Avigilon Announces AI-Powered H5 Camera Development

Published Sep 19, 2018 14:37 PM

Avigilon will be showcasing "next-generation AI" at next week's ASIS GSX.

In an atypical move, the company is not actually releasing these products any time soon but they "announced the development of its future H5 camera line."

Based on speaking with Avigilon, we examine:

  • How the upcoming H5 will compare to the existing H4 cameras and analytics
  • What Avigilon plans to show
  • The benefits and drawbacks of such an announcement
  • How Avigilon compares to Dahua and Hikvision AI
  • How Avigilon compares to Milestone and Axis AI
  • 2018 strange year for analytics, 2019 outlook

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IPVM Image

Comments (27)
UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Sep 19, 2018

I am cautiously optimistic.  I generally have a lot of faith that Avigilon will implement it properly because they have a good deal at stake if they do not.  However, I do not understand how they can identify so many items (e.g. weapon, hat, etc) without making use of the cloud.  The cloud is challenging to sell into or even lean on within enterprise accounts or even many larger SMB accounts.

If nothing else some new image sensors would be great assuming that Intel Movidius does not add significant cost.

JH
John Honovich
Sep 19, 2018
IPVM

I do not understand how they can identify so many items (e.g. weapon, hat, etc) without making use of the cloud

Their aim is to use that Intel Movidius X to do that locally, Intel makes that exact claim (moving from cloud to edge) in this video:

I don't know enough about Movidius to know how much they can do but that's certainly what the chip is claiming to deliver.

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UI
Undisclosed Integrator #2
Sep 19, 2018

I'm looking forward to seeing this at the show, I'm also hoping they're integrating their suite of analytics to 3rd party cameras as well.  They used to have a "Rialto" (sp?) box that promised this but never quite delivered and now I believe is discontinued.  I have a couple of customers that have Avigilon software and Axis cameras that have been very upset about not being able to use the new analytics, currently only offered with H4 cameras.

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UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #3
Sep 19, 2018

(Note: Internal Avigilon employee)

UI2 - we recently announced the launch of our AI Appliance which offers exactly what you've requested above.  Ask for more details at GSX or read more by accessing the link below.

Avigilon AI Appliance

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UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Sep 19, 2018

we would expect it to take towards the end of 2019 for release

 

This may be the softest of soft launches so far this ASIS. 

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #4
Sep 19, 2018

Hope it makes them plenty of money so Motorola can finish paying off the same people who helped get ZTE and Huawei banned.  Very coincidental that as soon as Motorola buys a camera company it sneaks into a defense bill to kill the competition.  Same tactic they used against ZTE and Huawei.  Nothing artificial about that intelligence, just good business skills!

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UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #5
Sep 19, 2018

 just good business skills! kills!

More trophy heads mounted on the wall of free market competition in the room of minimal government at the lodge of hypocrisy.

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UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #6
Sep 19, 2018

Huh? Me confused. Read this five times and not sure what you're getting at.

Free market competition - good

Minimal government - good

Hypocracy bad - agreed - is that a reference to motorola lobbyist's?

If so, curious about Motorola lobbying activity details. Did Motorola lobbying really influence this legislation? If that's the inference, can you back that claim up with facts 

Just curious where you're going with the comment.

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JH
John Honovich
Sep 19, 2018
IPVM

We have had this Motorola lobbying discussion here.

From what I hear, 'Motorola did it' is an increasing theory / stance of Hikvision employees and supporters. I don't think Motorola has that power, I know the US government is clearly concerned about Chinese espionage regardless but no one is going to definitely prove one way or the other Motorola's involvement, so the theories will remain.

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UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #6
Sep 19, 2018

I'm equally curious about UI#4 comment on ZTE and huawei. Any facts on how that got done?

(Silly me, politics have nothing to do with facts, only influence and power, duh).

Motorola have that much juice? Who knows?

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JH
John Honovich
Sep 19, 2018
IPVM

The US government has long been critical of ZTE and Huawei, this is not a recent thing nor a product of Motorola, e.g. 2012 Congressional Investigative Report on the U.S. National Security Issues Posed by Chinese Telecommunications Companies Huawei and ZTE

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UI
Undisclosed Integrator #4
Sep 20, 2018

ZTE and Huawei directly compete with Motorola on multiple fronts.  The timing of the Motorola engagement in the security industry is very coincidental.  Excellent timing, almost too good.  They just got lucky I guess on their entrance in the market.  

Didn’t Mr. Trump once claim that the ban on ZTE was not nice to the Chinese workers?  Must have had another momentary loss of reason.  

Trump helps ZTE survive.  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/05/25/trump-strikes-deal-with-china-over-zte.html

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2018/05/14/president-trump-trying-to-bring-zte-back-to-life.html

Government bans them after all. 

https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/13/17686310/huawei-zte-us-government-contractor-ban-trump

I am not a fan of Hik or Avigilon, but the only semi US company that really benefits from the ban and tariffs is Avigilon and that wasn’t the case 8 months ago.  Now that Moto has bought them it is the case. Motorola made a very wise and timely investment into this industry.  Maybe the intel community was granted access into the Avigilon backdoor channel where it processes the AI.   The cloud is inherently insecure, and a little building in Utah was built just for cloud interception.  

