Nothing Down About This Year’s ISC West Show

• By Ralph C. Jensen
• Apr 02, 2009

Rumor has it that tradeshow officials expected fewer people this year. My very unofficial count says that there are more people at this year’s event. If not more, the aisles are surely crowded and the people attending have a keen interest in being here.

Seems to me that attendance is up over last year and the tradeshow is a success. That’s day one in the books and, it will be interesting to see if the crowds are as heavy Thursday.

There are some very interesting products on display.

First of all, Panasonic wins the New Product of the Show competition (more on that in the next installment) with its newest IP video surveillance camera. Company president J.M. Allain said last night at a media dinner that Panasonic had been focused on this opportunity for the past several months, putting an all-out effort in the project to win.

At a time when U.S. companies are moving jobs overseas, give Axis Communications its due for building a North American distribution center in Atlanta. Forty percent of the company’s business is in the Americas, and this is a genuine commitment on the part of the Swedish company’s efforts in the United States and, of course, Canada.

Axis general manager Fredrik Nilsson also stated at a press briefing yesterday that a HDTV intelligent video surveillance camera isn’t far behind. How do they think of these things? It’s easy. This technology is already in use on the consumer side and, with the flip of a switch, or use of technology, it will be integrated into the security industry.

BRS Labs out of Houston also wins a prestigious award in video analytics. It works pretty simply. Its AlSight automatically learns and stores memories of normal behavior for each camera position when the view of the PTZ camera changes. If something seems out of the ordinary, it probably is, and the operator is notified. As the camera moves from one position to another, AlSight calls up memories associated with the new position and applies cognitive video analytics to detect abnormal behavior immediately.