Working the Floor

• By Ralph C. Jensen
• Sep 25, 2012

There is nothing worse than having an appointment to meet someone at the tradeshow, and you get your wires crossed. Security Products is fortunate to have a salesperson working in Europe.

Our sales guy, Sam, speaks English, and I speak American. Sooner or later, we’ll find each other on the show floor, and get down to business. However, in the meantime, I wanted to bring you up to date on what’s happening in Germany.

Security Essen is so large there are endless halls of security exhibits. Essen is held every two years, which adds to the mystery of what is new. In walking the floor this morning, I have found the buzz is about IP cameras. I thought the buzz had already hit this market, but apparently not to the extent that has been created in the United States.

From Our Friends
There are several U.S. companies that are showing an interest at Security Essen.

“I’m amazed at the size of this tradeshow,” said Skip Haight, director of marketing at ComNet. “It seems the focus is on IP video surveillance. The companies here showing their IP networking are putting it all out there, and it seems to me that the Europeans are further down the road with IP and Ethernet solutions.”

I also happened to visit the Arecont Vision booth. I wondered if there could be anything different today from the recent ASIS show.

The company is announcing the release of a firmware upgrade. It should be available this week, following regression testing, which means that new features added to the existing firmware is tested to ensure that it doesn’t cause any problems with cameras already deployed in the field.

“Firmware code is always evolving based on previous products with enhancements,” said Darrell Tisdale, director of quality of technical support at Arecont. “This is easy on the customer and the technical partners. One firmware will make is easier on everyone, and later this year, we will be releasing an updated firmware for our panoramic cameras.”