“For several years, we would have wanted to offer our customers an HVAC and security system solution that is not brand-dependent. However, in the video surveillance space, there weren’t any operators that suited our operations model. Then we teamed up with 6sense. Now we can incorporate our customer’s video systems from every major brand into our environment”, says Mr. Jari Kenttä, the Chief of Business Development at AddSecure.
To date, AddSecure and 6sense have been doing business together for about 10 years. Thus far, their common working environment has been the Alerta alarm transfer system, but from now on, their cooperation will extend to other areas.
The Alerta service dates back to the 1970s when the first regional alarm centers were established. The technology behind relaying alarms has changed many times, and currently, the service entails much more than just relaying fire alarms.
Nowadays, situation reports, surveillance camera images, and metering data from different HVAC and security systems are relayed widely to various service partners of our customers.
The unlimited possibilities of video feed
We will need visual data from different events such as fires, people moving in the wrong places or at the wrong time, temperatures exceeding set limits, etc. The technology 6sense provides allows us to include a feed from surveillance cameras to these alerts. That way, most of the situations can be assessed remotely without the need to get to the site. This saves considerably both resources and money and helps determine if there’s a need for help or further action.
“Our customers may have from tens to thousands of different cameras, which can be administered and controlled from a central location, thanks to the solution from 6sense”, says Jari Kenttä.
Different businesses and organizations can significantly boost their internal and external operations when they can remotely observe what is happening on their properties and sites.
For instance, one set of surveillance cameras can be dedicated to the property maintenance personnel who can monitor recreational areas in real-time. The acquired information will help the maintenance staff to organize and execute snow removal, de-icing treatment, management of green spaces, and sanitation operations, to name a few.
In hotels, for example, with proper cameras, the receptionists can monitor guest parking, which will make more crucial customer service tasks easier.
How to bring AI into the mix without massive investments in hardware
The next step is to make current solutions smarter than before. When you hook up a camera into the system, you can observe, identify and measure things that happen. That could be, for example, the number of people or vehicles moving in a certain direction.
This data can then be forwarded to wherever necessary and help automate various manual tasks.
“When the cameras are centrally controlled at AddSecure, the AI machine vision solution from 6sense can be incorporated into the existing system, bringing it up to date”, Kenttä concludes.
At the time the cameras were purchased, most likely no one knew what type of AI applications would be used with them if any. Therefore they might not be readily suitable for use with machine vision applications if they were intended to be used for something else.
For example, the cameras might be positioned in the wrong locations or their angle might be off. Most of the cameras, however, can be fully utilized. A new and smart solution can be achieved by replacing only 10% of all the cameras, without the need for a complete system renewal.
The joint solution of AddSecure and 6sense already includes over 12,000 cameras. So far, the cooperation has been taking place only in Finland, but with the new contract, AddSecure has a chance to put this technology into use globally.
AddSecure has operations in 15 countries with a focus point in Europe. The company employs about 1,000 people and has about 50,000 customers in Europe. Roughly 450,000 different customer sites are connected to the AddSecure environment.
The Alerta alarm transfer system is part of the AddSecure Smart Alarm solutions, involving about 20,000 customer sites. AddSecure is the largest operator in this branch in Finland and Europe.
More Information:
6sense Innovations Oy, Jussi Mäkinen, toimitusjohtaja,
jussi.makinen@6si.ai, +358 40 8334576