Smartvue: The Era of Visual Intelligence

Martin Renkins, Founder & CEO

In 1999, Smartvue’s Founder and CEO, Martin Renkis launched the world’s first plug-and-play, hybrid cloud surveillance system. Today, a leading innovator of end-toend surveillance solutions, Smartvue provides the most robust visual intelligence platform for schools and campuses. These include input devices such as surveillance cameras, cloud servers, and camera to cloud solutions in remote management and cloud video storage. “Aside from the processing power and scalability, the cloud also creates a cost-effective way to share software-based services,” states Renkis. Cloud technology also makes Smartvue’s solutions globally scalable, easy-to-extend, and simple-to-use, providing a functionality which no one else currently offers in the market.

While devices like smart cameras or video sensors provide greater capabilities beyond mere video transmissions, the key contributing factor to smart cities is their ability to communicate with a central management system over the network. This spans from delivering video analytics, triggering alarms using AI to generating metadata alongside the associated video stream. A smart city with cloud-connected, AI-powered surveillance systems could easily locate any citizen, notify residents of any emergencies, alert police about crimes in progress, or even send out traffic congestion warnings. “There are countless benefits. From our perspective, we look at every aspect of a smart city from an IoT video standpoint,” says Renkis.

Smartvue provides self-configuring and dynamically extendable services that address issues like manual configuration of systems to add newer cameras and expand storage

When it comes to scalability, Smartvue provides self-configuring and dynamically extendable services that address issues like the manual configuration of systems to add cameras and storage. By utilizing cloud computing, the challenges of expanding video surveillance across large campuses have significantly been reduced. In addition, to curb shortcomings in providing proper hardware, processing, and storage for video surveillance, Smartvue’s Visual Intelligence solutions empower CIOs to optimize their utilization with on-demand resources.“We offer a centralized setup and management, making our solutions affordable and faster to implement; providing customers with almost instant access to processing power and new data storage capabilities for video surveillance,” reveals Renkis.

Smartvue’s platform provides secure remote monitoring and storage while supporting the wide distribution of content through a simple, elegant interface in a cost-effective manner. Once a video is captured, it can be stored directly in Smartvue’s global surveillance network in the cloud. Thereafter, users can leverage Smartvue’s cloud interface to search, bookmark, and share those videos. But cataloging these videos is only half the benefits that clients can experience. One of the benefits of Smartvue lies within its Mapvue service that is embedded in the platform and helps users map all the cameras deployed in an area. It opens a Google Map-type interface and shows the exact location of cameras, the status of those cameras, displays live stream feeds, and plays recorded video.

For enterprises, Smartvue’s cloud platform has a unique and industry innovative central management system that updates customers about the status of their connected devices and networks. It facilitates reporting, troubleshooting of any network upheavals, updating of firmware, and the monitoring of network latency through live dashboards.

Smartvue also gives customers restful APIs, SDKs, and libraries that enable them to integrate Smartvue’s platform with their existing software and analytics engines. Today, Smartvue uploads a staggering 72 million minutes of video footage to the cloud every day and has been instrumental in alleviating several critical issues, making it a sought-after platform in the industry. In one instance, the City of Rome, Georgia, turned to Smartvue’s solutions to implement a centrally managed, scalable, and easy-to-operate video-enabled platform to survey facilities and public spaces. Smartvue connected hundreds of IoT cameras through a single video interface, allowing the city’s management to monitor and analyze its activities effectively.

Smartvue has been in the network video surveillance industry for 16 years now and has a portfolio of more than 60 utility patents to its name. As innovation continues to tread new paths, Renkis intends to invest heavily in cloud-based analytics and keep an eye out for disposable cameras—cost-effective battery powered cameras enabled with analytics, machine learning, and AI. He believes these cameras hold the ultimate key to unleashing the real potential of smart cities. “Imagine a future of video intelligence and aggregation made possible through extremely cost-effective video sensors and the impact it would have on cities that embrace it,” envisages Renkis. In the coming years, Smartvue will continue to develop and innovate new Visual Intelligence solutions that leverage the cloud. “We are constantly identifying new opportunities such as cloud powered social surveillance, wearable devices, video analytics, and robotics," concludes Renkins.