Posts Tagged ‘meraki mv’

Cisco Announces Acquisition of Modcam

At Cisco Meraki, we strive to create products that solve our customers’ problems. With our MV smart camera portfolio, we have eliminated the problems of infrastructure cost and complexity that were prevalent in legacy systems. At the same time, we have simplified day-to-day physical security operations, while raising the bar for digital security. Importantly, we have done this all while keeping an eye on the future; a future we deliver on today, with integrated analytics in every camera at no additional cost.

This evolution of security cameras to smart cameras has resonated with every customer I have spoken to. We know that less than 1 percent of the video our MV smart cameras capture is actually watched. One of the questions we ask ourselves is, how do we extract value from the 99 percent that no one ever sees? And in these challenging times, it becomes even more critical that we can offer solutions that deliver valuable outcomes for our customers.

Mod.cam logo

For this reason, I am pleased to announce the acceleration of this evolution through Cisco’s acquisition of Modcam, a privately held, video analytics company headquartered in Malm?, Sweden. In acquiring Modcam, Cisco is investing in a team of highly talented engineers who bring a wealth of expertise in machine learning, computer vision and cloud-managed cameras.

Modcam has developed a solution that enables cameras to become even smarter. Cisco Meraki MV smart camera capabilities include motion detection and machine learning-based object detection, all of which run at the edge, in-camera. Today, these analytics are constrained to a single camera’s view of the world. With Modcam’s technology, this micro-level information can be stitched together, enabling multiple cameras to provide a macro-level view of the real world.

Modcam’s technology for precision locationing and journey pathing provides insights that inform strategic planning of physical spaces. These collaborative, cross-camera analytics can allow retailers to better understand customer behaviors — from products of interest to check out wait times. Facilities managers and office space planners can better measure occupancy and room usage, while using trend data to optimize space utilization that can create safer working practices.

The analytic functionalities of the Cisco Meraki MV smart camera portfolio allow for the protection of individual privacy, while still providing intelligent insights. These features will be maintained with the integration of the Modcam technology, allowing users to continuously monitor an individual’s path without obtaining or disclosing personal information.

We are thrilled to welcome the Modcam team to Cisco Meraki and we look forward to sharing more details on the technology integration in the future.

Video Exports, Better Together

Unfortunately, bad things happen – whether it’s theft, vandalism, a workplace accident, or something else. In these cases, security cameras can help create a timeline of events and provide evidence. MV smart cameras make it easy to isolate footage and export video, but the more cameras you have and the more video you need to export, the more challenging managing those exports can become. 

All your exports, in one place

Previously, a user would need to go to each individual camera to view and manage exported video from that camera. With the new Exports page, MV smart camera customers can see recent exports from all cameras in a network in one centralized place. This means users no longer have to remember if they exported video from Entrance Camera 1 or Entrance Camera 2. Simply navigate to the Exports page to see the status of all recent exports, download video footage, or share download links. 

Video exports table showing all exports from your network

The Exports page on the dashboard shows you all video exports in one place

All your exports, in one file

And if, by chance, you exported video from both Entrance Camera 1 and 2, video files can be merged into one using the new combine export tool. This can be very helpful in a retail environment, as you may need to capture footage of a suspect taking merchandise, as well as showing them leaving the store without paying. To combine files, simply select the clips that you would like to combine. The files can be arranged in the desired order, and you can specify a name for the new file. Once completed, the merged file will appear in the Video exports table. A title card will appear before the individual clips — indicating the name of the camera and the date and the time of the video — for seamless playback of the entire event without losing important context. Like all MV export files, it can be easily downloaded to an .MP4 file, or shared via a link. 

Combine exports gif

Combining exports from multiple cameras into a single file

Let us know what you think

The new Exports page is available now. For more information on how it works, check out the documentation. Or, head on over to the Meraki Community to join the discussion. We’d love to hear what you think!

MV, Now with RTSP!

Yes, you read that correctly. MV smart cameras now support RTSP. RTSP (Real Time Streaming Protocol) is a protocol that allows a third party system to access the video stream directly from the camera. Now, you may be thinking, “But why? MV smart cameras already have so many great features that make it easy for me to do what I need to do!” If you are, thank you! We think you’re right. 

A Focus on Solving Business Problems

Almost three years ago, we published a blog post called “APIs for Meraki MV Cameras” in response to the many requests for camera APIs. An overwhelming number were driven not by a desire for APIs, but by the need to solve a business problem. These needs fell into a few categories: 

  • Off camera storage for longer retention or offsite backup
  • Integration to provide context into business systems, or other physical security solutions
  • Analytics

In the months following, we released new functionality that addresses many of these needs without sacrificing simplicity, or ease of use. To meet the need for longer retention or offsite backup, we introduced Cloud Archive with simple, one-click provisioning. The Snapshot and Video Link APIs let customers easily integrate into access control systems like Kisi, shown below, or point of sale platforms to provide visual context to events.

