Google Chrome OS - sneak peek

Here is a sneak peak of the Google Chrome OS. Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks.  According to the official google blog, speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS.  Here is a slideshow of the OS as reviewed by PC Magazine:

http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewer/0,1205,l%253D246319%2526a%253D246243%2526po%253D1,00.asp

You can download and get involved in the development of the Chrome OS here. You need to have Linux. 
and have the following:

Ubuntu (Hardy 8.04 or newer, Karmic 9.10 recommended)
An account with root access (needed to run chroot and modify the mount table)
Chromium prerequisites (needed to build a Chromium-based browser as part of building Chromium OS)

Exhibition at Philconstruct

This week, the sales team had an exhibit at the SMX (SM exhibition center) featuring several product lines including, embedded DVRs, PC based DVRs, web based DIDO and central monitoring system.  Some of the pics are shown below

Above.  The Central Monitoring Station console

Camera and Audio visual presentation

A busy week for the team

Understanding a DVR

What are the major components of a DVR?  This is a diagram of a typical security DVR where you will see the major components starting with the CPU, the compression chip, video encoder and decoder and various sub systems.

Scalability

Scalability key to viability

Software capability determines product application and scale. Aside from the basic client software bundled with the units, some large and midsize companies also offer software development kits or SDKs. Certain designs even provide Wiegand for intercom with access control.Software compatibility, however, restricts product variety. With no official industry standard to solve equipment or platform mismatches, makers are limited to only a few available types of software and hardware.

Most DVS models from China are based on RISC CPU (ARM9) + ASIC or RISC CPU + DSP architecture, which is similar to embedded DVRs. DSP is mostly adopted in high-end products because of its flexibility. ASIC, which has lower cost and a shorter manufacturing period, is mostly used in low-end and midrange models.

The commonly utilized DSP solutions are TI’s DM64x, NXP’s PNX-1500 and 1700, ADI’s Blackfin BF53x and Equator’s BSP-15. ASIC solutions are sourced from HiSilicon, Faraday, Softlogic, Vweb and Nextchip. Of these, HiSilicon’s Hi3510 is widely adopted. Makers said it provides complete technology support at lower cost.

Adoption of SoC is also rapidly expanding, with some suppliers of ASIC and DSP solutions already promoting SoCs, such as HiSilicon’s Hi3510 and Hi3511, TI’s DaVinci platform and NXP’s PNX8550 and PNX8950.

One  SOC is SOLOs 6010

Softlogic has been developing security chips since 2002 and it has been developing all ASIC IP, embedded software for embedded system; DDK driver for PC based DVR and the hardware of reference boards.

SOLO6010the newest announced chip in Jan. 2007. SOLO6010 will be a main solution for the most security systems with 16channel video multiplexer, quadruple speed D1 MPEG4 video CODEC and quadruple speed D1 motion JPEG encoder. Application such as 4/8(9)/16 channel DVR/ NVS/PCI card can be developed easily, and different performance and cost effective solution with SOLO6010 platform.

Latest news from Techwell

Techwell Introduces Two Multi-Channel Video Decoder Solutions With Embedded PCI
Express Interface to Simplify Hardware Design

SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 3, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Techwell, Inc. (Nasdaq:TWLL),
a leading designer of mixed signal video semiconductor solutions for the
security surveillance, automotive, and consumer electronics markets, today
announced two multi-channel video capture products, the TW6864 and the TW6868.
These devices feature Techwell's premium quality 4-in-1 video decoder technology
-- which has the best weak signal performance in the industry, four
high-performance audio ADCs, and an integrated PCI Express interface. This high
level of integration simplifies the PC DVR card hardware design and reduces
production costs.

Demonstrated at the CPSE show in Shenzhen, China earlier this week, the TW6864
and TW6868 take advantage of the significantly faster speed and overall larger
data bandwidth of the PCI Express interface -- a feature in high demand for
security surveillance systems utilizing a software compression PC DVR card.

