Motion Detection and Object Tracking Security Cameras

The vast advancement in technology has virtually reached all areas and fields of human life. Entertainment, transport, communication, business, education, and security are a few fields that can not function properly without the extensive use of technology. Perhaps amongst the fields that benefited the most from the rapid advancement in technology is the field of security systems, and more specifically, security cameras. Theses surveillance devices used to be very expensive and only the rich could afford to buy them and get them installed, which would include major manufacturing companies and the government. Luckily, just like everything else, their prices were significantly lowered a couple of years after they first entered the market.

In order to stay competitive security camera companies began to investigate and research ways to make their products more popular than the other company. This competition came to the benefit of the consumers and the general public. They started by making the cameras "user friendly", thus, enabling the average citizens of installing them and operating them with relative ease. Also, they began to compete with the features that every camera now provides. Over the years these features became fundamental standards of any security camera. These features have also caused the cameras to diversify and be accustomed for specific tasks. For example, there are outdoor cameras, indoor cameras, infrared cameras, micro cameras, just to name a few.

Amongst the most recently invented features is the feature of motion detection. This new technology basically revolves around capturing or recording footage that is most important and beneficial to the owner, which is essentially footage with motion. Let's say that you are an owner of a security surveillance cameras systems and some crime happened on your property. If you have a regular security camera you will have to waste a significant portion of your valuable time to just sit and watch through the recorded footage of the entire day just to find the few minutes or seconds in which the crime happened. On the other hand if you have a security camera equipped with motion detection you will be able to find the perpetrators very quickly.

The motion detection feature enables the camera to sit idle for the majority of the day, but as soon as something moves in front of it, the motion detection system immediately sends a signal to the cameras to start recording. This process can also be done by a computer software at the end of the day where it uses special techniques to separate the footage with obvious motion from that that does not contain any. Both, pre or post capture technique, allow you to free up space in your hard drive by only storing those instances that matter the most, thus saving you time and money.

The way that motion detection works is by detecting frames. For example, the security camera captures a quick picture of the surroundings and after a preset amount of time it captures another picture and then quickly compares the two frames for any changes. If there are changes the camera begins the recording process while continuing the comparison process, as soon as two images compare to be the same the camera stops recording.
In a regular security camera, or one without the motion detection feature, everything would be recorded and stored. From the first time you turned your cameras on in the morning till you come home at night your cameras would have been recording. Of course this wastes lots of space and resources on your chosen method of storage. If you use video tapes to store the media then that would make you go out and buy extra video tape that are unnecessary in reality. Similarly, if you use a DVR or the hard drive of a computer to store your surveillance video, this may cause you to invest in more storage just to save this unnecessary footage. With a motion detecting security camera. Only significant movements will be recorded by the camera. These movements may total to a couple of hours throughout the whole day, instead of having the entire twenty four hours on tape. This will also save your valuable time by enabling you of getting to the vital parts of your surveillance video a lot faster without having to spend endless hours searching for them

Another newly invented feature is object tracking. This feature has truly elevated security cameras to a new level of professionalism and sophistication. The upgrade in this feature is not in the security cameras themselves but rather in the computer software that manages them. The upgrade to this software enable it to recognize specific light patterns, shadows, and colors and recognize them as objects, or a pattern that should be tracked. Upon recognizing this object the software uses the camera to monitor if it exists in the view of any nearby camera. If it does, it continues to monitor it until it moves into a direction that is beyond the view of the security cameras.

To give you a simple example, let's say that you have three of these object tracking security cameras in your house. They are located in the kitchen, living room, and bedroom. At a certain day you decide to spend the night at your friend's house for a sleepover. Before you go to your friend's house you make sure that the cameras are in stand by mode and you head out. A burglar happens to invade your home that night. He breaks in through your kitchen door. Your object tracking security camera, which is also equipped with motion diction capabilities, immediately recognizes the motion, starts recording, and sends an image of the object to your cellular phone. The intruder decides to head for the living room area. The software recognizes that the intruder has disappeared from the view of the kitchen camera and was moving towards the direction of the living room camera. The software then activates the living room camera based on the directional data gathered from the previous camera, it also deactivates the kitchen camera putting it in standby mode. The living room camera starts recording the thief's activities who then decides to move to your bedroom. The software acts accordingly and activates the bedroom camera. After that if he decides to move in the direction of any of the previous cameras they will be activated just as before however if he decides to escape from your bedroom window, the cameras will all be deactivated, unless you have an outdoor camera.

As you can clearly see, motion detection and object tracking are two features that no household should go without, let alone business and governmental institutions. These two features have infinite uses and countless advantages that can only be appreciated when experienced.