Snapshots from security camera footage

The Snapshot API helps integrate MV Smart Cameras with Kisi Access Control.

The third category, analytics, is one of the most exciting areas of video. Analytics provide insight into processes and help organizations better understand what is happening within their space. MV cameras have always analyzed motion, and this was the basis of our first analytics, motion heatmaps. The second generation of cameras introduced machine learning based computer vision for object detection, specifically for detection of people and vehicles.

This was followed by the launch of the MV Sense API, which provides access to all this detection data in real time. When these various MV APIs are combined, it enables custom or advanced analytics capabilities that range from other types of object detection, to text recognition, and sentiment analysis (emotions or demographics). 

Gif of security camera footage

Person Detection on MV Smart Cameras

The Best of Both Worlds

By building solutions to solve customer problems, and keeping video within the Meraki ecosystem, we are helping to ensure they are not held back by their video data. It means that users do not have to watch countless hours of footage to investigate an incident, or need to be data scientists to gain insight from video analytics. While we have come a long way since launch, there are a few unique use cases that call for solutions outside of the Meraki ecosystem. 

An example of this are customers with large-scale deployments of legacy cameras. Previously, these customers would have no choice but to operate two viewing systems (a legacy VMS and the Meraki dashboard) in tandem as they worked to replace their old cameras with Meraki cameras. Now, RTSP lets them view video from Meraki MV cameras in their old VMS platform until all legacy cameras are replaced, and they can switch over to viewing everything in the Meraki dashboard. Another example is a public viewing monitor, or PVM, placed at a store entrance. With a PVM, there is no need to interact with the video in any manner other than static, live viewing, and RTSP fills this need.

screenshot external rtsp

Enabling RTSP on a Meraki MV Smart Camera

Finally, RTSP will enable access to the video stream for particularly niche analytics that simply cannot be met using the MV Sense and Snapshot APIs. This could be an organization with an existing analytics solution that relies on a traditional camera architecture.

By enabling access to RTSP, MV smart cameras are now available to customers who previously had no path forward with MV. These customers can benefit from the core value of MV smart cameras – simple architecture and cloud management through the Meraki dashboard – and use RTSP when needed to meet their other needs.

What Do You Think About RTSP?

RTSP is available now, for all second generation MV smart cameras (models ending in 2). For more information on how it works, check out the documentation. Or, head on over to the Meraki Community to join the discussion. We’d love to hear your thoughts on RTSP, and if it may be beneficial to your use case. Let us know what you think!

Export Video, On Your Schedule

When you need to get video off of a security camera – say for evidence collection after an incident – you want it to be simple. With MV smart cameras, video can be exported from the camera and uploaded to the cloud in just a few steps.  As simple as exports are to set up, there are times that users may want to wait to export video after hours, as they do require upstream WAN bandwidth.  Before, this would require logging into the dashboard at a later time to export the video, but the newly released scheduled exports allows a user to set and forget. 

Schedule Video Exports to Minimize Disruptions

With scheduled exports, users can select the video they’d like to export from their security cameras, and choose the time most convenient for exporting.  Scheduling exports after hours can help reduce the potential bandwidth impact on other business critical applications, allowing your organization to run more smoothly.

Screenshot of video analytics menu

Scheduling video for export is easy in the Meraki dashboard

Scheduling video for export is easy.  Once you’ve navigated to the desired video time, select the “Share” drop down, and the export video option. You can drag the sliders on the video timeline to adjust the length of the export, or use the date/time boxes at the top of the video stream.  Then, choose the date and time that you’d like the video to be exported, and select “export”.

Download or Share Video Clips After Export

After export, the file will be available for download or sharing in the dashboard by selecting the “Share” drop down, and then “Show recent exports”.  Video clips are saved for 12 months in the dashboard, during which time they can be downloaded to a computer as an MP4 file.  Need to share the video with someone outside the organization?  Generate a shareable link within the dashboard to send, and they’ll be able to download the file via the unique URL.  

Screenshot of recent exports report

Interested in learning more on exporting videos, or MV smart cameras? See our documentation for more information on how exporting video works, or check out a webinar for an overview of our MV smart camera line. Let us know what you think about the new feature on the Meraki Community page. 

