Body camera: a fashionable gadget or a serious tool?

13 Апреля 2021

Basically, a body camera is an ultra-portable camcorder - that is, a combination of an ultra-miniature television camera with an equally small digital video recorder, designed for continuous Pasang CCTV Jakarta while wearing the device on outer clothing. Should we classify devices that are worn on the head (on a helmet, headdress or head belt) as body cameras? The question still remains open, since scientific classifications in our time are barely keeping up with commodity ones. At the very least, the helmet-mounted cameras supplied to the firefighter are considered by marketers to be a separate sector of the market.

Body camera

From the point of view of industry, body-worn cameras are at the intersection of classic video surveillance and its relatively new modification - managing the collection and storage of video evidence. In the judicial systems of different countries, the status of video recordings as evidence can vary significantly, but there are general requirements for files recorded by body cameras. The main group of requirements is reduced to guarantees of non-interference with materials in terms of their integrity and content. In other words, the hardware part of the devices must exclude the possibility of deleting or editing video content.

Technical specifications

Camera manufacturers are constantly improving their products, and at the moment the de facto standard for resolution is FullHD. The used optics in most cases is reduced to wide-angle; a number of camera models have built-in IR illumination. An important function of body-worn cameras is pre-alarm recording, usually set to a 30-second cycle. This means that when the control button is pressed, a video recording is saved on the built-in storage device, starting 30 seconds before the moment of pressing. Recording on cameras can also be activated by other events - for example, if there is a built-in acceleration sensor, it is possible to start recording if the user starts to run or falls to the ground. More exotic sensors were also reported - for example, detecting the removal of personal weapons from the holster.

It is only natural that a body camera, especially used for security purposes, must be weather resistant and withstand certain shock loads. Considering the relatively low weight of the devices (usually from 50 to 150 grams), there are no special problems to ensure the appropriate security characteristics. With regard to the load on the batteries, everything is somewhat more complicated here. When using cameras by guards or police officers, it is assumed that the operating time of the camera from the built-in power source corresponds to the duration of the patrol shift. However, not all models are able to provide this, and the manufacturer, in general, can only indicate the average operating time under standard load. An increased load on the onboard processor in low light conditions, the inclusion of IR illumination, low ambient temperature and heavy use of radio communications (4G, Wi-Fi) can lead to a significant reduction in the effective operating time of cameras. And this is fraught with the loss of valuable information: at the right time, the camera may turn out to be a useless toy.

The ups and downs of the market

It should be noted that the purchase of body cameras for use in the practice of law enforcement officers is very similar to "soup from an ax." The fact is that the costs of operating and maintaining cameras, training personnel, and most importantly, processing and storing captured video data often turn out to be an order of magnitude higher than the cost of the cameras themselves. The Los Angeles City Council Public Safety Committee released data that the City Police Department incurred in 2016 for the acquisition of 7,000 ultraportable recorders was