The TW6864 and TW6868 support both real time and non-real time video and can
output multiple video resolutions including D1, half D1, and CIF, providing
maximum application flexibility. Techwell's proprietary video locking technology
enables a non-real time switching speed that is faster than competitive
products, allowing for the highest possible frame rate per channel. In addition,
both ICs contain a high-performance proprietary DMA controller that fully
utilizes the PCIe x1 bandwidth, enabling video and audio data transfer at an
optimal throughput rate.

The TW6864 can decode and transfer four channels of real time D1 video (up to 16
channels of non-real time video) and four channels of audio. In comparison, the
TW6868 can be cascaded with an external Techwell 4-in-1 decoder such as the
TW2865 to achieve eight channels of real time D1 video and 9 channels of audio.
In non-real time mode, the TW6868 (when combined with TW2865) can support up to
24 channels of video.

"The PCIe bus is becoming the dominant interface on the PC motherboard.
Fortunately, the TW6864 and TW6868 provide a versatile and scalable solution for
the software compression PC DVR card market," said David Nam, Techwell's VP of
sales and marketing. "Techwell has set the precedent for highly integrated
front-end surveillance video semiconductor solutions since 2001 and these two
new video decoder solutions demonstrate why we continue to be the market
leader."

About Techwell, Inc.

Techwell is a semiconductor company that designs, markets and sells mixed signal
integrated circuits for multiple video applications in the security
surveillance, automotive and consumer electronics markets. Techwell designs both
general purpose and application specific products that enable the conversion of
analog video signals to digital form and perform advanced digital video
processing to facilitate the display, storage and transport of video content.
Headquartered in San Jose, Calif., Techwell currently has more than 200
employees in the U.S., Korea, Taiwan, China and Japan. More information is
available at http://www.techwellinc.com

Surveillance recorder standards

A draft document on the proposed surveillance recorder standards that aims to set interoperability standards among different surveillance recorder manufacturers is out already.  The group spearheading this thrust is called the Physical Security Interoperability Alliance (PSIA) and is composed of major industry players such as GE, Pelco, Cisco, Texas Instruments, etc.

By setting a standard, the group aims to reduce problems related to managing various DVR and NVR brands in one system, which is a typical problem of large organizations which needs to maintain several backend systems to control and manage varying subsystems.

You can read more about the document at:

http://www.psialliance.org/documents/1013RaCMRel.pdf

Internet eyes video monitoring service

There is a new video monitoring company in the UK called Internet Eyes that aims to provide video and alarm monitoring service for companies reportedly using hundreds of "freelance" viewers motivated by a GBP 1200 reward prize.  Looks very promising, but I think there are issues that need to be addressed especially on reliability and accountability.  Also, the one time monthly prize money, may not be a better motivator than small but incremental prizes.  Let's see how it goes.  Their site goes live this November.

http://interneteyes.co.uk/

An invisibility cloak?

An interesting video on possible technologies that will render someone invisible.

Spoofing IP based CCTV systems

The case against the security of IP based CCTV systems was recently highlighted with the release of a new tool shown at the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas.  A security assessment tool, Videojak has the ability to both intercept Internet video feeds and eject false 'looped' images.

Similar in concept to Hollywood's "Mission Impossible" where the attacker can hack, monitor and record a CCTV feed (when nothing is happening), then play this back in a loop to hide the actual live feed (presumably while Tom Cruise is lowered down on a black rope).

This tool also provides the ability to intercept video conferencing.

To be on the safe side, if you are using any kind of conferencing facility you should assume that the information can be intercepted. With the popularity of IP streamed video systems we are not sure if our network is compromised or not.

It's Friday!

It's beer Friday everyone!  Good day!

