The ASC finalist you just might resell Emza does wireless analytics for outdoor intrusion
By L. Samuel Pfeifle
Updated Wed July 1, 2009
BELLEVUE, Wash.--Of the six finalists in the American Security Challenge (see story on page 10), just one is likely to be resold by your typical commercial-focused security integrator. Emza, an Israeli company with U.S. offices based here, makes outdoor-appropriate wireless cameras with on-board analytics that company officials say are more than competitive with the algorithms used by the top-selling analytics companies.
It's a “purpose-built application for the smaller outdoor application,” said Mark Premo, Emza's U.S. manager. “It's one small unit, it's easily replaceable,” and it's designed to filter out the false positives that plague motion-detection-based solutions for protecting outdoor assets and perimeters.
“The algorithms that we run on the low-cost processor, that's the secret sauce,” said Premo. “We can detect a car at 300-to-500 feet, a person at 300 feet. And with IR illumination, we can find someone at night at 150 feet.” The camera does need 12 volts of power, though, so is not truly wireless.
“We're very impressed by it and installing it on a regular basis,” said Dave Meurer, chief operating officer at Armed Response Team, an Albuquerque, N.M., integrator that also provides response services by former police officers. With a vested interest in verifying alarms to determine whether response is necessary, Meurer said the Emza solution “eliminates most of the false positives” right out of the box, but “the nice part about it is that if we're seeing a new environmental issue, like a flapping piece of plastic that wasn't there before, it's easy for us to modify that sensor or a whole suite of sensors to not be affected by that problem. It learns on its own, but we can take it to the next level as well.”
With 32 employees, ART uses a third-party central station that receives the video from the cameras in the field. As of yet, the feed has not been integrated into the major central station software packages. However, “they don't have any problem with dispatches,” Meurer said.
Premo said he's looking for many more companies like ART. “We have to get to the channel,” he said, “because that's the way to get to the small business market, get them to understand that it's possible to prevent crime.”
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