The same camera that today only records can start measuring your operation.

And when something happens, the really expensive part starts: someone sits down and searches backwards, minute by minute, until they find the moment. That time never appears on an invoice, but it gets paid for.

Counting is worse still. How many people came in, how many lorries unloaded, how long the line was stopped. It is counted by hand, written down by hand, and each day's number depends on who wrote it down.

You don't have to change the cameras. The one already up there stays where it is: what changes is what happens to its image.

Everything goes in. Only what matters comes out. Routine is let through and what matters becomes an alert with its time, its camera and its video — or a number that comes out the same every night.

A camera records. What it records is watched by someone, or by nobody. Infinity Neural sits in between: it looks at the image, understands what is there and what is happening, and lets the routine through.

What isn't routine comes out in one of two ways. Either it is an alert —with its time, its camera and its video— or it is a number that adds up and can be compared across shifts, weeks and seasons.

It doesn't replace anyone. It stops people spending their attention watching what isn't happening, which is almost all the time on almost any camera.

When somebody tells us 'I want the camera to alert me if this happens', there is almost never one right answer. There are two routes, and which one applies depends on how many cases have to be covered, how much precision each one needs and whether that installation has a line.

It means somebody looks at your camera before promising anything. Where it is mounted, what angle it has, what light there is at six in the evening and at six in the morning, what happens when it rains, what crosses in front of it and how often. That is where the first thing we say comes from, and sometimes it is that it can't be done — and that is bespoke too.

If it can be done, what gets tuned is the detection for THAT scene. It isn't picking a model out of a catalogue and switching it on: it is adjusting it to your product, to the way you stack it, to the clothes your people wear, to the floor markings in your industrial unit. That is why it reaches a precision a general system can't reach in that particular case: because it isn't solving every case, it is solving yours.

What it asks in return is two things. First, time: you have to record, watch what really happens on that camera for a few days and correct. Second, a connection: the video is processed off site, so that installation needs a line that can take it.

And a third that isn't a cost but is worth saying: each tuned case is one case. If what you want is forty different things across forty cameras, tuning them one by one doesn't add up for you or for us. That is when what you need is the other one.

It means a system gets installed and from then on the whole installation is covered. Every camera, not one. Many cases at once, not one. And the video, the rules, the alerts and the history in one place, instead of spread across a recorder, an email and a spreadsheet.

The rules are written by your organisation, which is who knows what deserves an alert at four in the morning. IRIS automates applying them all the time without tiring, which is exactly what a person can't do in front of a wall of screens.

And it works with the internet cable unplugged. For a lot of people this is the first question and the last: there are installations that can't depend on a line, because of regulation, because they are isolated, or because the line that exists can't be guaranteed.

What it doesn't do is tune the way bespoke does. A system covering forty cameras can't be adjusted to each one's scene the way a detection built for a single camera would be. That isn't a limitation of IRIS: it is what covering a lot means.

Because a real installation doesn't have one problem: it has a background layer and two or three things that really matter. The background layer —knowing what is happening on every camera, having the video in order, having the obvious things flag up— is covered by IRIS. The two or three things that actually decide something are tuned bespoke.

One example of the ones that keep coming up: an industrial unit with forty cameras where the two things that hurt are that nobody walks in front of the forklift at the loading bay and that the counting at the door stands up to an inspection. IRIS covers the forty. Those two go bespoke, and one of them type-approved as well.

The odd thing is the opposite: paying for watchmaker precision in forty places where it isn't needed, or going without it exactly where it is.

That one is better than the other. It isn't. A system covering forty cameras can't be tuned like a detection built for a single one, and a detection built for a single one doesn't cover forty. That isn't anyone's limitation: it is how it works.

What we do say is which one is right for you, even if it is the cheap one. And if neither of them does what you want well, we say that too.

So far that is how it is organised. What comes now is the only thing that really convinces: what you see on screen when it is running. Every one of these detections was recorded at a real installation, not simulated — and if yours looks like one of them, you already know what to expect.

Anyone can put a counter on a door. The hard part comes when someone asks where that number comes from. And they do ask. An inspection asks when an occupancy figure has to be justified. The landlord asks when the rent is calculated on footfall. The advertiser paying for impressions asks. The committee asks when it has to decide how much staff to put on a Saturday.

At that point, 'a system we have counts it' isn't enough. You need to be able to say who has checked that the system counts correctly.

Type approval doesn't mean the system never gets it wrong. It means an independent body has measured how much it gets wrong, under defined conditions, and has put it in writing with its stamp.

That is exactly what you need when the number leaves your building and goes into an official file: not a promise from the manufacturer, but the measurement of a third party that doesn't sell the product.

The body here is the Centro Español de Metrología, the one that in Spain makes sure a metre measures a metre.

That it is 'the most precise on the market'. We don't know: that would need every other one measured under the same conditions, and we haven't done it. What we do know, and can be checked, is that it is the only European one type-approved to do this.

Or that the type approval covers any mounting. It covers counting done the way the protocol says: with the camera where it has to be and with the field of view it demands. Mounted any other way it counts just as well or as badly as any other, but it is no longer type-approved — and that has to be said before, not after.

That is everything: why it is needed, what it does, the two ways of having it, how it looks running and which part is measured by someone from outside. What is missing isn't something we can supply.

What is missing is looking at one of your cameras. Where it is, what angle it has, what can be seen from there at six in the evening and at six in the morning. That decides what can be got out of it, and there is no knowing before looking at it.