Homeland Security for Your Home

Inexpensive "web cams" have made it possible for almost anyone to set up a video surveillance system for a home or business.  Wireless cameras can use a home network to feed video back to a home computer, or even a web page, giving you a view of what's going on at home from almost anywhere.

That can give parents a sense of security—letting them check to see if their children got home safe from school from work, or checking in on their teenagers at home while they're out. The problem with most surveillance camera systems is that you have to watch the video from them. And that either means having someone constantly watching, or reviewing video later—after something has already happened.

Government agencies and big businesses solve this problem with computer software. Video processing systems can watch video streams and detect changes, then do pattern recognition to determine if something moving across the screen is a blowing leaf or a person. The same sort of change detection is used by the military in its efforts to detect the planting of roadside bombs by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That's the sort of technology that Cernium Corp. has now built into a home video surveillance system. Called Archerfish Solo, the combination camera and monitoring device connects to a home WiFi or wired Ethernet network, and can be configured to send video clip emails and alerts that you can watch on your smart phone or computer, whenever it sees something that either falls outside of the ordinary or is an expected event that you want to be notified of. You can also watch video from the device live by logging into the Archerfish web portal, a secure website that Cernium operates for its customers.

Cernium claims that the system can learn who to expect around your house, identifying children and pets. Archerfish can also learn to ignore passing cars and people just walking by on a sidewalk.  But you can configure the system to alert you when a family member comes home, for example, or when someone comes to your door with a delivery.

The latest edition to the Archerfish portal is a mobile web portal accessible from any smart phone or other device from an Apple Safari browser—in other words, an iPad, iPhone or iPod.  Archerfish customers can access the settings of their surveillance system from their device, as well as watch live streaming video.

The Archerfish Solo can be mounted indoors or outdoors on a ceiling, wall or shelf. The camera works in normal or low light, and you can set up multiple systems to cover each area of your home you want surveilled.

Each Archerfish Solo system costs $400, which includes a basic subscription to the Archerfish web portal.  While that's twice the cost of many multi-camera surveillance systems for a single remote eye, the cost is certainly lower than paying for someone to watch your video feeds all day for you.