I appreciate the note of good luck, but fortunately we have got a rapidly growing customer base who love our products.

I’m not surprised that you haven’t found it compelling, since we spent all of our time just discussing what it means to have the DVR built into the camera, and we never got to why it is so valuable.

Here are a few examples of why having analytics and a DVR in the camera are hot:

1. It makes the perfect solution for Remote Guarding, where you can provide better protection than on-site guards at 1/4th the cost. This is why over a dozen monitoring companies have adopted the iCVR. Saving significant money while providing significantly better protection than guards is generating a lot of interest.

2. Wireless networks are increasingly being used for city wide surveillance systems, or outdoor perimeters. The iCVR is a perfect fit, since it solves the bandwidth problem. You can get continuous recording and pro-active detection of potential security breaches, and put as many cameras on a wireless network as you want.

3. We increasingly see schools who want to add IP video systems, but don’t want to add another network or expand their network to deal with the bandwidth. Since our storage is completely in the camera, they can add our iCVRs to their network without impacting the bandwidth. At the same time, they can use the analytics for detection, both outside and inside their buildings.

4. If you have a lot of sites that only need one or two cameras, there is no simpler solution, or less expensive IP cameras, than our iCVR. You just connect the cameras to the network with PoE and you’re up and running.

These are just a few examples. There are lots more.

Thanks.

Doug.

As you now see, yes, our camera is currently a standard resolution camera, and our encoders work with standard resolution analog cameras.

I don’t know how you could say that what I wrote was misleading. I thought it was fairly clear when I said “… using Mobotix’s MxPEG compression” that I was talking about Mobotix cameras, not our own cameras. After all, MxPEG compression is proprietary to Mobotix. No other company uses it. We use H.264 compression. My point was simply to show that by my estimate you would need about 900 GB to have 30 days of continuous storage for the Mobotix camera, because that is what it would take to have full DVR functionality in their camera. I can see now, looking back, that you said 2 TB will give over 60 days of continuous storage, which means that 1 TB would cover 30 days, so this is exactly in line with my point. There was nothing misleading here.

I agree with you that comparing the Mobotix camera with our iCVR is like comparing apples with oranges. Mobotix has a megapixel camera. Our iCVR is a camera with video analytics and a full DVR built-in. They are indeed two different animals.

I’ve never tried to compare the two products or to pit the two against each other. In fact, this is exactly why in my first response to you I said that we were talking about two different things. But you told me that I was wrong.

As I’ve been saying from the beginning, my point has been about what people mean by “storage in the camera” or “DVR in the camera”. The terms are being confused, but they should mean two very different things: Using a flash memory card in the camera works if you only need to capture event type recording, but if you need continuous recording, then you still need external storage. However, if you have a complete DVR in the camera, then you don’t need external storage.

I’m hoping you can now see what I’ve been talking about.

Unfortunately, it still seems as if you are missing what this means. You wrote:

“To make it a fair comparison, as the iCVR cannot record in 1.3 megapixel, but only D1 – if the MOBOTIX camera was recording at D1 resolution @ 6fps, triggering and recording 200 events, you would get 30 days recording on 16GB microSD card.”

But this isn’t a fair comparison, as I’ve said from the beginning, because the Mobotix camera is still limited to event recording on the SD card, while our iCVR can record continuously for more than 30 days with the built-in hard drive. That’s the whole point. Not just event recording, but full continuous video recording.

Here’s a fair comparison, using your example. If the Mobotix camera was only D1 resolution, and you wanted it to be able to continuously record for 30 days at 5 frames per second, my estimates are that you would need about 230 GB worth of storage. It will be many years before you can find an SD flash memory card that large. Obviously, using H.264 compression gives us a big advantage for storage in the camera.

But the whole point of my post was not to compare the Mobotix camera with our iCVR, since they are indeed two different animals, each appropriate for different applications. My point was simply to show what it really means to have enough storage in the camera that you don’t need external storage, and that this is what we mean when we say we have a DVR in our camera.

Thanks.

Doug.

Therefore your figures are somewhat misleading! Firstly I am fully aware of of your camera’s ‘buffering’ to 1GB and then archiving to HDD. BUT you said (quote) “… using Mobotix’s MxPEG compression, my estimates suggest that you would need almost 900 GB to record 30 days worth, even at only 1.3 megapixel at 5 frames per second.”

But you are not comparing ‘apples with apples’. How can you even talk about megapixel when your own iCVR camera is not even capable of delivering megapixel. To make it a fair comparison, as the iCVR cannot record in 1.3 megapixel, but only D1 – if the MOBOTIX camera was recording at D1 resolution @ 6fps, triggering and recording 200 events, you would get 30 days recording on 16GB microSD card.

It sounds as if you aren’t familiar with our product or how it works.

We’ve solved the hard drive failure problem by using 1 GB of solid state memory as a buffer. So, the hard drive is asleep about 96 percent of the time. Every 4-5 hours the hard drive wakes up and stores the video from the buffer. Then the hard drive goes back to sleep.

This extends the life expectancy of the hard drive by a factor of ten.

The notebook class hard drives, by the way, are more ruggedized that desktop drives. They are also quieter and use less power. 2.5″ drives are now regularly being used in server farms, to help reduce current and increase storage density. Hitachi was also one of the first to solve the on/off cycle problem with the 2.5″ drive, by parking the head when it is off. That’s because laptops need to put up with much more abuse than desktop drives, so they are built better to handle that.

It’s actually perfect for our application.

Doug.

Why do you ask?