or Germany or America, if there was any clear front runner.
Speaker 2:China held the front running status for certainly the past 20 years. 95% of the video surveillance installed in this country over the past two decades came from China. For anyone that followed the news back in 2017 with the great backdoor hack that happened in video surveillance, this is what caused at that time, who is Vice President Mike Pence, to open up the National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA, which was a document written post-World War II. Out of the Cold War in the 50s, he added an amendment to that to include video surveillance, at which point they put in mandates for how they were going to handle any Chinese manufacturing. As a result, what you've seen in the past six years gone by in counting is a great exodus from China and countries like South Korea, Taiwan.
Speaker 2:They're the ones that have now really opened up. They had a toe in the water, so to speak, but they were never able to jump into the pool because of China. Well, now the reverse is happening. Your two biggest Chinese manufacturers are being pushed out very hard. Congressionally speaking, they're working on it still. A lot has happened. A lot of installations have been ripped out and reinstalled with more acceptable brands.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of our condo and HOA boards, lewis, are going to be stuck on the facial recognition tech. This is a question that I get asked and I imagine I'm going to get asked more frequently in the future. Okay, we've got the cameras in our condo or our HOA. What if one of the people we've tagged turns out to be a sexual predator or turns out to be on a watch list of some sort? Is there an alert that would allow that association, that would alert the association that this person? I don't know if that's possible because I don't know if it's linked up anywhere else.
Speaker 2:It's not possible because to my knowledge, to this day there is not a central monitoring service that databases these folks and allows for the transmission of that video data in real time to return an alert on someone that may be on one of those lists.
Speaker 1:What's your personal philosophy on that, lewis, do you think we'd be a safer society if there was something like that?
Speaker 2:My obvious answer for me, I should say my obvious answer is yes, we would be a safer society. For that, the good news is and let's key in, unfortunately, on the sexual predator database. For a second, interfaces are uploaded to that database. So now what I can do and you're going to guide me legally here, so I'm going to rephrase and say what I think I can do is grab those mug shots out of that sexual predator database. I can do that and load those into my own personal platform database. Now I will get an alert on my system if one of those faces show up. If there are predators local to me, within an X mile radius that I'm concerned about, I'm going to go ahead and do that. Now. I'm going to know when they come in front of my camera system.
Speaker 1:There's so many people listening right now where they have approval screening for new purchasers, for new tenants. What you're saying is you can actually upload, use that system to run and check mug shots as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could take. So if I'm a criminal and I'm in some database that's forward-facing to the public, mind you, because the sexual predator database is forward-facing to the public, we can all log in today, as are the criminal records for the criminal part, unless it's minors, 100 percent.
Speaker 2:I am going to go to those forward-facing public records. I'm going to take those mug shots, I'm going to download them and save them. I'm going to load them onto my proprietary video platform and I'm going to set up an alert in my facial recognition database. Just like I'm going to take Donna and Lewis and mark them as residents because I get their head shot, I'm going to take these head shots and I'm going to mark them as a not approved list person. I want alerts sent to me whenever one of these characters appear.
Speaker 1:I would say this to our listeners Please check with legal counsel before you attempt to do this. But again, one of the things that they gather they gather a picture ID for potential purchasers. They will have that driver's license picture or passport picture. The options that technology will afford for future screening are impressive, but they also do not come without significant risk. I would suggest you work with your professional advisors. I'm going to ask you about wired versus wireless security cameras. Talk to us about that.
Speaker 2:We do make a Wi-Fi line. We call it IC Home. This is our door station. This is both an indoor and outdoor Wi-Fi pan-tilt zoom camera. We have a camera that is a floodlight camera like your typical floodlight. You would hang on the outside of your home, except this one has a camera built into it. Then we have a little desktop version that's got magnetic. Put it on the fridge, watch the kids, the dog, all that stuff.
