[jimduk]

Hikvision are an interesting company with performant products. You can view CCTV as having had 3 stages. Stage 1 - the model is like a TV studio - closed circuit TV, analog cables, control rooms, monitor banks (some setups are still like this). Stage 2 - cameras are network devices - Axis the big European security camera co started life as a networked printer company, not a coincidence. Stage 3 - connectivity is all IP, but the focus is the combined sensing effect of everything on the network and the smarts to make sense of it all. Some projects have tried to do this as middleware, but much easier if you provide the whole solution like Hik. Stage 4 is combined 'pattern of life' analysis from external and on-person surveillance, maybe this comes from Google/Apple, maybe from Hik/Huawei etc. The game is afoot