The problems in a building
Buildings leak at their edges. A door is propped for a delivery, a visitor tailgates a resident into the car park, a bike goes from a storage cage, parcels disappear off the foyer shelf, and the bin room collects dumped mattresses.
After hours is the awkward part. Contractors, cleaners and uninvited visitors all look alike on camera, and nobody can say later whether the person in the lift lobby at 11pm was meant to be there.
The other half is the people who live or work there. Residents and tenants expect cameras on shared areas, not aimed at their front door, balcony or desk. Ignore that and you have a different argument at the next committee meeting.
What we install
The walk-through starts at the street and follows how people move through the building.
- Entries and lobby. Cameras at head height on the main entry and any secondary door, positioned for usable faces.
- Car park. The vehicle entry, angled so a plate is readable, plus cover across the aisles and visitor bays.
- Common areas. Lift lobbies, stairwell doors, the parcel and mail area, bin room, storage cages and shared facilities.
- Recorder, storage and network. The NVR sits in a locked comms or services room. We size storage to camera count and retention, cable and mount, set up remote access for the people you nominate, then commission and train. See installation.
Footage stays on the recorder in the building. Analysis runs on our own server, not a third-party cloud.
What the AI layer watches for
- After-hours access. A scheduled sweep checks the cameras outside the hours you set. If a person appears, the people you nominate — building manager, committee contact, office manager — get an email with the camera frame attached. A cooldown stops repeat emails.
- Door monitoring and line crossing. Lines across the entry, car park boom or bin room door, so crossings and door activity are logged as events.
- People and vehicle counting. Counts per camera over time, for car park traffic and after-hours patterns.
It detects, logs and alerts. It does not identify individuals, recognise faces or decide who belongs in the building. People make that call; the system saves them scrubbing nine hours of lift lobby.
What you see day to day
Movement is written to a searchable timeline, with a clip of roughly ten seconds either side of each event. When a parcel goes missing, you search the foyer camera over the window the courier gave you and watch a clip, not an afternoon of vision. Same for a dumped mattress or a car park scrape.
Out of hours, the alert arrives by email with the frame attached, so the building manager can judge it from a phone. How it works follows an event end to end; AI analytics covers each capability.
Practical constraints
- Privacy comes first in the plan. Cameras must not cover toilets, change rooms, inside a lot or a neighbour's private areas, and we aim them away from private windows and balconies. Surveillance, workplace surveillance and privacy laws differ by state and territory, audio is treated more strictly than video, and signage and notifying staff matter. This is general information, not legal advice — check your state's rules and, for a strata scheme, your by-laws.
- Who can view footage. Decide before install who holds access, who can export a clip, and how a resident request is handled. Easier agreed on paper than after an incident.
- Cabling and light. Risers, fire-rated penetrations and body-corporate approvals shape what is possible. Car parks are lit for people, not cameras, so position and lighting get planned together.
- Licensing. In several states installing security equipment is a licensed activity. Ask any installer for their licence and insurance details, including ours.