Solutions by typeInfrastructure integrity
How much time do I have from the moment a battery starts smoking?
A battery starts smoking and the detector says nothing
It is 18:50 in the warehouse. In the charging row, one battery has begun sending up a column of white smoke that rises straight to the roof. The two operators who were beside it have already stepped back. Nine metres up, the detector has still seen nothing: the smoke has to reach it, and that journey takes minutes. The very minutes in which this gets decided.
5 cameras across 5 sectors
This is how you ask for it
«Alert me the moment you see smoke in the battery charging area, even if no detector has gone off.»
A battery fire is not an ordinary fire: it reignites, water alone does not put it out, and it fills the building with smoke that forces an evacuation even where nothing is burning. If the alert arrives once the roof detector has gone off, you are not putting out the start of a fire: you are clearing a warehouse. Then come the days of downtime, the loss adjuster and the conversation about what was seen and when.
You decide once
It is decided once, with the safety officer and the warehouse manager: which areas are battery areas, in what hours, who gets the alert by day and who by night, and what happens in the first two minutes. That conversation is the hard part, and it only happens once. After that IRIS watches those areas all the time, on every camera that covers them, and applies what was agreed at six in the evening exactly as at four in the morning.
The battery charging area holds more energy per square metre than anywhere else in a building, and it is almost always an aisle at the back with a row of chargers. The same is true in a data centre energy room, in a yard of storage containers, or on the sorting belt of a recycling centre, where a scooter battery arrives hidden among bags of household waste.
The roof smoke detector works, but it works late by design: it waits for smoke to climb nine metres and gather. A camera sees the first column the moment it appears, because it is looking straight at it. The camera is not cleverer: it is closer. And in a battery fire, the first minutes are the difference between an extinguisher and an evacuation.
IRIS watches those areas continuously and alerts as soon as smoke or a glow appears where there should be none. It says which camera, which spot and at what time, and opens the video at the instant it started. Whoever gets the alert has nothing to search for: they see what is happening and decide. IRIS does not trigger suppression and does not cut the charge: the building’s systems and the people do that.
And there is a second thing the picture gives that no detector gives: where. In an energy room at four in the morning, knowing there is smoke does not help much; knowing it is coming out of the grille of the third module in the rack, and seeing the orange glow behind it, changes what you do in the next minute. The same in a container yard: «there is a fire in the yard» is not the same as «the door of the front container has been blown off and there is flame in the gap». The alert arrives with the spot already marked, and whoever responds does not lose the first minute finding it.
What changes
Before: the first warning came from a person walking past, or from a roof detector once smoke already filled the building.
Now: the alert comes from the aisle itself, with the picture in front of you, and reaches the supervisor’s phone and the control desk at the same time. Whoever decides to evacuate decides while looking, not while hearing a siren and asking where.
Where we have seen it
CAM-231Smoke coming off a battery pack in the middle of the aisle
«Tell me the moment smoke comes off a pack in the trolley area, however little, and put the camera in front of me.»
CAM-558Smoke coming out of one module in the battery block
«Tell me if smoke or a glow appears in the power room, and tell me which module it is coming from.»
CAM-276Smoke coming off a battery in the charging bay
«Alert me the moment you see smoke in the battery charging bay, even if no detector has gone off.»
CAM-420A lithium battery is riding the belt towards the shredder
«Alert me the moment you see a battery, a phone or a scooter on the sorting belt, before it reaches the shredder.»
CAM-353Black smoke pouring out of a battery container
«Alert me right away if smoke or flame comes out of a battery container, or if a door opens on its own.»
What it does not do
IRIS puts nothing out. It does not trigger suppression, does not cut the charge and does not replace the detectors or the fire system: regulation requires that equipment and still does.
It also cannot see the problem before it is visible. A cell heating up inside gives no image until smoke appears, it swells or it vents. If what you want is the earlier thermal warning, that is a temperature probe, not a camera.
Questions
- Are the fire detectors not enough on their own?
- Not always, which is why you have both. A roof detector waits for smoke to rise and gather, and in a tall building or one with air currents that takes time. A camera facing the charging row sees the first column as it appears. IRIS does not replace the fire installation and does not claim to: it gets there earlier with an alert so somebody can look, and the system does its job if things escalate.
- Can it tell smoke from steam or dust?
- Largely yes, because it does not just look at a patch: it looks at how it behaves. A column rising from a fixed point and growing does not look like the steam cloud of a wash-down or the dust a forklift kicks up. Even so, there are places where steam does confuse it, and the honest thing is to say so: the rule gets tuned against real scenes from that building until the alert is useful. Promising it never gets it wrong would be a lie.
- Does it work for an outdoor battery yard?
- Yes, and it is one of the places where it counts most, because nobody is inside. In a container yard what is watched is smoke, flame and also a door that opens by itself, which is often the first thing you see. The alert reaches the standby crew with the camera and the video, and they decide from outside whether to approach or call the fire brigade. Nobody has to open a door to find out what is behind it.
- Does it work on a waste belt, with a battery among the rubbish?
- Yes, and it is a different case: there is no smoke yet, there is an object that should not be there. What you are looking for is a battery, a phone or a scooter riding among the bags towards the shredder. IRIS alerts while it is still on the belt, with the camera and the spot, so somebody can stop it in time. It will not catch everything, because whatever is buried is not visible, and that is why we put it that way and not another.
Every simulation
Something has spilled
Tell me if there is liquid or foam outside its place and it is still there two minutes later.
- The sentence
- Where it applies
- What it finds
- The same rule
Not seeing yours here?
These words are the ones we have built, not the ones IRIS understands. The list falls short on purpose: you ask for it in a sentence, and sentences do not run out. Tell us what is in front of your cameras and we will tell you whether it understands it, or not yet.
And the best part
What holds on camera oneholds on camera four thousand, with nothing to copy by hand.
A rule is stated once and applies everywhere. And it says the same thing on Sunday night as on Tuesday morning, whoever is on call.
Tell us your problem and we will say whether IRIS understands it, or not yet.
We reply the same working day.