Speaker 2:Wi-fi versus wired. The Wi-Fi technology is vastly improved over, I'd say, the past five or six years gone by. Historically, the problem with Wi-Fi is the signal that it delegates. As you encounter cement, concrete, sheet rock, metal beanings and everything our dwellings are built out of, They've improved that Wi-Fi signal strength. The majority of the cameras have these very strong antennas built into them. There's no worries in terms of video latency or video loss anymore. Now it just comes down to what are the parameters of the install. There are folks that do not want to pay a contractor to punch holes in their walls and go through their crawl space and pull network cable in order to create a camera network. There are those that would prefer to just drill something into place, have it hung up and rely on the Wi-Fi network, A wired camera system. It offers a lot more versatility in terms of a combination of functionality, To a certain extent, reliability, versus a Wi-Fi system. But Wi-Fi systems are really not what they used to be. They're quite commonplace nowadays.
Speaker 1:They're differential in pricing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there can be. I can give you an example and tell you that a stationary Wi-Fi camera, like that floodlight camera, may carry a retail price to the consumer of $400. And a comparable higher end residential camera, same kind of resolution, functions, features, etc. On top of $400, it could add as much as 30%.
Speaker 1:Gotcha, Want to talk to you before because you've been so generous with your time. We're going to wrap up, but I want to ask you about your data storage. Is it all cloud-based?
Speaker 2:No, no, we offer three ways to store video on the camera. The first way, my recommended way, is to actually have a network video recorder on-premise, with a wired system, especially you want to home run those network cables back to that unit and then you can build out. Storage is based on how much do you want to record before first, then first out, right over occurs. All of our cameras have a micro SD card slot. It comes from our factory with 32 gigabits, but you can get up to 256. It supports a 256 gigabit SD card. Recording 24-7 will give you about seven to 10 days of storage. If you want to get beyond that, you want to go to a network video recorder. And then, of course, the cloud does exist, like probably every other business in the world. We all support JetBasos, our cloud posted on the AWS, amazon web services. But no, we do offer all three methods of storage.
Speaker 1:What's the tape over time? Is it typically because I hear from a lot of clients it's 30 days, some it's seven to 10. What's your recommendation on that?
Speaker 2:My recommendation is load the recorder up with as much storage as it will hold. So to give you a more finite answer to that, if I have, let's say, an eight-channel recorder that has two hard drive storage bays in it OK, sata drives they call them If it has two SATA drives in it and each of those SATA drives can support up to, let's say, eight megabits, I would put all 16 terabytes, I would load the thing up and on an eight-camera system I'd probably get in excess of three to four months of recording before the writeover starts.
Speaker 1:But has anything ever lost completely? If we were going to go and do a forensic investigation of the camera, can we pull back things that have been taped over last year, for instance?
Speaker 2:You can't pull back what's been taped over, but you can pull out from a damaged hard drive. We've partnered with everyone on Odeoname Seagate, and we use a particular commercial grade hard drive that they may call the Skyhawk. And because of the volume that we do, we have a very special deal set up with Seagate where we can take a broken hard drive, send it into their forensics and they can extract the video data. And that's a free service, by the way, to anyone that buys an ICRIL Tonset.
Speaker 1:Good to know. So there's been a running theme on the podcast for the last year where I ask everybody about artificial intelligence, how it may impact their community. You already have a device. I think it's a cloud-based device named Ella, right.
Speaker 2:Well, ella, we have Sunset. Ella, the Sun has been set, it no longer exists.
Speaker 1:Ella's gone.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you why, though in a nutshell, before we wrap up here. Ella at the time, back in 2018, was the first of its kind algorithm that crawled the metadata that happens in video surveillance, so unbeknownst maybe to a lot of people. Listening. When you're recording video, the metadata, what exists in the parameters of that video, are actually being stored on the back end, and so what are those parameters? They're human versus animal, red versus white In the case of vehicles, truck versus sedan versus van, etc. So what Ella did was it crawled that metadata. Because a historic problem prior to Ella with video surveillance is if you had an incident in your community, what camera did it occur on? Well, there's four we have to look at. What data did it occur on Somewhere in the past week? Can you imagine the time consumption of scrubbing through three, four, five, seven, ten days, thirty days of video, looking for a five-second blurb of an occurrence?
Speaker 1:So you could ask Ella find me a red truck.
Speaker 2:How about even better? I could ask Ella find me a red Toyota pickup truck.
