World Leader in IP Surveillance Industry Supported by Ivideon



    Sweden. The population is half as much as it now lives in Moscow. But this did not stop them from giving the world Ikea, H&M, Volvo, Saab, Ericsson and Carlson.

    And also a wonderful Axis Communications company or just Axis comes from Sweden . It needs no introduction for those who are familiar with the IP video surveillance market. If only because in 1996 Axis launched the world's first IP camera.



    Then it was far from modern analogues. Both technologically (analog cameras at that time gave significantly better quality), and the architecture. If now the vast majority of IP cameras use the embedded version of Linux on board, then the world's first IP camera contained a very simplified custom implementation of the web server without using Linux. But be that as it may, this was the first and very important step towards replacing analog video surveillance with IP. In my opinion, this is comparable to the appearance of the first digital camera, which served as the beginning of the end of the largest Kodak corporation, which stubbornly did not notice the ongoing digital revolution. And, probably, seeing the high cost and low quality of the first "soap dishes" - underestimated the current situation. And then, with a capitalization of almost $ 40 billion, it rapidly slipped to 0.

    Interestingly, the history of Axis itself begins in 1984. At first, she specialized in the development of print servers, which she successfully did for more than 10 years. And then, since the release of the first IP-camera in 1996, there was a shift towards the then-new IP-video surveillance market, which was partially created by Axis.



    At the heart of modern Axis cameras is a proprietary chip designed specifically for working with video. This is a symbiosis of processors based on RISC architecture and DSP. By controlling the production of hardware and software, Axis engineers were able to achieve truly unrivaled image quality at maximum compression. Thanks to this, Axis confidently maintains its status as an industry leader, setting the trend for other manufacturers of IP surveillance cameras and participating in the formation of standards.

    And now, Axis cameras support working with our cloud-based video surveillance service Ivideon . Together with Axis specialists, we managed to port our module for two generations of ARTPEC-3 and ARTPEC-4 processors used in cameras. So for their work with the Ivideon cloud, you no longer need a computer and an external IP address. Our application installed in the camera independently communicates with one of our data centers and makes the camera available in Ivideon's personal account or in applications for Android and iOS .



    Axis cameras have a very high-quality motion detector and some video analytics functions. So in the video archive you will see only really important events, and not a huge number of false positives due to the noise of the matrix and low light. Naturally, Ivideon supports the pre-recording function, which allows you to see the moment the event occurred, and not just what happened after it.



    Some models have an SD card slot. So videos can be stored not only in our cloud, but also duplicated locally, in case of disconnection from the Internet. Thus, a hybrid of both a centralized and decentralized surveillance system is obtained.

    But the most important thing, for what it is worth choosing on Axis cameras, is to broadcast live video on your website or in your blog using Ivideon . If you want to show a truly high-quality image, especially in a changing light environment, then you are unlikely to find better equipment than what Axis offers.

    Here is an example of broadcasting an Axis camera from our partner’s office in Kiev .

    We are very proud that Axis's development products were highly praised by Axis, which was reflected in the best cooperation in integrating Ivideon into the camera firmware. Despite the fact that Axis is already a corporation with offices in more than 20 countries, it is great that it has not lost its desire for development and innovation, confirming this not only in advertising catalogs, but also in practice.

    UPD: A question was asked in the comments. And what exactly is “the integration of Ivideon into the camera firmware”?

    The vast majority of IP cameras on the market are poorly adapted to work via the Internet, that is, if you connect such a camera at home / in the office, it will take a lot of effort to watch it, for example, remotely on an iPad. Configure an external IP address on it (often, you need to buy it). If the camera is connected to the router, configure the redirection of the dedicated port on the router to the camera. If the camera works on the RTSP protocol (virtually all cameras encoding in H264 or MPEG4), then it is likely that it can only function on top of UDP (not all manufacturers implement on top of TCP). This means that your provider or other providers on the way to you can "cut" UDP traffic and you will not receive video, but a set of color / gray squares. In addition, there is no talk of any encryption. All traffic is in the clear.

    Therefore, we created a special module - an application for IP cameras, which is installed directly in the firmware and acts as a client for our cloud service. After personalization (linking the camera to your personal account), our module itself establishes a secure SSL connection with the nearest data center and expects to receive further commands. These can be commands for requesting live video, a list of archived recordings (if the camera has an SD card), archived recordings themselves, receiving information from a built-in motion detector or alarm inputs for recording to a remote archive, and others. In fact, it’s just an Embedded version of Ivideon Server, which is available on our website for Windows, OS X and Linux platforms.

    What is the difficulty of integration? First of all, to solve this problem, we need tools and an SDK for assembling our module for the specific chip used in the camera. Not all manufacturers are ready to provide such tools and access to the camera so that we can install our application in the firmware. Therefore, it is doubly cool that the industry leader, not only quickly provided everything necessary, but also advised and helped in every way in the development process. In addition, each manufacturer, in its own way, implements an interaction interface with a motion detector built into the camera and for obtaining additional information. We needed to write an implementation for Axis in accordance with the documents that they also provided.

    As a result, together with our Ivideon cloud service, in addition to the standard functions of surveillance systems, the Axis camera received the following features:

    - no need for an external / static IP address
    - connection of all cameras scattered geographically into a single personal account
    - camera location on the map
    - ease of connection and convenience of work. No need to drive the IP addresses of cameras, for example, on an iPad. A list of them will be downloaded from your personal account when you enter your e-mail and password after installing the application.
    - the ability to remotely view from anywhere in the world on our website in your personal account a live video and archive with sound (as well as on Android, iPhone and iPad)
    - the ability to export recordings from any camera to AVI without leaving the place
    - the service of recording video to our cloud (if something happens at the facility, your recordings will not go anywhere)
    - full encryption of all traffic via SSL
    - the function of transferring rights to view video and archive to other personal accounts (if access to cameras should be differentiated between different people)
    - the ability to embed a video from your camera on your site. This can be done in 3 clicks. The rest of the work will be done by our CDN. And it's actually free.
    - there is no site but there is a desire to share video from your camera with friends? Post to a social network? There are no problems either .
    - Do I need to receive notifications that your camera has disconnected? There is such a function.

    We do not seek to make money selling equipment. Therefore, all of our developments, including ready-to-use firmware, as well as detailed instructions for installing them, are presented on our website . This is necessary primarily for those who, for one reason or another, have already become the owner of the cameras we support, but without our service on board. Nevertheless, for those who prefer to buy cameras already ready for use and tested by our specialists, we have opened our small online store . All prices for cameras are presented at the same level as in other companies, and somewhere even lower.

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