CAM-906
Blinded
The same crossroads at night, the ground wet and the street lights on. You can see the pharmacy with its green cross, the café terrace, a white car waiting before the crossing and a red one stopped further along. In the middle of the crossing there is a person, and out of them comes a very bright point of light aimed straight at the camera: a white star with long rays, a halo that eats several metres around it and a line of coloured circles running diagonally down to the bottom corner. Of that person not even the clothing can be made out. IRIS sees that a light is aimed at the lens and that no usable image is left there. What kind of light it is, it does not know.
Turn on IRIS Vision
AI-generated image
What IRIS understands
What it recognises in this scene
- light aimed at the lens
The rule
You decide once. IRIS applies it always.
If
a light source is aimed at the lens and leaves part of the frame without a usable image for longer than a passing headlight takes
Then
- alert whoever is on shift, with the camera, the time and the video of the seconds before the light
- call up the same scene from another camera on the crossroads while the glare lasts
- log how long the camera could not see, so that the gap in the video has an explanation
The instruction that set it up«Tell me if a camera stops seeing because a light is being shone straight at it, and keep me the video from before that light appeared.»
What changes
What changes for whoever answers for the cameras working
A blinded camera looks like it is working. It is recording, it is on the list and there is a picture on the screen. What there is not is a picture of the place that matters: the crossing itself, those very metres, are white. And it does not take long: a minute is enough for nothing to be left of what happened there. Today nobody notices, because at eleven at night nobody is watching that particular screen, and it is discovered the next day when the video is requested. With IRIS the alert goes out while the light is still there, with the camera and the time, and with the video of the seconds before it appeared, which is almost always the part worth having. Whoever is on shift decides what to do: look through another camera on the same crossroads, call someone, or nothing.
What people usually ask
Will it fire every afternoon when the sun is low?
Not if the rule is set up properly. The sun hits the same camera at roughly the same hour and from the same direction, and it moves slowly through the year: that is a repeating pattern, and those time bands can be left out of the alert. What cannot be done is telling the sun from a torch by the shape of the light, because the sensor sees the same thing. What does tell them apart is when and from where: glare at eleven at night, from the middle of a pedestrian crossing, is not the sun. That is the rule you write.
What about car headlights, which point at the camera all the time?
They need not raise anything, because what is measured is not how bright the light is but how long it lasts and whether it stays still. A headlight crosses the frame and is gone in a couple of seconds; a light aimed at the lens stays put and keeps the same area white. How long counts as too long is set by whoever runs the site, because a street with traffic is not a closed yard. And if on one particular camera the headlights are blinding it every night, that is not a false alert any more: that camera is pointed the wrong way.
Does IRIS say whether someone is blinding the camera on purpose?
No. IRIS states a fact and nothing more: at such a time a light aimed at the lens left this part of the frame without an image, and it lasted this long. Whether it was a torch, a work light, the headlight of a car parked facing it or a reflection off a window, the image does not say, and the intention even less. That is decided by a person watching the video, and IRIS hands it over whole, including the seconds before the light appeared, which are usually the ones that answer the question. No accusation appears in this record, and none ever will.
Demo · IRIS at work
This isn’t a video. It’s a slice of the real screen.
A summary of the real interface, played hands-free. You see one case from start to finish; what you do not see are the other screens, and there are many.
- Four cameras at once
- Each understands its own view
- The numbers climb by themselves
Next step
How long does it take to find a hand played two hours ago?
12 cases: 9 raise an alert when something happens and 3 only measure. You see each image as it is, and then with what IRIS understands on top.
What does a shopping centre see beyond the visitor count?
12 cases: 4 raise an alert when something happens and 8 only measure. You see each image as it is, and then with what IRIS understands on top.
And the best part
Video is late by definition:you watch it once the thing has already happened.
IRIS tells you while it is happening, with the camera, the time and what it saw. Arriving in time changes the end of almost any story, and no new cameras are needed for that.
Tell us your problem and we will say whether IRIS understands it, or not yet.
We reply the same working day.