CUDA

A major issue found in Network Video Recorders is high CPU utilization.  Unlike in DVRs where encoding and decoding is being done by hardware, receiving and recording multiple video streams, while encoding and decoding them for live view and remote view using just software demands a lot of processing power.  Imagine if there are 32 incoming video streams and resolution size is D1 (720X480), lacking a dedicated hardware encoder and decoder chip,  will heavily tax even the latest PC CPUs available in the market today.  In fact, no present NVR solution can display more than 4 simultaneous D1 streams while recording them at the same time.

CUDA to the rescue

Short of installing another encoder/decoder card, one can use the spare processing power of a PC GPU (Graphic processing unit) for encoding and decoding, as well as add more capabilities to the system.   Last year, Nvidia released the developer kit for CUDA for various developers, to enable applications to take advantage of the powerful NVIDIA GPUs.

What is CUDA?

CUDA (an acronym for Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a parallel computing architecture developed by NVIDIA. CUDA is the computing engine in NVIDIA graphics processing units or GPUs that is accessible to software developers through industry standard programming languages. Programmers use 'C for CUDA' (C with NVIDIA extensions), compiled through a PathScale Open64 C compiler, to code algorithms for execution on the GPU. CUDA architecture supports a range of computational interfaces including OpenCL and DirectCompute. Third party wrappers are also available for Python, Fortran, Java and Matlab.

The latest drivers all contain the necessary CUDA components. CUDA works with all NVIDIA GPUs from the G8X series onwards, including GeForce, Quadro and the Tesla line. NVIDIA states that programs developed for the GeForce 8 series will also work without modification on all future Nvidia video cards, due to binary compatibility. CUDA gives developers access to the native instruction set and memory of the parallel computational elements in CUDA GPUs. Using CUDA, the latest NVIDIA GPUs effectively become open architectures like CPUs. Unlike CPUs however, GPUs have a parallel "many-core" architecture, each core capable of running thousands of threads simultaneously - if an application is suited to this kind of an architecture, the GPU can offer large performance benefits.

In the computer gaming industry, in addition to graphics rendering, graphics cards are used in game physics calculations (physical effects like debris, smoke, fire, fluids); examples include PhysX and Bullet. CUDA has also been used to accelerate non-graphical applications incomputational biology, cryptography and other fields by an order of magnitude or more. An example of this is the BOINC distributed computing client.


CUDA provides both a low level API and a higher level API. The initial CUDA SDK was made public on 15 February 2007, for Microsoft Windowsand Linux. Mac OS X support was later added in version 2.0, which supersedes the beta released February 14, 2008.

GPUs are cheap, massively parallel, programmable compute devices that can be used for many general purpose (non-graphics) tasks. They are a "good fit" for many scientific applications and significant speedups (as compared to contemporary CPUs) have been reported. The CUDA language makes NVIDIA GPUs accessible to developers through a series of extensions to C (with no mention of pixels or shading!).

By harnessing CUDA, it may be possible to have high quality recording simultaneous with multiple high quality video streams for playback and remote view.  It also deloads the CPU of tasks that can help the application run faster and more smoother.  Expect to see a lot of CUDA based NVRs in the future.

Some links:

http://codingplayground.blogspot.com/2009/02/web-search-ranking-and-gpp-many-core.html
http://www.bikal.co.uk/network-video-recorder/nvr-pro.html

ARMed and ready!

We are right in the midst of an on-going battle which I am sure most haven't noticed.  You may have heard about the Intel vs AMD wars in 90's, but have you heard about ARM processors? This is the processor of choice for all our embedded devices and probably for your phone as well and probably has a larger impact in the tech industry as a whole.   Why choose arm?  It can be best answered by learning more about the chip.

From wikipedia:

"The ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by ARM Limited. It was known as the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that as the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in terms of numbers produced. They were originally conceived as a processor for desktop personal computers by Acorn Computers, a market now dominated by the x86 family used byIBM PC compatible computers. But the relative simplicity of ARM processors made them suitable for low power applications. This has made them dominant in the mobile and embedded electronics market as relatively low cost and small microprocessors and microcontrollers."

