Vivotek - The Eyes of Mobile Robots

Based in Markham, Ontario, Canada, mobile robot development company, Dr Robot Inc., was looking for a high performance resolution wireless (802.11g) IP camera for its new series of mobile robots, i90.




VIVOTEK cameras were tested along with other suppliers from Japan and Europe. There are a few key requirement: the remote monitoring task normally requires robot and camera to operate under low illumination in some circumstance and capable of bringing the target close by optical zoom without alerting the subject; the camera has to be reliable and capable of operating on a constantly moving robot; integration to high level AI software should be flexible.

VIVOTEK PTZ camera was finally picked for integration with the i90 robot for its functions including smooth pan tilt operation, plus the 10x optical zoom, two-way audio, low light operation mode, and excellent image quality with reasonable cost.



A variety of mobile robots were then developed based on i90 platforms, and all equipped with VIVOTEK PTZ cameras as a standard feature.




i90 robots are deployed for various application including nuclear facilities, advance automotive engineering labs and university research facilities.

Arecont Vision - Channel Partner Certification

Congratulation to our business partner, Steve!

He had recently participated in the Arecont Vision's Channel Partner Certification program.

This program is designed to educate and certify Arecont Vision’s distributors, resellers and A&Es on Arecont Vision products and megapixel technology.

Free Ride

You may have a home network with a permanent-on broadband connection that allows you to access the outside world anytime 24/7, but how do you go the other direction and access your home network from the public Internet? This is possible if you can afford to spend two to four times the money on a broadband account with a fix or static IP address. Fortunately there is an easy solution to solve this problem with DDNS (Dynamic DNS) service. A DDNS service helps a dynamic IP user (non fix IP user) to tie their ever changing dynamic public IP address to a fix IP hostname or domain name.

Most name brand IP camera comes with free DDNS services, for example;

Panasonic: viewnetcam.com

Vivotek: Safe100.net

This free DDNS is for the authorized IP camera user to perform remote monitoring via Internet or handphone. Some smart IP camera users actually free riding on this free but stable DDNS to perform the following tasks;

(1) Host a personal Web site from your own computer.

(2) Host your own FTP server.

(3) Remote Desktop or VNC into your own personal computer from anywhere on the Internet.

(4) Host your own game server.

(5) Host your videos with something like a Slingbox.




In other words, this free for life (or rather paid for) principle provided DDNS makes those IP camera absolutely a bargain. The IP camera actually paid for itself after a while with the money you saved from subscribing to a fix IP line.

Hybrid

This is a follow up to my previous posting.

In order to integrate analog cameras with IP network camera, network video server is an option and the other option is to deploy a hybrid surveillance system.

A hybrid NDVR system comes with analog composite video supporting DVR and digital network camera supporting NVR software.

Both network video server and NDVR provide surveillance users the flexibility to tailer made a most cost effective and efficient integrated cctv solution, which capitalizes on the advantages of both the analog and digital network surveillance gears.

Like this pair of shoes, hybrid gives you the best of two worlds.