CAM-927

No night vision

A street at night, seen from a camera mounted on a lamp post. You can just make out the tarmac and the dashed lane markings, a car parked at bottom left, another one stopped in the middle of the road, the row of vehicles further up and the tree trunks along the pavement. On the right, a single warm point of light in a doorway. Everything else is black. The scene is not dark by accident: this camera has night vision and tonight it has not come on. By day it gives a clean picture. IRIS sees that, at this hour, nothing usable can be taken from the frame. What it does not know is why: whether it is the illuminator, the cable or a setting is for whoever goes up to look.

CAM-927 · ILUMINACION IR · SIN RESPUESTA

What IRIS understands

What it recognises in this scene

night, no usable image

The rule

You decide once. IRIS applies it always.

at night a camera stops giving a usable picture and the night vision it had on previous nights does not come on

Then

alert maintenance with the camera, the time and the video of those minutes
mark the camera as not operational at night so it does not count as covered
check again the next night and close the alert only when there is a picture again

The instruction that set it up«Tell me as soon as a camera is left with no usable picture at night, even if it looks perfect by day, and tell me since what time.»

What changes

What changes for whoever answers for the cameras working

A night-time failure is the worst kind, because night is when the camera is needed. Almost everything that gets asked for later — a car broken into, a shutter forced, someone who fell and nobody saw — happened between eleven and six. Today nobody finds out: whoever looks at the cameras looks in the morning, and in the morning this one looks perfect. The fault only exists when there is nobody watching. It comes to light weeks later, the day the video is requested and what comes back is a black screen with a timestamp on it. With IRIS the alert arrives that same night, with the camera and the clip, and the next day somebody is going up a ladder instead of writing a report explaining why there is no picture.

What people usually ask

How does IRIS know it is the camera and not that the street is dark?

Because it compares that camera with itself and with its neighbours. On previous nights, at the same hour and pointing at the same place, it gave a picture with edges and detail; tonight it gives nothing. A street does not go dark for good from one day to the next. And if the public lighting really has failed, it fails for every camera on that stretch at once: that is not a camera fault, it is a power cut, and it is reported as such.

Is this not stepping into the camera manufacturer’s maintenance?

No. IRIS does not touch the camera, does not configure it, does not change its settings and does not replace anyone’s warranty. It only looks at the picture that arrives — the same picture any recorder would receive — and says whether it is usable or not. Who repairs the unit, under what contract and how fast, is between you and your supplier. The only thing that changes is when you find out: the first night, instead of the day the video is needed.

If it looks perfect by day, why is it flagged as critical?

Because half the hours of the year are night, and night is when that camera was meant to work. A camera that only performs in daylight is watching half the time, and the easy half at that. On any daily count it shows up as operational, because whoever checks it checks it in daylight. That is why IRIS rates it critical: it is not completely broken, it is blind in exactly the hours it was put there for.

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