You’ve long been accustomed to it with your smartphone: apps to add functions to your phone. You buy them from an app store, and if you’ve had enough or the app turns out not to be as good as expected, you simply remove it. From a backup, you can easily transfer installed and purchased apps to a new device. Recently, this capability has become available for security cameras as well. You can install apps on security cameras to easily add new analytics functions to the cameras. .

Tech start-up Security & Safety Things developed an open operating system for security cameras – based on the safe and proven Android Open Source Project (AOSP) – and came up with an app store. Security & Safety Things is a Bosch start-up.

Benefits for users

This innovative development offers many advantages to users of camera systems . So now you can select the best camera and the most suitable app for your situation and objective. They don’t have to be from the same brand anymore. This opens up many new possibilities. It is now easier to use cameras for a different purpose, simply by installing a new app. For example, the camera you use now to count people in a certain room can be used for heat mapping tomorrow. And will there be a new license plate recognition app that’s better than the one you’re currently using? Then you can simply replace the old app with the new one. Cameras therefore remain a worthwhile investment for a longer period of time. Once purchased, apps can also be transferred to another camera – just like on your smartphone. Depending on the computing capacity of the camera, multiple apps can also be installed on a camera.

First cameras available

Since this spring, the first cameras that use the operating system developed by Security & Safety Things have been available. And more will follow soon. In the short term, we expect smart IP cameras with this operating system from a number of renowned suppliers, such as Vivotek, Hanwha, Pelco and Bosch itself.

App store fills up

The app store is also slowly but surely filling up with apps. There are now about 60 available. From lesser-known and well-known analytics parties, such as Snor.ai, Saimos, Neurala, Altech and Goodvision. There are already apps for license plate registration, people counting, crowd management, object recognition, heat mapping, drone and weapon detection.

App Challenge good for 21 new apps

An App Challenge by Security & Safety Things in 2020 resulted in no fewer than 21 new apps. The three winning apps are:

  • App that sounds the alarm if an unattended package is left unattended in certain places in a camera image (Category Production and Logistics)
  • App that can measure shoppers’ satisfaction by analyzing the behavior of these people, without processing their physical characteristics (Category Retail / Commercial Building)
  • App that can recognize objects that may contain privacy-sensitive information, such as laptops and phones, and then automatically blur them in the image (Category Transport and Smart City).

The creators of these three best apps each won a cash prize of 10,000 euros.