It's all brand new

Looking at the selection of products that will be unveiled in Las Vegas this year, it should surprise no one that "IP," "wireless" and "intelligent video" crop up regularly. NVRs are becoming nearly as ubiquitous as DVRs. Sensors and detectors now come with so many bells and whistles it would hardly be a surprise to see them actually handcuff the intruders and deliver them to the police. In the end, though, most manufacturers understand that it's not fancy technology that integrators want, it's functionality. Hence, while L-3 Communications' new Thermal Eye 2400xp is an infrared camera that detects motion and has a scalable detection area, L-3 is also quick to point out that the camera is immune to solar radiation and is utterly weather-proof-plus, it comes in fixed-mount or pan-tilt. Hawk-I Security's new color camera is also weather- and tamper-proof, and offers an autoiris varifocal lens. Axis Communications' new 225fd camera has a built-in fan and heater to accommodate changing seasons, but also is power-over-Ethernet equipped and compresses to MPEG4 with multi-window motion detection. Speaking of MPEG4, the compression medium may be becoming the standard in the industry. Panasonic's new i-Pro WV-NP1004 Mega Pixel Camera features include dual MPEG4 and JPEG outputs for simultaneous live monitoring and high resolution recording/alarm monitoring. Digimerge Technologies' new DHT300/400 series is a 4/9/16 channel pentaplex network DVR with MPEG4/Linux. Crest Electronics' new embedded DVR offers MPEG4 compression and real-time recording. Also standard is the Wiegand output with which virtually all new cards and readers operate. IMAG's door IG900 door openers transmit at 900 MHz and interface with Wiegand readers, while both Secura Key and GE Security's new readers read Wiegand communications. Also common to both Secura Key and GE's readers is the ISO 15693 RFID standard. GE even adds in ISO 14443A RFID communications. In intelligent video, the commonality is a push beyond classic security applications. Both VerintVideo's Nextiva Queue Analysis and iOmniscient's IQ-120 software are essentially crowd-control devices. They count people, alert operators to crowding problems and generally help locations manage their resources better. Smartvue's S3 camera comes with such software already loaded, with people-counting ability that's exportable to common database software. Sensors are getting intelligent, too. STR International has a Digilon microprocessor in their new R-300 motion detector that learns about its environment to cut down on false alarms. Heck, GE Security Networked Solutions' new Dual Technology RCR-REX (Range Controlled Radar Request-to-Exit) sensor combines Doppler Range Controlled Radar motion sensing and Fresnel lens PIR technology so that both physical motion and heat are simultaneously required to trigger the device. Thus, the new sensor is immune to common attempts that defeat current request-to-exit sensors using PIR only. Finally, if there's anything people like, it's being able to do things from the comfort of their own couches. Videx's new CyberAudit-Web authorizes keys to open locks remotely with a cell phone. Cogent Systems' Mobile Ident II is a wireless fingerprint authentication device that allows a central database to check IDs in real-time for guards and police officers in the field. Sony's new NSR-100 NVR not only comes with a terrabyte of memory (that would be 1000 gigs), but it also ships with Real Shot Manager software, that allows camera control from any PC linked to the Web. Maybe you'd want to combine that with AirVisual's IntelliViewer Mobile Command System, which allows users to view video produced by just about any camera to be viewed on just about any remote device: cell phone, laptop, PDA and anything else you can think of. Or combine it with the ultra-compact Dinion IP Camera Series from Bosch, where you get bandwidth-efficient tri-streaming and DVD-quality 4CIF video at frame rates up to 30 IPS.