I work in the recycling industry, we work with many other scrap yards and facilities, and as metals values climb we're finding meth heads and other druggie type people trying to break in and steal stuff to scrap elsewhere.
We've had 3 attempted break-ins in 4 months which is rather unusual, but I've spoken to another local company about their camera systems to see what they're using. Here is what they've used the last few months as recommended by another yard...
Unintentional ad: Coram AI.
So I do a little homework. They're really new to the market (2022), and funded by several VCs (booo). They're hardware agnostic which is nice, but if you know anything about 3rd party camera systems, they mostly cross-communicate over ONVIF or RTSP. They have locally hosted PCs or servers rebranded as Coram AI servers or you can go fully cloud. No pricing on their site, only "setup a demo" which sounds very "Verkada"ish where you'll endlessly be hounded by salesmen.
Anyone have personal experience with any similar company or system? We upgraded camera hardware a few years ago, they're UHD resolution, record to local storage, external access blocked, and license free. I wish we just went Ubiquiti in the first place, but I was trying to avoid vendor lock in because we were getting that with Verkada (before my start) and just had issues with that whole experience.
I know it's not "ai" in the sense everyone knows current LLMs, but it all feels very fake and is really just relying on frame and pattern detection to analyze stuff. The company who recommended (or the guy on particular) sounded like a stakeholder or higher up who doesn't understand it but praised it for it's speed at "producing information". I don't want a bunch of false readings for the sake of "fast" and I don't like the idea of a 3rd party having access or oversight to our facilities.
7 Comments
e0qdk@reddthat.com · 3 pts · 1d
What camera are you using? Some security cameras (e.g. AXIS) already have built-in detectors that you can use directly on board -- I'm not sure on the quality since I never used it myself, but worth a try before you pay someone else if you've already got it...
There's also open weight models for object detection. YOLO models can find people in images easily, though you'll need some heuristics to avoid drowning in false positive alerts. VLMs like Qwen or Gemma are more heavy-weight but you can give them an image or short video clip + natural language description of what you're looking for and have them make a judgement before escalating to a human; the usual LLM caveats obviously apply. That's just the kind of DIY stuff I'd do though.
unitedwithme@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 1d
They're rebranded Hikvision hardware. They're pretty solid for our main cameras outdoors (like defrost/defog modes, h.265+ encoders, and color night vision) so I know they're somewhat capable.
They are all run independently, with internal 512GB SanDisk High Endurance cards. No centralized NVR. The software is pretty much Hikvision's iVMS which shows it does "AI detection", but it doesn't work the best on my desktop (i7-13700K, 64GB DDR5 RAM, Arc A750 GPU) which you'd think it would. My guess is there's something missing with the software since it's not officially Hikvision.
e0qdk@reddthat.com · 1 pts · 1d
Hmm. That sounds on par in terms of features with the AXIS cams I've encountered before. Does the camera have a web ui? (If so, maybe try poke at it through that.)
What exactly do you mean by "doesn't work the best"? (Slow?) If it's trying to do "AI detection" on the desktop itself from a desktop app then it's possible that it doesn't know how to use your GPU effectively, maybe? (ARC is still relatively unusual.)
unitedwithme@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 1d
Yes, Axis and Annke look VERY similar in terms of style and function. And yeah there's a web UI too. The GPU (Arc) looks to leave the iGPU in tact instead of disabling as it's listed in Task Manager as a GPU. Idk, I guess I never have it much thought about whether or truly active or not.
I could install the actual iVMS software to test, too, but I'm guessing with Hikvision, the server does a lot of the work and these cameras are standalone like I said. So likely it won't work regardless.
I've heard of Frigate and Shinobi after digging around online, but I don't know if these are more like homelab and enthusiast level or truly SMB quality. The other fear with Coram is great usable features now to lure customers in, but later that VC backing will destroy features and usability while increasing costs (typical enshitification). So I really don't want to give them money if I can help it.
e0qdk@reddthat.com · 2 pts · 1d
Do you feel like trying to DIY something?
If so, like I said take a look at YOLO and other object detection models, or try using a small VLM like gemma-4-E2B-it-qat-q4_0-gguf -- which ought to be able to fit on your graphics card -- and pass it an image and a simple question like "Is there a person in this image? YES or NO. No extra text." when a simpler process like a motion detector light triggers.
If not, that's probably as far as I can help.
Either way, good luck!
unitedwithme@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 1d
Thank you so much for your knowledge and help!!
unitedwithme@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 21h
Frigate runs YOLO and seems to support Arc A750, so I'll test that, thank you!