Surprisingly, when someone asks who the giants of the semiconductor industry are, the names of Intel's founders, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, float to the top of my mind. And of course, there is the colorful and controversial William Shockly, who founded Shockly Semiconductor Labs, the first major semiconductor lab in Silicon Valley. And then there is Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments, who along with Robert Noyce is credited with inventing the integrated circuit.  The person behind ARM is Dr. Robin Saxby; or to be more specific, Sir Robin Saxby, the founder of Advanced RISC Machines LTD (ARM) of Cambridge, England.

How big is the ARM market?

"As of 2007, about 98 percent of the more than a billion mobile phones sold each year use at least one ARM processor. As of 2009, ARM processors account for approximately 90% of all embedded 32-bit RISC processors. ARM processors are used extensively in consumer electronics, including PDAs, mobile phones, iPods and other digital media and music players, hand-held game consoles, calculators and computer peripherals such as hard drives and routers."

"Consider: Intel sold its 1 billionth x86 chip in 2003. Its closest rival, AMD, broke the 500 million mark just this year. ARM, on the other hand, expects to ship 2.8 billion processors in 2009 alone -- or around 90 chips per second. That's in addition to the more than 10 billion ARM processors already powering devices today.

Pick up any mobile phone and there's a 95 percent chance it contains at least one ARM processor. If the phone was manufactured in the past five years, make that 100 percent; that goes for standard handsets as well as smartphones.

The same is true for portable media players. Whether the label says Archos, iRiver, or Sony, inside it's ARM."

Thus, ARM is a giant in the tech arena and most surprising is that folks in the U.S. haven't heard of  the almost ubiquitous ARM processor. Almost ubiquitous because the ARM processor in some form or another is at the core of almost every cell or smartphone sold today, as well as being used in billions of embedded devices around the world.  Until now these processors have mostly had life in embedded devices, cell phones and most recently in smartphones. They are the main processors used in many of the Linux-based operating systems on the market today, which you'll find in cell and smartphones, such as Apple'siPhone, and in DVD players, GPS systems, smart TVs, set-top boxes, etc.

However, we are starting to see ARM processors move into some netbook models.The one with the highest profile has been the ARM-based Qualcomm SnapDragon processor that will reportedly be used in an HP netbook somewhere down the line. And the ARM processor is also at the heart of Nvidia's Tegra processor that, like the SnapDragon, is heavily targeted at netbooks, and especially netbooks aimed at being sold through telecom providers like Verizon Wireless, AT&T, etc. They are even showing up in servers with low-voltage requirements.ARM Holdings, LTD, which is the parent company, does a lot of R&D of its own, but its real business is that of IP licensing. The ARM core is licensed to six public ARM silicon partners that are specifically taking aim at netbooks and smartbooks. These partners are Marvel, Qualcomm, Freescale, Samsung, Nvidia, and Texas Instruments.In emerging markets, Linux-based systems could do well. And over time, Linux-based systems based on an OS like Android could actually gain ground with carriers that want to sell subsidized netbooks in stores, and want an OS that offers more control of the users' experience and service offerings.

This is why, we chose to use ARM in our embedded devices.  Lock and load!

References:

www.wikipedia.org
www.pcmag.com
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9140039/ARM_vs._Atom_The_battle_for_the_next_digital_frontier?taxonomyId=15

Stereoscopic rangefinder

One of the projects I was mulling on before was a stereo rangefinder using two PTZ cameras.  The concept is simple, when an object is being viewed by two cameras, its distance can easily be calculated.  Since the distance between two PTZ cameras is known, the distance of the object can be derived trigonometrically.  This concept is still being used by existing optical rangefinders despite the presence of accurate laser rangefinders.

