Insights on Construction Technology and Site Visibility

Vinnie and I went to CeBIT 2015 @ the Code-n stand this year full of enthusiasm to teach the Industry 4.0 enthusiasts how cameras could be integrated with IoT and triggered by events to capture images � making for powerful, convincing documents.

Well, it turns out they were one step ahead of us:

Parking Fine from the City of Hannover

Milos explaned some of the benefits of our move to Elixir, namely:

• Vastly improved performance, handling several hundred cameras per m1 AWS instance versus <100 per instance.
• Auto-recovery at the process level.
• A �utility scale� architecture whereby we can reuse our code on the gateway devices and on the server. Some slides here:

Elixir at Evercam (By Milos Mosic) from Evercam � Making Cameras Programmable

Evercam is a commercial software company. We�ve decided to open source all of our code because we believe it is the best way to achieve our goal:

To build the best camera management software in the world.

We believe the camera software industry is being held back by a proprietary attitude that was better suited to the last generation of closed circuit TV systems.

We believe that the main difficulty in developing good, universal software for cameras is the difficulty of dealing with the many unexpected scenarios and edge cases.

This is a problem perfectly suited to the many eyes approach of the open source community.

Already today much of our code is available on�Github�under the�Apache 2.0 licence. Over the next few weeks we will be opening up the rest of it (some of it needs a little polishing first).

We plan, over the coming years to cultivate an active developer community around the Evercam codebase that will be able to build high quality, robust innovative applications around an open camera platform that works reliably, securely and openly.

We want to underline that this is not a side-project led by people who are forced to juggle it with together with their day jobs. For�the 9 full-time employees of Evercam, this IS our passion and we�re here for the long term.

The world deserves better camera software, it�s about time we got it.

I�ve been working with IP cameras for nearly 5 years. From the early delight at getting a jpeg to refresh on a web page to the large scale cloud CCTV projects, it�s been a long learning experience.

All the while, Camba.tv and now Evercam have been pushing the frontier of what is possible with or expected from, Cameras. We�ve worked on remote storage for thousands of cameras. We�ve built a beautiful API, timelapses, and many more features.

Then it struck me.

No one has yet solved the basic, most fundamental problem of working with cameras. Just the simple ability to login and view a camera with the sort of frictionless user experience that we are familiar with in other areas of our lives. For the most part, this experience, for the majority of people, is still broken.

So what do I want?

I want to login and see my cameras. I want to see the recorded video. I want to share my camera or a recording with someone else. I want to log files. I want to be alerted if my camera has gone offline or if something unexpected has happened (motion detection etc.). I want to be able to work with any type of camera and I don�t want to have to spend hours trying to understand the rules of port forwarding. I want to be relaxed knowing that my camera is not unwittingly exposed to strangers on the Internet and I want this to work on any device, mobile or desktop, that suits me.

Let�s call it Camera Management.

Somehow this reminds me of an advertisement for Honda that I really liked.

Evercam, it�s like writing on bananas for cameras.

Cameras are a little bit different to other IoT devices. Here�s why.

Eyeballs v Algorithms

With CCTV cameras, the output is images. Don�t bother trying to get data from them, it�s expensive and disappointing.

Instead, use images for what they�re good at?�?transmitting information into the human brain.

Let the IoT device trigger the event, then look at the images.

That�s the root of the issue, now here are some details:

Connection Protocols

Unlike every other IoT device, high bandwidth requirements mean that cameras don�t use Bluetooth or Zigbee. We even advise customers to avoid WiFi.

Communication Protocols

This is not a place for MQTT or ZeroMQ. Like with the connection protocols cameras are often sending in the region of 1mb/s streaming video and so the protocols designed for small amounts of intermittent data aren�t appropriate.

Cloud v Edge

It�s easy & cheap enough to take the output of a temperature sensor, polling every minute, and store it for almost infinity. With live streaming video, that would start to get expensive. As the survivor of a cloud CCTV business (Camba.tv) I learnt the hard way that it makes more sense to store your video locally, if you can. Now, with 64Gb SD cards on the camera, you can.

