WestPoint · Cameras · Hanwha Vision
Hanwha makes it all down to the chip. And you can see that in backlight.
Korean, it comes from the old Samsung security division and it makes its own image processor. A good ratio between what it costs and how it behaves in difficult light, and management software that comes with the equipment.
What kind of manufacturer it is.
A vertical manufacturer: it designs the sensor, the processing and the software, and it sells them together.
Making its own chip has a practical consequence: the manufacturer decides how light is handled instead of inheriting whatever a processor bought from somebody else brings. You notice that in scenes with a lot of contrast and with little light, which are the ones that break most installations.
The second thing that defines this house is that the management software comes with the family of equipment and not as a separate invoice per camera. In a medium installation that changes the budget visibly.
What it sacrifices is being fully open. It works with third party software, but the best of what it has —the analytics and the fine management— is got out within its own family of equipment. The more mixed the installation is, the less of that gets used.
Where it behaves well.
In industrial and logistics interiors with irregular light: units with roof lights, racking aisles with deep shadow, loading bay doors open to the sun. This brand's mid-range equipment stands that jump in light better than its price would lead you to expect, and in an industrial unit with twenty cameras that turns into money.
And where the customer wants a complete, simple system: cameras, recording and software from the same house, with the security staff searching and exporting without ringing anybody. The catalogue is wide —dome, bullet, multisensor, fisheye, motorised— so the whole installation is covered without forcing any point. The advantage there is not technical: it is that the system actually gets used.
Where we would not put it.
There are two situations where proposing it would be selling the easy way.
In installations where the video software is already decided and comes from another house, and what is expected of the camera is on-board analytics governed from that software. It works, but you pay for a part of the equipment that will not be used, and some adjustments have to be made in the camera's own interface, which is exactly what you wanted to avoid.
And at the genuinely difficult points: an entrance in full backlight with the setting sun straight in front, a number plate read at a long distance, a scene with almost no light and no way of putting in a floodlight. There the conversation is no longer about the brand, it is about what lens and what sensor are needed, and sometimes another house comes out on top — or moving the camera does, which is cheaper and nobody proposes it.
The analytics it carries inside, and where they stop.
The range with on-board analytics classifies what is moving —person, vehicle, face, number plate— counts crossings over a line and alerts on intrusion into a zone, and it does it inside the camera. That cuts the number of silly alerts enormously compared with the motion detection of old, which goes off with a shadow and with a plastic bag.
And that is where the ceiling is. Classifying an object is not understanding a situation. The camera knows that is a person; it does not know whether that person is arguing with another, whether they are wearing the hard hat needed today because a crane is working, or whether the odd thing is that they are there at that hour. Asking it for that ends in rules that get more and more complicated until somebody switches them off on a Tuesday.
What comes now is a recommendation with an interest of our own, so it is declared: in the same house there is IRIS Neural, the NVMS from Infinity Neural, the other company in the group. It is our own product. We would rather you knew it by reading this line.
What it brings is that understanding of the scene over the same cameras that are already fitted. They sit together with no trouble: the camera filters at the edge and the system deals with what needs context. And if classifying a person or a vehicle is all that was needed, the camera on its own is enough and we say so.
What we do.
- Separating the easy points from the difficult ones before asking for a price. The catalogue is wide and the temptation is to quote everything with the same model; the difference between ranges in this house is paid for exactly at the two or three points where the light is bad.
- The lens and the field of view with the plan: how much scene each camera takes in and how much detail reaches the exact place where somebody has to be recognised. The calculation is done before buying, not on the way up the pole.
- The installation: height and tilt, sealing, power over the network cable with reserve, and the junction boxes reachable without putting up a scaffold in two years' time.
- The setting up at the bad hour and at night, with the light that place really has. On this brand there is a lot of room for adjustment in exposure and in backlight handling, and without touching it you are throwing away half of what you have paid for.
- The maintenance: firmware, passwords in the customer's name, and a check of the field of view camera by camera at every visit. An inspection that does not check what can be seen from each point is a visit, not an inspection.
The angle and the height are not decided at fitting time.
With backlight something happens that you only learn by fitting cameras: you almost never win by adjusting the camera. You win by turning it fifteen degrees, dropping it a metre or moving it to the other side of the door.
The angle, the height and the light decide for good what will be possible with that image: whether one day a number plate can be read there, people counted or a face recognised. It is settled in the project, with the plan and at the bad hour, and not on the day of fitting.
Where to go next.
The area covers what does not change with the brand: what detail is needed at each point, how long it is kept and who can look.
Get started
A new installation or an extension of the one you already have?
Tell us how many points there are, what the light is like at each one and what video software you use today. With that we will tell you where this brand's mid range suits, where you have to go up and where the thing to do is move the camera.