Cramer should recommend Moto as a buy.   I’d rather own shares of Moto than Dahua.  

 

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U
Undisclosed #7
Sep 20, 2018
IPVMU Certified

Trump helps ZTE survive....

...Government bans them after all.

Two different “bans”.  The first was an export ban to ZTE of us parts, which was crippling to them.  This was lifted.

The second was the usage ban of ZTE in gov, probably of little immediate impact, since AFAIK, ZTE provides little, if any equipment to us gov.

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UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #6
Sep 21, 2018

Curious again, how do ZTE and Huawei directly compete with Motorola? ZTE and Huawei are telcom companies. Motorola is (fundamentally) a two way radio company. 

I apologize if I do not know other underlying (chip level relationships/competitions between the companies) but eager to learn if there are. 

U
Undisclosed #8
Sep 20, 2018

Very coincidental that as soon as Motorola buys a camera company it sneaks into a defense bill to kill the competition.

 

 

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MD
Matthew Del Salto
Sep 21, 2018
Hudson Security

How do you know this was the actual chain of events? What if Motorola caught wind of the bill and positioned themselves accordingly?

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NH
Nicolas Heyman
Feb 04, 2019

Does this mean I should hold off on buying H4 cameras? Very confused about the product roadmap especially since they just released the H4 multi-imagers, and NVR4.

 

MM
Michael Miller
Feb 04, 2019

NVR4 is the lastest server hardware which doesn't have anything to do with camera versions.  All you need to know about the cameras and NVR4 is the Appearance Search Kit is included and doesn't need to be added.

 

H4A-MH is the latest version of the multi-head camera.  I don't see this changing any time soon since it was just released. 

 

H4A cameras have been out for a while so the V5 is the new version of cameras coming. 

JH
John Honovich
Feb 06, 2019
IPVM

Nicholas,

Feedback from Avigilon:

Our partners have always appreciated as much insight as we can give about future products and technologies so we often give technology previews at tradeshows like GSX.  We are expecting the H5 series of advanced analytics cameras to be available in 2nd half of this year.  In the meantime, our H4A series cameras remain our flagship camera line and we continue to roll-out new features on this camera family.  Customers can rest assured that H4A cameras will continue to be fully supported by Avigilon and our video solutions.  

You could wait but that means 6 months or more. The reality is most (real) manufacturers will release new cameras 6 months from now but that rarely motivates people to wait.

Avatar
Sean Patton
Apr 15, 2019

Report updated with details and picture from ISC West 2019:

ISC West 2019 Update

At ISC West 2019 (IPVM Full Report) Avigilon showed their H5 camera line. Though they look nearly identical to H4 models, the H5 line is claiming additional analytics, and better object tracking in crowded environments than H4, based on true neural network algorithms.

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JH
John Honovich
Sep 06, 2019
IPVM

UPDATE: Intel is evidently not being used in the H5 cameras now starting to ship, contrary to the original announcement. Ambarella CV is being used.

Ambarella mentioned this in their recent investor call and Avigilon confirmed to us.

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U
Undisclosed #7
Sep 07, 2019
IPVMU Certified

Intel is evidently not being used in the H5 cameras now starting to ship, contrary to the original announcement. Ambarella CV is being used.

not a minor change, I’d imagine...

JH
John Honovich
Sep 07, 2019
IPVM

This is a big change. I don't know what happened but it does raise questions about how ready or competitive the Intel Myriad chips are. A year ago, Intel had a lot of momentum in the AI camera space, but Ambarella, e.g., also disclosed Hanwha choosing their CV chips:

Hanwha has stated that they will use Ambarella's CVflow SoC as they introduce new camera with integrated AI capabilities.

Obviously, given how much bigger Intel is than Ambarella, these deals are far more crucial to Ambarella than Intel.

U
Undisclosed #8
Sep 07, 2019

I don't know what happened but it does raise questions about how ready or competitive the Intel Myriad chips are.

Not very. Several manufacturers have evaluated them and gone with Ambarella (or other options) instead. Intel is really struggling in this space.

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DS
David Steele
Sep 09, 2019

Could it be more about system integration/cost than performance? Movidius is a standalone AI accelerator - more directly comparable to a Google TPU than an Ambarella part. To use Movidius in a camera you still need a host processor - so it's a 2 chip solution vs a 1 chip solution.

U
Undisclosed #8
Sep 09, 2019

To use Movidius in a camera you still need a host processor - so it's a 2 chip solution vs a 1 chip solution.

Are you sure about that? Intel promotes the Movidius chip as having 2 CPUs, alongside the VPUs, as well as I/O's like USB and Gig-E that are generally not seen on GPUs. They also highly the ability for floating point operations, also not a common GPU-only function. In looking at some of the reference design materials, the Movidius looks to be more or less competitive with something like the Ambarella CV22.

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DS
David Steele
Sep 10, 2019

That sure would be interesting to know! From the publicly available MA2485 product page there is not a lot of reference to the additional features. That said, I do see a couple of RISC cores and the Ethernet connectivity on some block diagrams on the net. But are these additional RISC cores just the control cores for the pipelines and chip itself, maybe some basic peripheral connectivity? Or can you port and run your full Linux app on them? Where the CV22 points out a quad core Cortex A53 - the MA2485 seems a bit bereft of these key details. If you have more information, it would be great to know!