Mobile NVR/DVR Reviews?

Kevin, we have not done any reviews of mobile DVR/NVRs. Mainly we have not had a lot of requests. We are open to it though if there are more interested.

Also, hopefully some other members have some info to share.

We did have a discussion recently on a Large School Bus Camera Deployment that included mobile DVRs.

John, thanks for the link.

In addition to what John listed, these mobile systems normally have to interface with other bus components like turning signals, door actuation, other vehicle/engine controls, and include an accelerometer. The backend systems then use all this metadata offloaded by the vehicles to a central system(s). Much the same way you could have a VMS looking at certain cameras from an area of a building, a technician could pull the data/video/audio from multiple vehicles in a given location using GPS information.

These systems have a "tagging" system. Where a driver via a push button, an accelerometer event, or other interface could have the on-board DVR tag the video and not let it overwrite it. The rest of the video is recorded at first in first out.

The more advanced functions of this I've mostly seen for public transit though, less on school busses. Public transit tends to want more cameras internally and externally up to 14, where school busses are normally less.

I was wondering if there were others in the IPVM community with any good/bad feedback on different products they've used. I'm guessing it's a bit of a niche when compared to the surveillance industry as a whole.

ACS has used mobil DVRs with a lot of school districts in our area. Our major niche is schools and they requested mobile DVRs on their buses and one major questionst that we asked the school districts is "is there going to be someone monitoring the feed as it is mobily uploaded to their system?"

We ask this question because there are many different options on how the DVR talks to the cloud. You can use the mobile chip to upload in real time (more expensive) but the only reason that you would use this option is if you had someone dedicated to watching the live feeds coming in. You have the option to upload the video once the bus is in the bus yard and you can do this either through their network if it is strong enough or mobily. We have had a couple districts choose this option. The majority of the bus fleets we service however just used an ordinary DVR and if they need a video for either a hearing or dispute then they take a flash drive out to the bus in question and upload the video to the drive. A lot of the time mobile uploading isn't necassary for school districts needs.

Check into Lensec. They have a mobile solution that works well in the school bus market. With school districts, it is also about influencing driver behavior to promote outcome. If the driver can conduct day to day routes with the knowledge that the video will only be reviewed upon and event, they are less likely to actively modify their daily driving habits. Now, if you have a solution that can be interrogated without the driver being aware (such as remote viewing from the bus lot), then the driver never knows when they are being evaluated thus changing their daily habits. Lensec has a deployment in Texas with something like 700+ school spread across multiple transportation depots.