SnapAV Acquires Visualint? Should I Know Who Either Of These Are?

back in the day when we did audio/video and structured cabling for homes and did our purchasing from snapav... tried a couple analog domes way back but never have tried their ip surveillance line... dealers like snapav because they are very good to their dealers... they offer upfront tiered pricing, incentives and occasionally send gift cards for you to try products... and you have to be a dealer to sell their product... they are pretty much a one stop shop offering materials and equipment within their website and they make it extremely easy to purchase... because the website (and their app) makes purchasing so simple we used to say that amazon.com was the snapav of the retail world...

Ross, that magazine is from the AV side. I am not sure how they calculate / tabulate their results but that this is an audio/visual dealers ranking of surveillance products, that certainly contributes to it.

Here is the full ranking:

SnapAV OEMs in video surveillance.

Visualint is small company focused on the home market that OEMs VCA analytics. That CE Pro calls a small VCA OEM a rising start is overstated.

Neither of those companies are likely to have a significant impact on video surveillance.

they are real popular with AV crowd. And all the AV'ers who do video surveillance on the side buy their cctv equipment from them because they are used to dealing with them

They're actually a threat on the radar to be honest. Integrators who go through SnapAV are fairly hard to crack. Control4 compatibility is another thing big in that crowd. They really have made themselves a solid case for being a true one-stop shop for quality home theater/automation/av/security integration and their product lines have been a big hit overall.

Vivint and Best Buy's Magnolia is an example of just how big that side of the market is with $1.3B in residential installs between the two of them alone.

Basically, it's enough that I'm extremely surprised that IPVM hasn't made much coverage of that side of the market at all.

I run into them all the time. My market, SoCal, they are actually a threat to video surveillance industry. Home Automation/AV integrators are taking over my surveillance jobs because the end-users want total integration with either and usually Crestron, Control 4, Savant, Elan, RTI, or URC.

SnapAV offers free certified drivers for their Luma Line to their customers. What sets these drivers apart is that it's written under RS232 interface. Home Automation system prefers RS232 over IR remote because RS232 can to 2 way acknowledgement. Of course straight deep integration using SDK would be ideal but so far, Home Aumation manufacturer are not willing to invest their time. They would rather spend their time integrating TV, Lighting, A/V and etc.

For the end-user, opening one control interface to control every aspects of their home including surveillance system is ideal. Hey, if I was the home owner, I would do the same.

I have been reading IPVM randomly over the past 2-3 years....and the whole forum is based on dedicated camera integrators.....seemingly predominantly commercial in scope. The problem with residential is we are usually tying the camera and DVR ecosystem into a whole home control system. I do think this forum is great....but nothing in this forum ever addresses how well the DVR system and camera system integrates into a control system via some API. The best tradeshow that addresses resi is CEDIA....and only a handful of camera vendors display at this show. SnapAV has been growing leaps and bounds and needs to solidify their camera platform.....the company has been basically the best one stop shop for many integrators needs.....so they got absorbed this company obviously for the analytics and how to tie the events back into the home control systems.....and SNAP av's new remote servicing options.

The two biggest new products announced this past year at CEDIA was SnapAV's OVRC Pro's hardware & software solution and Control4's remote support's software solution that is installed on a WiFi traffic cop device sold by C4. What these two products have introduced is the ability to remotely manage all devices at a project remotely. This means, an integrator can remotely troubleshoot a whole project from a desk, and can remotely tunnel in and login into a web interface on the remote network....for service needs...So if a whether a camera is down, or a light switch, or a wifi antenna, is down....devices can be rebooted via POE, or a control power outlet, all remotely. The system can even reboot a broad band connection modem based on internet ping...if the system can see a remote server, reboot the modem a number of times.....and another feature is monitoring and measure the internet connection over a period of time....

So it might be logical next step for SnapAV is to tie in Visualint's analytics into the OVRC Pro's software solution...

For the most part IC realtime, Visualint, Lilin, along with SnapAV's offering are the biggest vendors that do also focus on camera integration for resi......and it really is the camera vendor's api and how robust it is written that allows this type of tight integration. For those who don't know, for example Control4 is probably the leader in home control right now in just shear numbers of installers....and it is a ecosystem where drivers are very easily created for all sorts of devices....just because Control4 api is very simple. Savant is another template driven home control eco system, but drivers are a bit more complicated to write because of the way savant's profiles have to be created and encapsulated in XML. The more simple it is to write a driver, the more drivers will be created for a given home control system......

For example in Control4 ecosystem, the company will create a driver and certify it as working....and then all a system integrator has to do is download the driver, configure the settings and it's literally plug and play in functionality....no programming required. Some camera vendors offer tight integration....some almost nothing. Lilin is one camera vendor that has really went after the Control4 market....and actually develops cameras specifically for resi integrators needs....and has a very tight integration relationship....

As a resi integrator, the biggest unknown always is how well the control system and the camera and or Camera DVR integrates. For example, does the control system and camera talk via IP when an event occurs, or does the home control system receive events ....and then the control system can send the event notification to the home owner.....via text, email, or the control systems app's pop up message notification on a phone. These control systems would include Control4, Savant, Elan, RTI, URC, Crestron....

I wish IPVM actually did more research and reviews on home control system to camera and camera DVR integration. If IPVM did so, there are another 20K of system integrators who could use the this forum to really help them make the best hardware choices for their systems.....there is really no one else who currently does this today...

Aloha

Mike, Smart House Media LLC.

Good product lineup, great tech support and training (maybe best in the home a/v market) is why we buy from them. Easy replacement on failed devices, generous margins, next day shipping and really great cloud based ecosystem for monitoring. For us in the residential custom market, they make it hard to not buy from them.

Ditto to Mike on his post. Integration is paramount for us.

Resi market should really not be underestimated in it's growth potential. We get more requests for cameras systems now than ever before. SnapAV has listened well and continues to deliver.

I use SnapAV for a lot of AV products. Cameras have never been something I have bought from SnapAV. I installed someone else's SnapAV purchase of an Analog system and didn't really care much for it. They have now jumped into IP a little while back and now have new IP cameras available. They have jumped aboard the Hikvision wagon it seems.

As others have said, when dealing with a control system having a direct integration driver is a huge plus and probably the only reason to use SnapAV. Their reviews on fairly recent IP products from other dealers weren't so great though. Their apps didn't look that great either. For the price I would pay for their cameras and NVR, I could easily have a nice Spectrum install with Hikvision or Dahua cameras.

Now their support for the products I do purchase from them (SnapAV) has been awesome and the products I have bought work really well and is why I continue to buy from them...just not camera systems. If I did more residential work, I might consider it, but I only really do residential work for select customers anymore as most of my work is commercial.