LenelS2
Revolutionary Video Surveillance System
ICS Helps LenelS2 Security Realize its Vision for Industry's Most Capable Video Surveillance System
LenelS2, formerly S2 Security, is a leader in IP-based access control, video management and mobile security management systems. The company is part of Carrier Global, a leading global provider of heating, ventilating and air conditioning (HVAC), refrigeration, fire, security and building automation technologies. LenelS2 develops powerful, cost-effective solutions to protect people, property and assets, and is recognized within the security industry as an innovator.
LenelS2 is constantly exploring new ways to enhance the user experience (UX). To this end, the company wanted to develop a sophisticated digital security surveillance solution more capable than anything on the market. With a clear vision for an innovative cross-platform solution – S2 Magic Monitor® – LenelS2 asked Integrated Computer Solutions (ICS) – the largest UX, embedded and desktop Qt consulting firm in North America – to help turn the idea into reality.
"ICS' experience in real-time video was very helpful in this project. Because they understood and resolved the video and cross-platform issues so effectively, we were able to take that functionality for granted and instead focus on value-added features to create a new product that is truly revolutionary in the industry."
Magic Monitor Effortlessly Handles 64+ Simultaneous Video Feeds
LenelS2 envisioned Magic Monitor as an elegant solution that enables security, safety and informational content to be displayed in real time throughout an organization on multiple screens in various formats, from single displays to expansive video walls. ICS paired complex video capabilities with exceptional design quality to build a compelling next-gen front end for a unified security management solution. To get there, ICS had to solve myriad technical challenges associated with LenelS2's requirement that Magic Monitor be capable of handling dozens of simultaneous live video feeds.
The most puzzling: finding an elegant solution for streaming those live feeds across a congested network, as well running all the video players continuously for months on end. "From an engineering perspective, it's not that difficult to write a video player that plays one video stream at multiple forward speeds – there are a lot of free players that do that," explained ICS' Mark Antonelli, Senior Software Architect and manager of the LenelS2 project. "What you will not see, and what is a significant engineering challenge, is a system that can play more than 64 high-definition videos simultaneously; combines live streaming and playback using multiple streaming protocols, file sources, and back-ends; plays down to frame-by-frame detail in forward and reverse mode; and does it all with an intuitive user interface."
Technical Challenges Escalate as Project Evolves
The challenges facing ICS were further amplified as the project evolved and LenelS2 expanded its vision to include additional, increasingly powerful features, like interactive dynamic content, time-zone clocks, weather, traffic, news-scroll ticker and RSS feeds.
Other requirements included the ability to create custom layouts for the visual content display, mapping capabilities that pinpoint where all security cameras in a given system are located and opt-in monitoring of the "health" of a client's security system using the LenelS2 Cumulus cloud service.
Rather than being deterred, these expanding challenges energized ICS' engineering team, which responded with a slate of impactful solutions including creating a custom video pipeline and building a proprietary algorithm to increase bandwidth to deliver high-performance video.
“ICS was excited to work with LenelS2 from day one, when we first heard their vision for a new kind of video surveillance system. We have built a great rapport with the customer's team that allows ICS to work with them as a true partner, turning their ideas into reality."
Machine Learning Elevates Magic Monitor
ICS has collaborated with LenelS2 for nearly a decade through five products and 15 releases, among them Magic Monitor and Magic Monitor Forensics. Versatile and responsive, Magic Monitor delivers visual information to people where and when they need it – from security operations centers to public areas such as lobbies and cafeterias. Magic Monitor Forensics provides additional capabilities, including searchable review of pre-recorded video to identify perpetrators in incidents that may have occurred hours or days prior.
As Magic Monitor has matured over the years, making use of the latest most promising advanced technology has been a priority. “We have made every effort to employ the latest techniques to enhance the product,” Antonelli explained. “For instance, because separating useful information from raw data is a sizable challenge in video surveillance we used a convolutional neural network (CNN) to analyze video in real time to isolate objects of interest and bring them to the attention of Security Operations Center (SOC) operators. This CNN runs on different hardware through use of Intel’s OpenVINO™ and nVidia’s CUDA toolkits, respectively.”
Not only does the latest Magic Monitor release (Ver.2023.2) offer a spectrum of powerful features, including interactive maps (dynamic cells) and remote content control, it also integrates with NetBox, Global and OnGuard access control and event monitoring systems. Additionally, it integrates with video management systems from LenelS2, Milestone and Avigilon. The result is a highly capable system that leads the market.
"This Magic Monitor release is our most powerful yet. Working with ICS, we’ve created a product that gives users real control over situational awareness in security situations."