InnoDETECT
Camera units that see for themselves what is happening

What InnoDETECT is

Most camera systems send footage to a recorder or a cloud, where someone or something looks at it later. InnoDETECT turns that around: the watching happens in the unit itself, on an AI chip next to the camera. What remains is a notification with a photo or a short clip — and an encrypted archive that nobody can open without your key.

As a result, a unit needs very little: power, somewhere to mount it and, if you want to watch remotely, a SIM card or network cable. Detection, recording and clearing out old footage carry on if the connection drops.

• Raspberry Pi 5 with AI chip A Hailo-8L neural processor does the recognition work, leaving the main processor free for recording and sending.
• One or two cameras One or two cameras per unit, as a camera module or via USB. A day camera and a night camera facing the same way can work together as one camera.
• Keeps working without the chip If the AI chip fails, the processor takes over the computation — more slowly, but the unit keeps detecting instead of going blind.
• Power profiles From full power to a saving and battery mode for places where every watt counts. The unit reports a supply voltage that is too low by itself.

How it works: from image to notification

Every camera image goes through the same steps. Only when something passes all of them does it become a notification. That way you hear about the person at the gate, not about every headlight that sweeps across the wall.

1. Camera Footage from one or two cameras, day and night.
2. Motion A light switching on or headlights on the wall do not count.
3. Recognition on the chip Person, car, lorry, bus, motorcycle, bicycle or number plate.
4. Your rules Zones, loitering, watchlist, quiet hours and privacy masks.
5. Notification and evidence Alarm with photo or clip; the footage is stored encrypted and signed.

For a number plate, the unit reads the plate across roughly a second of frames, with two reading models that check each other, and only then does the result go out. If the plate is on your list but one read is still uncertain, you see a possible match; a second read turns it into an alarm.

What the unit can do

Everything below is in the software running on the units today. Whatever you do not use stays off: recording, face recognition and smoke detection are not enabled on delivery.

Detection

• People and vehicles People, and vehicles by type: car, lorry, bus, motorcycle and bicycle. Per camera you set what counts and how certain the unit must be.
• Zones and loitering An alarm when someone enters a zone or stays there too long. Areas you want to ignore you simply mask out; a parked car does not keep counting as a detection.
• Tampering A covered or dazzled lens, a blurred image or a camera that has been pulled loose triggers an alarm — with an exception for a room where the lights simply go off in the evening.
• Smoke detection For a unit overlooking woodland or countryside: can be switched on per camera, with separate thresholds for silent recording and for an alarm. If you mark a false alarm, the camera remembers that spot.

Number plates and watchlists

• Number plate recognition on the unit All Dutch sidecodes, and tested on plates from six European countries. You see the country for each read; if you only want Dutch plates, switch the rest off.
• Watchlist Plates with a category — stolen, wanted, flagged — and a label of your own. An ‘allowed’ category records without ever raising an alarm.
• Sparing with data By default, for a plate that is not on a list the unit keeps only the crop of the plate — no overview photo and no clip. Recording everything is a separate mode, intended only with a DPIA.
• Presence watch The reverse alarm: a message when a plate that ought to be there is no longer seen.
• Import and export Read in or export lists in one go as CSV, the way a spreadsheet produces them. Any export of detections is recorded in the audit log.
• Mobile with GPS With a GPS receiver, every detection carries a position and the unit sits in the right place on the map — even while it is on the move.

Alarms and notifications

• Your own channels Telegram, email, SMS, Signal, Slack, Discord, Pushover, Pushbullet and webhooks. For Home Assistant and other home automation there is an MQTT bridge on the local network.
• Configurable per recipient Text only, with a photo or with a clip, and per recipient which subjects: people, vehicles, number plates or watchlist hits only. Notifications arrive in the recipient's language.
• No notification storm Quiet hours, an hourly limit, and a run of movements becomes one message instead of forty. Alarms such as tampering or a wanted person always get through.
• Repeat until someone responds A priority alarm is repeated until it is acknowledged. If the connection drops for a while, a notification waits in a queue that even survives a restart.

Footage and evidence

• Clips with lead-in A clip starts a few seconds before the detection, so you see what led up to it. If you do not want to keep footage, choose detection only.
• Signed evidence Every detection gets a digital fingerprint. An export is signed on the unit, and a separate verification tool checks that nothing has changed since.
• Audit log Who viewed, exported or changed what is kept in a log in which tampering after the fact stands out.
• Storage that never fills up The unit clears out old footage itself according to the retention period you choose. If you wish, a second copy goes to a NAS.

Updates and licence

• Signed updates Every update is signed with a key that is never online; the unit installs nothing that does not carry that signature. If an update fails, the unit automatically rolls back to the previous version.
• You decide when The unit notices a new version by itself and shows what changes. You install it with a single button, or you switch on automatic updates.
• Licence via InnoKEYS Each unit checks its licence with InnoKEYS, which returns a signed response. Without a connection it keeps working normally for an agreed period.

