CAM-138

Someone comes in outside access hours

The school's pedestrian gate, open mid-morning. An adult in a cap with a shoulder bag is stepping through it; behind the railings, the playground with the children at break. IRIS does not know who that person is or why they are there. All it knows is that someone came through the gate at an hour when the school keeps it closed.

CAM-138 · MAIN GATE · ENTRY OUTSIDE ACCESS HOURS

What IRIS understands

What it recognises in this scene

person entering outside hours
gate open
children by the gate
children in the playground
car at the kerb

What this camera measures

An alert says something is happening. The reading says how much.

1People in the access area
35 sInside for
2 minGate open for
0Access slots at this hour
26Children in the playground
11:20Time it happened

The figures on this screen are an example from the illustration, not any client's measurement.

The rule

You decide once. IRIS applies it always.

someone comes through the gate outside the access slots the school has set

Then

alert the front desk with the camera, the time and the video of the moment
say whether the gate has been left open and for how long
log the time, so the school learns at which hours the gate is left open

The instruction that set it up«Tell me if someone comes through the gate outside the arrival and pick-up slots we have set, so that someone from the front desk can go down and see what is going on.»

What changes

What changes for the school team

A school gate is closed most of the day and opens in short bursts: arrival, pick-up, lunch, a delivery. The rest of the time it should be shut, and it is not always shut. When someone comes through mid-morning, today it depends on whether the person at the front desk happens to be looking at the screen that second. IRIS judges nobody and knows nobody: it could be a parent running late, a supplier or a former pupil. What the alert states is a checkable fact — someone came in while the gate was supposed to be closed — so that a person goes and looks. Almost every time it will be nothing, and that is exactly the point.

What people usually ask

Can IRIS tell a parent from someone who should not be there?

No, and it is worth saying out loud: it cannot. IRIS does not identify anyone. It does not recognise faces, it does not compare them against any database, it does not store who anyone is and it keeps no record on anyone. All it knows is the time, and the time was set by the school. The alert says 'someone came through the gate outside access hours', and nothing else. Who that person is, and whether they should be there, is decided by whoever walks over to look — someone from the school.

What if it is someone who comes in at that hour every day?

The timetable is written by the school, not by us, and it can have as many slots as it needs: arrival, pick-up, lunch, the afternoon meeting, Tuesday's delivery. If the alert fires when it should not, you do not touch the camera: you fix the timetable. That is the part of the work that shows most, because an alert that goes off every day at the same hour stops being looked at within a week, and then it is worth nothing.

Is the face of whoever comes in stored?

The camera records video, like every other camera in the school, and that video is held by the school under its own rules. What IRIS does not do is treat it as a face: it does not extract one, measure one, compare one against any database or create any record. The detection is 'a person came through this gate at this time'. A school can work with that sentence; it cannot work with 'this person is so-and-so'.

Other cameras

A different case every time

No extra alarms here. Just what needs looking at.

Not a recorded video, not an explanatory drawing: a summary of the real screen, with a different case every time it starts. There is a lot more behind it.