Privacy & Data Protection

I can store year�s worth of air quality readings or voltage measurements without worrying too mcuh about personal privacy infringements. A jpeg containing a face or a number plate is quite a different story.

Impact

Sometimes, this: Tide Status: 1.3 just doesn�t cut the mustard quite like this:

contact us https://evercam.com/contact for more information

We spend a lot of time talking about the power of the image and how it is starting to be used more in manufacturing.

At our visit to CeBIT last month (we were finalists at the Code-n event) we had a stand in the Industry 4.0 hall, surrounded by the latest trends in German manufacturing.

Front and centre was ROBOCHOP a beautiful installation showing the power of on-demand, customised manufacturing. From their website you get to design your cube and then watch the machine create it.

Here�s the nice surprise � as soon as my cube came off the production line, I got a notifcation email containing a beautiful video:

of MY cube !

Would I like that for my sushi? my car? my jewellery?  � hell yeah.

Every year boys from fifth and sixth year of�Belvedere College�spend 48 hours on O�Connell St raising money for the homeless, including 24 hours fasting.

You can watch it live here, and donate on�http://www.sleepoutdublin.ie/

Thanks for�Carrolls.ie�for allowing us to use their camera for the event.

Vinnie Quinn (1996)

For extra information, please contact us at evercam.com/contact

Evercam Glassware�is now�live�in the�MyGlass site.

The application allows the commands �Explore Nearby� and will return an image taken from the nearest Evercam-connected camera to your location.

Here�s how it works:

�OK Glass � Explore Nearby � With Evercam�

� and � Bingo:

It works with all public cameras or any cameras connected to your account. We�d love to hear your thoughts.

This is the first implementation of our /public/nearest.jpg endpoint, we think it�s perfect for Glass.

Glass is a trademark of Google Inc.

Many thanks to Vincent Lyons from�Dubstarts�for another great event.

As always, a really high quality crowd of people and lots of interest.

Here you can see Liuting explaining the future to a captivated audience:

For extra information, please contact us at evercam.com/contact

Silicon Stroll Bootcamp
>3th & 4th November 2014, Guinness Enterprise Centre

We recently got selected to be part of Silicon Stroll Bootcamp, a venture organised by the Dublin Business Innovation Centre (DBIC) and European Investor Gate.  As one of 50 of Europe�s most investable startups, Evercam got to deliver a 7 minute pitch against some other great startups such as Qymatix, Evolution Environmental Services and Green Communications.  It was really interesting to see how some companies were able to really deliver their message effectively.  The judges questions were very insightful.

As well as the pitch battle, DBIC also organised tours of the tech giants Google, Paypal and IBM and a networking event in the Gravity bar at the Guinness Storehouse.  It was super to meet the other startups and investors while drinking a pint o� Guinness. Workshops were also running throughout the day while the pitching was going.  The general consensus was that these were very useful.

Congratulations to the Spanish winners Seabery Solutions and thanks to DBIC for organising it.

Post-pitchin� at Silicon Stroll

The latest release of SAP MII (officially launching in January 2015) contains, amongst many other things, the ability to add 3rd party software extensions.

Together with Neoris, a leading solution extender for MII, we�ve taken advantage of this new feature to enable camera integration.

The motto of MII is to give the business owner visibility into his factory floor and what better way to do this than to actually be able to see key events as they happen.

By integrating cameras, live views are made available from any Evercam connected Camera.

Full details are being made available on the SAP SDN.

Many thanks for Henry Costa from Neoris and Rajeev Kansal from SAP for their help and support � and best wishes for the SP03 release.

Drop in to see Vinnie Quinn at the DCU Innovation Centre Hackathon.

Taking a screenshot selfie from the Evercam Camera in the Innovation Centre DCU Auditorium.

Showing the BigRedSnapshot app to Jordan from Kickflipx.com.

http://www.dcu.ie/news/2014/aug/s0814e.shtml