Spotlight on new technology

Police Professional looks at some of the latest developments showcased last week at IFSEC 2008 in Birmingham.

Irisys (InfraRed Integrated Systems) unveiled its latest IRI 4011 and IRI 4041 handheld thermal imagers. Designed specifically for police and security teams, the imagers feature a 160×120 pixel silicon microbolometer sensor that delivers clear images in total darkness, detecting people at over 150m for the 4011 model and 300m from the 4041.

The 4011 features a large clear 3.5in display, with user-friendly menus for camera control which are optimised for police requirements. An eyeshade provides discrete viewing for covert operations and images can be easily stored using a standard removable memory card. Selectable colour pallets include colour and ‘white hot’ and ‘black hot’ display and a hot-spot tracker aids automatic detection of a person in the view while the freeze frame feature helps in searching restricted access areas.

For detection of cannabis factories a calibrated temperature display can be selected providing remote monitoring of roof, window and vent temperatures. Two cursors allow clear comparison of temperatures between adjacent buildings.

The Irisys 4000 series PC software allows stored images to be uploaded to a computer and exported as standard bitmap pictures to office applications for incident reports.

The 4011’s integral rechargeable battery provides six hours continuous operation. The imager’s rugged carry case includes mains and car chargers, eyeshade and the PC Software with SD Card reader.

Firstsight Vision was showing the range of infrared cameras from Opgal Optronic Industries, as well as advanced image processing capabilities such as image fusion technology, gender recognition software and vehicle recognition systems.

New for 2008 are Opgal’s high resolution EYE-R640™ uncooled miniature cameras, offering 640×480 pixel resolution, and cameras with long range lenses and continuous zoom to provide night vision capabilities for surveillance.

The capabilities of the new ‘fusion technology’ were demonstrated by showing how visible waveband and thermal images of the same field of view can be merged to combine the critical components and discard low-grade information from each individual image. The resulting composite image contains far more useful surveillance information from the scene than either of the individual images.

Also on show was the Manto pattern recognition tool which can be used for the differentiation of male and female faces and for vehicle recognition applications.

Milestone Systems, developers of open platform IP video management software, showcased version 2.0 of XProtect Corporate. Designed for large-scale applications, it supports unlimited numbers of cameras, servers and users, with central control and intuitive access clients that make big installations very easy to manage.

Distributed server architecture allows flexible management of unlimited sites, servers, devices, cameras and users.

Surveillance system administrators get wizards, flexible rules system, automatic network scanning and camera model detection, with simple integration to existing IT environments. Integration with Microsoft Active Directory® provides strict user authorisation and management. All configurations, activity logs and alerts are cstored in a Microsoft SQL database. Managing cameras in groups and assigning users to role-based security groups helps to save valuable time.

The graphical user interface allows staff to access live and recorded video data at all times. Vital evidence material – encrypted and password-protected – is easily created in a single operation for fast sharing. Multi-casting and multi-streaming allow multiple operators to easily view live and recorded video without unnecessarily straining network resources.

Mobile computer solutions specialists Nexcom launched three fan-less tablet computers – the MTC 2100, MTC 2100-MD and MRC 2100. They are based on Intel’s