Speaker 1:And it'll take you to that snippet in the video.
Speaker 2:Any snippet that has a red Toyota pickup truck would instantly come up in front of me, and now I can just look at those snippets to find what I'm looking for. So why did we sunset it? We were able we, the engineers of the world were able to migrate the metadata algorithm onto the hardware. So part of our AI package offering is the ability to not only get alerts pushed to you based on specific faces, but human detection, vehicle detection, and this is great for the community listeners. We have our license plate technology, anpr. Okay, anpr is exactly what I just described.
Speaker 2:I could go to any video and I can type in any manufacturer's badging because the algorithms have been written and fine tuned to recognize them.
Speaker 2:So any automotive manufacturing badging, the difference between a sedan, a truck, a van, and I can now call up video right from my NVR interface. I want to see every red Toyota, every blue Ford, et cetera, and then, to put kind of the icing on the cake, with the ANPR technology I can also create allow lists and block lists based on license plates that I load into my license plate recognition database. So imagine having a community with a gate. You get all the residents to agree that anyone that's a resident, will give us their license plate. They pull up to the gate, the camera sees the license plate, it all instantaneously scrubs the database and says, oh, that car is on the allowed list. Then it sends through an alarm wire a trigger to the strike lock on that gate and opens it to allow the resident in. And if your license plate is not in the allow list, guess what? The gate's not going to open. And simultaneously you can be sending alerts to anyone that monitors the system that this license plate has arrived on the property.
Speaker 1:Sounds incredibly useful, but it also sounds to me, in terms of the metadata, that it requires constant updating, correct, no, no.
Speaker 2:No, the algorithms are already programmed in place and then, anytime there are updates needed, they're going. You know, the new car manufacturer got created and became very popular in America. That was my question Sure, you're going to. That'll be part of an update that you know we wind up pushing out to folks.
Speaker 1:It's like GPS where you need to update that. That was kind of where I was going with that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't need to update often. That's the good news.
Speaker 1:Is there going to be a next gen LO or we no?
Speaker 2:Well, because it's now proprietary to the hardware, there's no reason to have a third party device to go and give you the results that you're looking for. Again, nowadays, right on the camera platform itself, I can go and I can do metadata scrubbing. I gave you the vehicle examples on the people examples. I can say, and when I do video demonstrations for people and anyone listening that's going to contemplate a system and ever gets a video demo, I will show you this. I can go to that video data and say, for instance, at IC Real Time on Friday, all of our female employees wear their pink IC Real Time shirt. If I go into the video archives and say female pink T-shirt, which are parameters that exist in the metadata, I'm going to get the video clip returned of everyone walking around here. That's a female and a pink T-shirt.
Speaker 1:Which brings us full circle to people's comfort level with this sophisticated technology where, if you really wanted to, you could pinpoint where somebody was at a certain time, what they were doing 100%, you can. That's interesting. Is there anything? I didn't ask you, Louis, that I should have asked you.
Speaker 2:You know what? Honestly, donnie, you asked me a lot of great questions and I was happy to answer them. The only things that I can say that weren't touched upon and not to make a sales pitch out of your podcast, but certainly for everyone to understand that we're doing this for a very long time. We don't do what we do and put the time in our days that we put in for profit. We do it because we want to help. We've helped a lot of people over the years. We have been part of a lot of different stories that have solved crimes, that have prevented crimes. That's really why I wanted to join this podcast today. It's why I came to your boot camp. It's why I want to become more engaged with your listeners and the overall communities that you service, because that's really what our mission is. Our mission is to create safety and give people peace of mind. It's exactly why we're in business and we'll continue to be in business.
Speaker 1:Louis, I want to thank you for joining us. I learned a lot today. I'm sure our listeners learned a lot today. Stay in touch. I want to know what's going on in terms of the tech next year.
Speaker 2:I'll be more than happy to You'll see me at the boot camp. We'll talk more about it, I promise.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Thanks again.
Speaker 2:Have a great one.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us today. Don't forget to follow and rate us on your favorite podcast platform, or visit TicketToTheBoardcom for more ways to connect.