News Camera Corner Opinion
External factors that are shaping surveillance

I would like to talk about external influences on the security industry that I enjoy tracking and believe could have a big impact on its future.

Privacy and regulation

Politicians and governments around the world are now heavily involved in the regulation of both privacy laws surrounding surveillance and the specific products allowed in their country or region. While Canada has taken a less aggressive stance on these topics, it is certain to follow suit eventually. As more countries put pressure on suppliers to meet certain requirements, we can expect to see manufacturing shift across the globe and with it, changes to prices, quality and innovation.

GPUs

Graphics processing units (GPUs) are the backbone of machine vision AI but have also been a key component in the mining of cryptocurrencies. With cryptocurrency mining moving towards a new technology — called application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) — demand for GPUs has dropped off and prices have followed. This is in turn reducing the cost of AI, both on premise and in the cloud. As GPU costs continue to drop in the coming years, AI will become cheaper to deploy. This will allow surveillance vendors to not only make AI more of a standard offering, but also enable new innovations which were previously difficult to justify with the cost of GPUs.

Solar power

The two largest cost drivers of a video surveillance system (outside of the cameras) are power and internet. Both require extensive cabling which, when combined with the labour required to run cables, has a significant impact on the overall cost of a project.

Cameras can be solar-powered, and many options already exist for achieving this, but they are either costly or not reliable. The main driver behind this is the cost of battery technology. Lithium-ion batteries (the technology that powers cell phones and electric cars) are small and versatile, but also expensive. Lithium-ion is also difficult to ship due to safety regulations and is not ideal for environments where temperatures go below freezing.

Fortunately, the battery industry is innovating at record speed to keep up with the growth in demand for electric cars. Any progress in battery technology that can overcome the current limitations faced by car manufactures will ultimately benefit the security industry and make it much easier to support solar-powered cameras.

Mobile internet

Once power can be generated locally using solar energy, the only remaining reason to run cabling is for internet connectivity. Cellular technology is constantly improving, and with the introduction of 5G, running security cameras on cellular is easier than ever. Prices, however, need to come down for any integrator to be able to justify a single mobile internet connection for every camera on a site. This will change eventually, both reducing installation costs and making it more practical to use cloud-based surveillance technology.

Storage costs

Finally, storage costs continue to drop and outpace the needs of most surveillance systems. As these costs come down, cloud services will become cheaper, further reducing the need for onsite equipment. For cameras with built-in storage, manufacturers will eventually be able to move away from SD cards completely, instead using much more reliable solid-state drives which today are only found in premium camera models.

The industry continues to evolve, but where the limits in the past were based on camera technology, today factors external to the industry might have an even bigger effect. Political changes could drive the industry in a direction we never expected, while innovation in technology dependencies could make systems both cheaper and more accessible for many. It is difficult to predict what the video surveillance industry will look like 10 years from now, but one thing is for certain, this industry is not slowing down, and the future is bright.

In closing, this will be my last column for SP&T News. Writing this column has been an absolute pleasure. It has challenged me to explore complex topics and study the industry I love. I was honoured to be given the opportunity to write for SP&T in 2014 and will always be proud of the work we published together.

Colin Bodbyl is vice-president and general manager, Stealth Monitoring (www.stealthmonitoring.com).