During World War II, Allied and German tanks slaved their optical rangefinders to the tank main gun.  To operate these rangfinders, the gunner needs to merge the two views into one object and the gun automatically is set to fire in the predetermined range.  To illustrate:

sin B=b/c

c= b/sin B

  c^2   =   a^2 + b^2 

      

  a=  sqrt (c^2 - b^2)

Reference to such system is shown below:

"Using stereoscopic images to determine the range to objects isn't a new phenomena. Before the age of the laser manual stereo correspondence was used on ships and also amusingly on battle tanks. This web page describes the use of a stereo range finder in an M48 Patton tank as follows:

When first deployed, the M48-A3 had for the 1960s a state-of-the-art fire control system. At the time computers were mechanical, and range to the target was provided by a stereoscopic range finder, which functioned similarly to a 35mm camera. An end-box on each side of the turret exterior held a prism-type mirror. Turning a hand-crank on the range finder would pivot these mirrors until the double-image in the range finder merged. As the distance between the mirrors is exactly known, a little trigonometry provided the range (in meters) to the target. This information was displayed on a range indicator, and also fed to the ballistic computer by a rotating shaft. The ballistic computer was a collection of gears and cams--nothing was solid-state--which had a handle so that the gunner could select the type of ammunition that was to be fired. Each round had a different muzzle velocity, and therefore the computer had a different cam for each type. The computer would take the range data, merge it with the velocity data, and via a set of rotating shafts, supply this information to the gun's super-elevation mechanism, resulting in the gun being elevated above the gunners line of sight sufficiently for the round to overcome the downward pull of gravity on its way to the target.

The stereo range finder was effectively a dual lateral periscope, with the sights protruding from either side of the metallic monster as shown below. Using the stereo ranger was referred to as "flying the geese" due to the appearance of the markings which needed to be optically aligned."

With the advent of computers and video intelligence, the process of aligning the images and getting the range of a certain object can be automated and derived with ease.  Practical applications for such a system is however limited.

DVR standards

The market demand for the best,  fastest and highest quality products push us to continuously develop new and better products.  From the old analog tape based video recorders, the industry standard is now digital video recorders, storing compressed TV quality videos (CIF) at 30 frames per second.  Compression standards have likewise improved over the years, starting with Motion JPEG, then MPEG-4 and now H.264 (also known as MPEG-4 part 10).    Positioning one's product above this standard, at the lowest possible price, is the sweet spot for most manufacturers.  Some products sell just on low price alone and totally forget about quality and performance, while some offer the best performance and quality at prohibitive prices.  What is the sweet spot in positioning?  What is the minimum standard?  What is the best price? 

In my opinion, a decent DVR should have the following features:

• Real-time recording (30 frames per second - Note: Movies run at 24 frames per second) on all cameras for at least CIF size
• MPEG-4 compression
• Recording capability of up to D1 size (better known as DVD quality)
• Network capability (This includes video streaming thru LAN or the internet, remote setup and remote viewing)
• At least triplex operation (Simultaneous operation for recording, search and playback and live view)

Some ultra cheap designs are available in the market but are lacking in some basic features, which goes to show that there is no such thing as "free lunch :)".  What are the possible downside to missing out some of the basic features?

• Missing out important frames due to frame rate limitations.  Imagine split second action that results to damaged property, missing goods or worse, lost lives.  You don't want your video evidence to leave whodunit questions unanswered.

• Why compression?  Yes, storage is cheap, but it shouldn't be a reason why you should waste money on extra storage.   Uncompressed video takes a huge amount of storage space, regardless of whether you're storing it on a hard drive, DVD or digital tape. To imagine how much space is required, consider that a typical uncompressed still frame of video, at the quality most of us are used to viewing, requires just under one megabyte to store. Video typically plays at 30 frames per second. This means that your typical uncompressed video might occupy 27 megabytes per second to store. Do a little more math, and you'll soon discover that the new 80 gigabyte hard drive that came with your computer will only store about 50 minutes of raw, uncompressed video. Do one more calculation and you'll see that a DVD disc (at 4.5GB) can hold less than three minutes. Clearly, we need some form of digital compression to reduce that file size.  The second issue is so closely related to the first that it's really the same problem viewed from another angle. Imagine you have an uncompressed VHS-quality video file sitting on a hard drive, ready to play. In order to provide smooth playback, your hard drive would have to dump data to your computer at a sustained 27 megabytes per second (or, as an engineer would think: 216 megabits per second [27 x 8 bits/byte]). Storage systems are available that can hit these speeds, but they're very expensive. Now consider that you want to deliver that same video to the masses, via the Internet. Whatever technology you use, the speed of that technology (bandwidth) would have to match that 27 megabytes per second, without fail.  
• D1 capability is needed if you want that extra resolution to positively identify objects or people which otherwise would have been unrecognizable.  It's better to have a snapshot of a recognizable face rather than a barely recognizable blob, especially at a distance.