The fleet console: all your units on one screen

A unit on 4G sits behind the provider's network address translation and has no address anyone can call. So the unit calls out itself: it keeps one encrypted connection open to the fleet console, and everything — live view, a setting, the unit's own console — travels over that one line. No port needs opening and no firewall needs changing.

If the console goes down, the unit does not notice: detection, recording, retention periods and notifications carry on locally. The console adds an overview, not a dependency.

• Live video wall All cameras side by side. Footage is only sent while someone is watching, so a mobile data bundle is not drained by a screen nobody is sitting at.
• Map with view cones Units in their place, with the direction and angle each camera looks in. On a detection the spot lights up; clicking opens the camera. You draw your own site plan over it: fences, stages, entrances.
• Search across all units Where has this number plate been seen in the past day? One search goes to all units, and units that could not answer are named rather than left out.
• One plate list for the whole fleet Add a number plate once and every unit has it, including a unit that was briefly offline. A match anywhere triggers a fleet notification with the unit and location.
• Profiles per label A set of settings is tied to a label, such as ‘city centre’. A new unit given that label takes over the settings automatically — rolled out in stages and reversible.
• Seen and reported Per unit, when it was last in contact. If a unit goes offline, you get one notification per outage and a message when it is back; a daily summary lists the quieter problems.
• The unit itself, remotely You open the full console of each unit through the fleet console, without the unit having to be reachable from the internet.
• Roles and accounts Four roles, from viewer to administrator; two-step verification; several accounts side by side, each with its own units and its own retention period. In five languages, just like this page.

The fleet console stores no footage. Photos and clips stay on the unit where they were recorded; the console fetches them when you open them. What the console does keep briefly is information about detections — 24 hours by default, adjustable per account and can be set to zero.

Security: the unit can encrypt, not open

A camera unit by definition hangs somewhere someone can take it off the pole. That is why InnoDETECT encrypts footage with your public key. The matching private key is not on the unit — so the unit cannot read its own archive, and neither can a thief. Whether the unit is switched on or off.

• Encryption per fileEvery image gets its own key, which in turn is locked with your public key. Deleting is done by throwing that key away: after that the file cannot be recovered, not even from flash memory.
• Linked to the fleet consoleA unit linked to the fleet console also encrypts for your account's key there, so you can view footage in the console without pasting your private key. That account key can be protected by a PIN; the unit itself still holds no key. Footage from before the link can only be opened with your own key.
• A retention period that cannot be forgottenEvery file carries its own expiry date. The unit clears out on a fixed schedule and at start-up, so even a unit that was off for a week keeps nothing too long. Turning the clock back extends nothing.
• Privacy masksAreas that must not be in view — a neighbour's window, a public pavement — are masked before anything is stored.
• No default passwordEvery unit gets its own administrator password on first start. The connection to the unit's console is always encrypted.
• Honest about the limitsWhatever a running unit holds in its working memory at that moment, and your own private key, fall outside this protection. If you lose that key, footage that can only be opened with it cannot be recovered — that is by design.

Privacy and legislation

Camera footage and number plates are personal data. Responsibility for what you do with them lies with you as the user, but InnoDETECT's default settings are chosen so that you start with as little data as possible.

• GDPRRecording is off on delivery, plates that are not on a list are stored sparingly, privacy masks cover what should not be in view, and every category of data is subject to a retention period — including the system log, which is why it contains no names and no number plates. Recording everything or carrying out large-scale camera surveillance requires a legal basis of its own and often a DPIA.
• AI ActDetecting people and vehicles and reading number plates is not biometric identification. Face recognition is: it is off by default and only goes on once an administrator has explicitly accepted legal responsibility. Real-time biometric identification in publicly accessible spaces by or on behalf of law enforcement is in principle prohibited under Article 5, with narrow exceptions and prior authorisation.
• Cyber Resilience Act (CRA)Signed updates with automatic rollback, no default passwords, and a regular check of all software components used for known vulnerabilities.

About face recognition

Faces are biometric data: a special category under the GDPR. If you switch recognition on, you record per person whether someone is flagged (alarm) or known (never an alarm). The facial features are stored encrypted on the unit. The fleet console can show faces from several units and link a face to a name on all units at once, but itself stores no photos and no facial features.

The tick box in the console is not a legal basis: it only records who took responsibility. Whether you may use face recognition depends on your organisation, your purpose and your own DPIA. This page is not legal advice; put your situation to your data protection officer or lawyer.

Where InnoDETECT fits

InnoDETECT is made for places without fixed camera infrastructure, or where it only needs to be there temporarily. A few examples of how units are deployed:

• Municipalities and enforcement Temporary monitoring of a spot with nuisance or fly-tipping, with a unit running on 4G that moves on again after a few weeks.
• Construction sites and premises Outside working hours, a notification for a person or vehicle on site, and a tampering alarm if someone covers the camera.
• Events Set up units the day before, draw the site on the map, and the whole crew looks at the same plan.
• Parking and access Number plates at a barrier or site, with a list of who may park there and an alarm for anyone who does not belong.
• Mobile deployment A unit in a vehicle or on a trailer, with a GPS position for every detection.
• Rural areas A unit on a mast that spots smoke above woodland or heath.