Smoke and fire detection from the image.

A camera detection system is NOT a statutory fire detection system. It does not replace the type-approved control panel, nor the detectors the regulations require, nor the installation that has to be inspected and signed off. What it does is reach where a point detector does not reach, and give the alert earlier.

We say it on the first screen because the alternative is that somebody fits cameras where the law asks for detectors, and that is not a commercial misunderstanding: it is a problem with consequences.

A warning, and it comes first: IRIS Neural is a product of Infinity Neural, the other company in Upon Group. It heads this list and it is ours, so read it knowing that. With the rest we integrate; with this one, we are also the people who make it.

A point detector needs the smoke to rise up to it. In a fifteen-metre-high industrial unit that takes time, and with air currents it may never happen: the smoke stratifies, it is pushed aside and it arrives diluted. Outdoors there is simply no ceiling.

That is where a camera brings what is not there: it sees the column of smoke while it is still at floor level, and it sees the glow of a flame as soon as it appears. It does not wait for anything to rise.

The places where this changes things are the usual ones: very tall industrial units, outdoor stockpiles, conveyor belts, waste plants, material yards, large car parks and the perimeters of industrial sites.

It analyses the image looking for the behaviour of smoke and fire: how it moves, how it grows, how the light around it changes. It is not a colour detector: a column of smoke behaves one way and a white lorry going past does not.

And things fool it, as they fool everything. Water vapour in a plant that produces it, dust thrown up by a machine, fog at dawn, welding smoke or exhaust fumes. That is why it is adjusted to the particular scene, with the camera where it has to be and with the field of view the scene allows — and that is why the first step is to look at that camera.

As one more layer, not in place of another. The type-approved control panel does what it has to do and remains the one that answers to the regulations and to the inspection. Image detection is put where the panel does not cover well, and its alert arrives in the same room and to the same people, with the image of what caused it.

That last part is half the value: a fire alert that arrives with the image is verified in seconds, and the difference between evacuating and not evacuating is usually there.

Who fits each part is also clear: the control panel, the loops and the detectors are fitted by WestPoint, which is the electronics part. The water —sprinklers, dry risers, fire hose reels— is another line of work and it is not ours.