Fighting Crime From Above?

Could Google's Android be a good fit for the future of smart cameras?  Recently Android has made it's way out of the cell phone market and into the fast growing netbook market.  Is the next logical leap into smart IP video surveillance cameras?

Back in May, 2009, Vikram Agarwak wrote a program called Watchtower: A Surveillance Camera for Android.  This app is a simple program which turned his Android powered phone into a surveillance camera with remote access.  While this program is very rudimentary when compared to modern IP cameras, the Watchtower app serves as a good "proof of concept" that Android can be used for this other rapidly growing market: Smart IP surveillance cameras.

Comparison to the evolution of smart cable boxes
About a decade ago, the cable industry struggled dealing with new technologies like personal DVRs and Tivo systems.  The cable companies wanted to keep proprietary VOD in the cable headends, and leave "dumb" cable boxes out at the edge of the network.  Over time, the marketplace chose the winner, placing the "intelligent" cable boxes at the edge of the network.

Android looks like it can possibly do the same thing for the intelligent video business.  By building an infrastructure where a self-contained android-powered video camera can store video, perform video analytics, access control,  and alarm monitoring, the economies of scale go up, and the price for this techonology will come down.

Android architecture examined
The figure below shows how an Android powered camera could work in a small, medium, or large scale setting for both the public and private sectors.  Over time, the potential is there for local and federal government to connect into this architecture for both monitoring and sending crime metadata.

Click figure for larger view

I think Google's Android has the potential to do well in the smart IP camera market. The Android operating system itself would not take long at all to port over to this new hardware, and surveillance software would have to be tweaked and re-compiled to run on an android platform.

While it takes good CCTV practices, the correct installation context, and technology for surveillance cameras to be effective, using Android technology may prove to be a cost effective way to help offset the problems with practices and installation contexts.