• Network capability?  Remote monitoring and remote setup capabilities add a factor of more than 100 to the useability and convenience of using a DVR.  Imagine, visiting each and every DVR, especially for multi-site installations.  
• Multiplex operation?  This is the most overlooked feature in DVRs.  You don't want recording to stop, just because somebody is viewing via the network or somebody is adding a user to the DVR.

Building a DVR

How do we build a DVR from scratch?   Here is a mini-guided tour to our R&D facility.  

The process starts with a list of needed specifications or features.  From these requirements, two teams will collaborate in the design and production of the DVR, namely hardware and software.  

Depending on the requirement, hardware will design the motherboard only or including the case.  A block diagram is the first order of business to based on all the spec requirement.  Following the block diagram would be a schematic diagram (see left illustration).  The whole process takes around ten (10) working days or less to complete.

     Sample schematic diagram

After the schematics, the printed circuit board (PCB) will be designed based on the schematic diagram.  The process takes around 2 days to complete.    For the casing, the mechanical team will produce the mock up prior to producing the engineering sample.

PCB board design

Mechanical

After each and every stage, a quality control staff checks and monitors the process and output as per established company standards.  Next process is PCB production.

The finished PCBs will be tested and a few samples will undergo surface mount device (SMD) assembly.

 

After assembly completion, the finished board is tested for defects.  The few samples produced will be used for the prototype and subsequent engineering samples for further testing.  

Part of the finished engineering samples will then be turned over to software for testing and driver and application development.

After completing the driver and applications, the finished product will undergo extensive product testing prior to the release of the commercial version. This will include useability testing, aging test, feature and function testing.

Some of our sample products are shown below:

Video terminologies

In the coming articles, I will discuss things about our existing and future projects.  I definitely see myself using terminologies that will sound Greek to a lot of our readers.  Before this happens, I'd like to explain some basic video related terminologies that is sure to pop out time and time again.

The definitions below are layman definitions

Pixel    - Contraction of the words picture and element.  The smallest item of information in a picture.  It's essentially a colored dot.  A series of dots would form a line, clumps of it will form a picture of parts of it.  The number of pixels arranged horizontally and vertically is equivalent to the resolution.

Resolution 

Common terminologies in video security

CIF - 352 X 288 pixels (Regula TV resolution)

                VGA - 640 X 480 pixels

D1 - 720 X 480 (DVD quality resolution)

Frame rate 

Video Management System

Video Management System 

How to Design Video Surveillance Solutions 

Video management systems are the hub of video surveillance solutions, accepting video from cameras, storing the video and managing distribution of video to viewers. 

There are 4 fundamental options in video management systems. Most organizations choose 1 of the 4. However, as companies may have multiple types when they transition between one and another. 

DVRs are purpose built computers that combine software, hardware and video storage all in one. By definition, they only accept analog camera feeds. Almost all DVRs today support remote viewing over the Internet. DVRs are very simple to install but they significantly limit your flexibility in expansion and hardware changes. DVRs are still today the most common option amongst professional buyers. However, DVRs have definitely fallen out of favor and the trend is to move to one of the 3 categories below. 

