The proliferation of surveillance cameras in the 21^st century has certainly assured that at some point in any given day it is likely that someone’s looking at you. In fact, in the United Kingdom, the use of surveillance cameras has skyrocketed over the past 20 years.

In a recent study done by law enforcement, there are more than 1.8 million estimated cameras in the UK, which translates into one camera for every 32 UK citizens (Source: Guardian UK). Many of these camera deployments have transitioned from analog to digital cameras, requiring sophisticated digital signal processing, leading to large code sizes that are perfect for Spansion high-density NOR flash.  In fact, according to IDC Japan, almost 15 million IP-based security cameras are expected to be sold worldwide in 2014.

Weeks of Waiting for Minutes of Excitement

Privacy issues aside, the biggest issue with surveillance cameras is that they are always on the job and never get tired. Day in and day out, they are recording what is happening in front of them leading to weeks of monitoring the simple goings-on of life in hope of catching minutes of excitement.  Fortunately, cameras are not people, so they don’t die of boredom. Of course, if you are the security person who reviews the recordings, you may die of boredom.

There is the question.  How do you identify the important information amongst the “hours and hours” of recordings? One approach is simply not to record the “hours and hours” and only record key events, such as when sound or motion is detected by the camera. Of course, then the camera needs the ability to respond instantly to an event and to start the recording process. Instant-on capability enabled by Spansion NOR Flash has been a critical element in the design of these types of embedded cameras.  Also, surveillance cameras must be capable of recording in the darkest, moonless nights. Since the camera sensor must capture a “wide dynamic range”, it requires more complicated algorithms for video motion analysis which increases the density needs for NOR Flash memory.

Now, this is great for watching a seldom used door, but not effective to continuous monitoring of people transitioning through a bottleneck area like immigration at an airport. In order to help make the process easier, face and pattern recognition software is used. However, in order to effectively process the faces in a timely manner, lots of data must be processed. Spansion’s fast random read performance and high-density NOR solutions make an ideal solution for these intensive surveillance requirements.

Out of Sight…Out of Mind

Some people don’t like the fact that they are under constant surveillance. Also, sometimes you want to make the surveillance apparent, but other times you want it to be more discrete. Consequently, small form factor becomes a critical design element for these solutions so that it can be hidden and placed in remote locations. Spansion’s reliability, small form factor, die Flash availability and high speed become a critical part of any solution.