Although many of Rhode Island’s public schools have long placed video cameras
in their hallways and on school buses, a partnership between two businessmen
is hoping districts around the state will see the value in upgrading their surveillance
technology.
The AutoEye Digital Monitoring System, which evolved out of a homeland security application, allows digital cameras to convert color video images into a digital format that can be instantly viewed, stored, printed or transmitted for real-time viewing over a computer network. Joseph Serdakowski, an independent consultant and developer from East Greenwich, developed the software AutoEye as a side project shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The AutoEye system is an integrated IP system that creates digitized video streams that are then transferred over a wired or wireless IP network. The cameras are actually a part of a computer network, and are accessible for real-time viewing from any computer or user who has permission to access them, either over a local area network or the Internet. Serdakowski said the software is designed to handle up to 300 cameras and store up to 10 million images.
Cameras on the system can be configured to save images periodically (one image taken per second, per camera), or can be activated by motion detection or by hooking a camera up to a relay switch and tying the camera into an alarm, or a light switch. The system can be reconfigured at any time and images can be viewed using controls similar to a DVD while allowing for contrast enhancement or enlargement.
Serdakowski, who holds a doctorate from Brown University in computational fluid mechanics, is looking for more distributors like David Lippitt, of Systematic Information Control in West Warwick, to actually sell and market the systems. Serdakowski makes his profit supplying the software, while Lippitt makes his money in the installation, training and maintenance of the system’s hardware and cameras.
Lippitt said his wife, who works in Coventry High School’s library, was regularly coming home with stories of malicious false alarms. Lippitt took Serdakowski’s program and tailored it for schools, stripping down the amount of cameras the system could support and allowing the cameras to be controlled by a single computer that local schools could afford.
Unlike video, which takes up a significant amount of hard drive space, the second-by-second images allow 10 to 12 days of data to be stored before the camera begins overwriting itself. Coventry’s School Committee began allocating money in April 2003 and the systems were completely installed over the summer. Activation of the system was delayed when the committee, though its public schools had used video surveillance for years, decided it needed to outline a policy for the use of surveillance.
While he had heard some legal rumblings from groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, Lippitt said their concerns were apparently put to rest when it was confirmed that the units weren’t going to be recording audio.
The cameras were turned on in December 2003 and Lippitt said within days the cameras identified a handful of students who damaged ceiling tiles as they kicked a soccer ball around the halls after school. Later in the year, cameras picked up a student haphazardly driving his mother’s car along a sidewalk. Thanks to the system’s color images, Lippitt said identification is usually pretty easy.
Lippitt has bids out for several other elementary schools, a couple middle schools and is preparing for larger installations in two private schools – one in Massachusetts and the other in North Smithfield.
He also recently completed a mailing to 500 schools in Rhode Island and Connecticut, and his received significant interest in his digital systems, which he says are two to three times lower than other competitors. He said most of the systems he’s been installing run between $12,000 and $20,000.
“A lot of these schools don’t have the money, but they have the need and so
they find the money,” said Lippitt, who offers his lowest prices for schools.
“And it’s worth it, because if cameras can lower the tensions in the hallways
and the destruction of property, at some point the level of education is going
to start to improve.”