HDVRs or hybrid DVRs are DVRs that support IP cameras. They have all the functionality of a DVR listed above plus they add support for IP and megapixel cameras. Most DVRs can be software upgraded to become HDVRs. Such upgrades are certainly a significant trend and is 

attractive because of the low migration cost (supports analog and IP cameras directly). Learn more about the value and issues in selecting HDVRs. 

NVRs are like DVRs in all ways except for camera support. Whereas a DVR only supports analog cameras, an NVR only supports IP cameras. To support analog cameras with an NVR, an encoder must be used. 

IP Video Surveillance Software is a software application, like Word or Excel. Unlike DVRs or NVRs, IP Video Surveillance Software does not come with any hardware or storage. The user must load and set up the PC/Server for the software. This provides much greater freedom 

and potentially lower cost than using DVR/NVR appliances. However, it comes with significant more complexity and time to set up and optimize the system. IP Video Surveillance Software is the hottest trend in video management systems currently and is the most frequent choice for very large camera counts (hundreds or more). 

From IPvideomarket.info

Our first venture

What could be a more duller topic than a CCTV surveillance system?  It's a product that you buy to secure your home, office or any other property.  You buy one, install it and use it.   At first, you spend hours watching it.  Later on you learn that it is probably a good activity to do if you want to beat insomnia.  After a few days, when excitement wanes off, you start to forget about it.  This stuff is pure boring, the average security guard assigned to watch over surveillance systems probably falls asleep more often in front of the live view screen and would not probably pass any lucidity test if one is given especially in the wee hours of the morning. A camera, a video recorder, a monitor is what comprises your average surveillance system and yes, we chose to enter into this very boring business.  

We are not into cameras or monitors, we are into DVRs. Ask the average Joe about a DVR and he would probably say Tivo.  Yes, Tivo was once exciting stuff, you can record your favorite shows, suspend it, resume it, go back to any part of the show, view past shows at the press of a button.  Again, we are not into this exciting stuff, but yes, we can do what a regular Tivo can do plus more!  We do not record TV or cable shows, what we do is watch over what matters most to you, your loved ones, your business, your wealth and your property.  The shows we record are shows of your life or your company's life.  

Security Digital Video Recorders or DVRs, replaced tape based recorders that keep watch over protected areas, but unlike tape recorders, DVRs are more versatile and generally possess some intelligence.  But again, these devices are condemned to be largely unknown by their very nature.  They watch over people, they are usually hidden and would be better if kept secret.

Rewind to the year 2004, developing a DVR seems simple enough! You have established brands out there in the market.  You have an exponentially growing market (due to heightened security awareness, the growth of the internet and falling CCTV prices) and you have the technology and the brainpower, or at least one thought you had it.  Let's aim for number one was the clarion call for the development team.  "Yes we can" was the motto, and so started our journey.  A quixotic charge into the windmills or sure-footed optimism, this is our story.

Philippine skunk?

What is this site all about?  A new species?  Nature site?  Skunks?  Smelly objects?  No, not really.... Read on...

Working in a Filipino R&D company has its challenges in terms of locally available resources, existing infrastructure and capital availability. Competing in the global market is an even bigger challenge.  In a sea of American, Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Chinese brands, one cannot expect an upstart Filipino company to even survive.   When was the last time has anyone heard of a Filipino technology company making it big in the global market?  Would anyone even dare?  

Well, there are some insane people out there who would want to give it a try and I am part of this endeavor.  After four years of struggle, survive we did!  We even made quite a significant dent in our market.  Of course, we have had some heavy backup from good hearted individuals who believe in what we can do, who gave leapfrog opportunities for us.  Now, we are embarking on more technically challenging projects which can define us in the next few months.  

Skunks?  Like the legendary Lockheed Martin Skunkworks, we churn out not so top secret military and industrial grade products, albeit only a small portion go towards military applications, which we hope will be representative of cutting edge technologies in the near future.  This blog aims to provide a glimpse of related technologies, declassified development updates and general technology news.  

Cheers!!!