Here at Meraki, we have a plethora of snacks, candies, and sweets to choose from. So I was mortified when I found that my special gluten-free and vegan cookies had been snatched from my desk!

I was determined to find out who the culprit was. I went out and bought a traditional security camera, and after hours of reading the manual, harassing our technical engineering team, running cables, and setting up an NVR, I finally had the camera ready to go. I brought in more cookies, left for an all-day meeting, and recorded the scene of the crime all day — only to  realize I was going to have to watch the entire day’s worth of footage to figure out who took my cookies. Since my boss didn’t classify finding the cookie culprit as a high priority project, I was stuck yet again.

Luckily, there is a new, much easier way to find thieves, hooligans, and cookie-snatchers, with very little detective work required. With Meraki MV security cameras, you can view video footage through the intuitive, web-based Meraki dashboard from anywhere. Using the Motion Search and heatmap features, quickly and painlessly find important moments in video footage in just a few clicks.

So, I borrowed a MV security camera from the product team, plugged it in, and voila! After collecting a days worth of footage, I just logged into the dashboard, retroactively selected the area around the cookies, and was instantly presented with only footage that showed movement around that area. Even with his sneaky disguise, I caught the offender.

Turns out I am not the only one in the office experiencing cookie disappearances – watch the video to see another example.

Our customers also use Meraki MV security cameras in creative ways. The city of Fayetteville, AR, uses MV in government buildings across the city to protect its workers and residents and solve for unique business challenges. They can easily identify who tracked mud into City Hall, which carriers delivered damaged packages, and what sports equipment needs to be replaced in the city gym. Once cameras are deployed in the parking garages, they plan to monitor traffic patterns to see when the garage is most utilized, and make adjustments accordingly. Better yet, the IT team can provide dashboard access for specific cameras to building managers and security guards, so they can monitor and search video footage as they see fit, without any training or technology experience.

All of this has freed up the IT team to focus on deploying more cameras and participating in more impactful projects. They currently have 61 indoor and outdoor cameras deployed, with many more scheduled to deploy over the next couple of years. Read the full City of Fayetteville case study here.