New Features and Updates for MV Smart Cameras

As Meraki users are well aware, one of the benefits of the cloud management is seamless updates. We talked about the security benefits of automatic firmware upgrades in our recent blog post, “Security Starts with Simplicity.” Another advantage is getting new features and functionality without doing any extra work. Starting today, MV smart camera users have access to several new and upgraded features designed to make the solution even easier to use, and offer additional value.

Timeline Navigation Changes

The timeline may not be something people think about as a feature, but it’s a core part of how users interact with video. Our goal has been to make that experience as simple as possible. Natural language processing is one example of this — users can type in “yesterday evening” or “a week ago at noon” to access to the corresponding video. Now, users have new options for fluidly navigating the timeline using the scroll wheel on a mouse or the equivalent controls on a touchpad:

  • Zoom in and out by scrolling on a mouse.
  • Move forward or backward in the timeline bar by swiping on a touchpad, or shift+scroll on a mouse.

Finally, in a motion search, slider bars will appear on the timeline to indicate the time range for the results. Search results default to the middle 50% of the current visible timeline bar, and can be adjusted by moving the slider bars or changing the start and end date selectors above the motion search results. Refer to our documentation for more information on timeline navigation.

Motion Alerts 2.0

Motion alerts was one of our most requested features post-launch, and our engineering team granted that wish early last year. Alerts could be scheduled, and configured for the full frame or area of interest. When Motion Recap was released, images were included with motion alert emails to make alerts easier to understand. But our engineering team wasn’t going to stop there. They’ve been working on ways to make motion alerts better by making them more meaningful, and potentially reducing the frequency of false alerts. 

Motion alerts 2.0 offers new tools to select motion sensitivity levels and multiple areas of interest, allowing for greater flexibility. The average expected motion alerts per day are now displayed in the dashboard, making it easy to understand the impact of any configurations made. For more information, check out our motion alerts documentation.

Vehicle Detection

With this new release, MV smart cameras are getting a little smarter. In 2018, we announced advanced analytics with people detection. Now, using the same ML/AI capabilities, MV cameras will be able to detect vehicles in the frame of the camera. The vehicle detection model will be enabled on outdoor cameras (MV72), and vehicle count information will be displayed in the dashboard in the same format as people count is today. 

The ability for the camera to detect vehicles opens a variety of new applications. In addition to being able to discover motion events with vehicles more quickly, vehicle traffic and trends can be easily monitored in areas like parking lots or garages. Vehicle detection data is also available via the MV Sense API, allowing for custom integrations and applications. Check out our MV Object Detection documentation article for more information on vehicle detection.

Camera Field of View in Maps

Rounding out the list of new features is an enhancement to maps and floorplans. In December 2018, we added cameras to maps and floorplans. Now, the camera field of view (FoV) can be displayed for easy reference. The MV32 (fisheye) camera view is indicated by a circle, while other models will have a directional triangle. Simply use your mouse to position the FoV as needed. You’ll find more information about placing cameras in maps and floorplans in our documentation article, here.

How will you use the new features with your MV camera deployment? Share your plans and let us know what you think in the Meraki Community!

A Revolutionary Way to Not Watch Video

When it comes to our favorite shows, riveting movies, or funny cat videos, some of us can’t get enough screen time. But reviewing security camera footage is another matter. When tasked with going through hours of video to understand what happened during a particular incident or situation, most of us want a way to figure it out as quickly as possible.

What if there were a way to see the entirety of an event in a single image? Motion Recap makes this possible.

Motion Recap takes advantage of the Motion Search 2.0 algorithm, which uses background subtraction to isolate motion. Imagine a person walking down an empty street. Things in the background — buildings, signs, trees, or parked cars — remain unchanged. The only thing that changes is the location of that lone individual. Now imagine that activity as a series of still frames. A Meraki MV Smart Camera analyzes those frames to determine what is the same in each — in other words, the background. When the background is removed, what remains frame over frame is the motion (the individual walking).

A lone individual makes their way down the street.

Motion Recap images are composite images, built in-camera, that summarize a motion event. In the example described above, the Motion Recap image is created by superimposing the individual on the background at set intervals as they make their way down the street. This image allows the viewer to understand the entirety of an event with just a glance, instead of watching a 30 second video clip to see that the person did indeed walk down the street.

The path of a delivery person shown in a Motion Recap image

Find What You’re Looking for, Faster

The new Motion Recap feature on MV smart cameras enables users to find answers without having to watch video. Motion Search results are now displayed as Motion Recap images, allowing users to understand what has happened in video, without ever watching it. Say you need to find out who placed this dog toy on the couch in the video feed below. You use Motion Search to select the dog toy, and the Meraki dashboard returns results containing motion in that area.

Who moved the toy? Isolating activity using Motion Search.

Below are the six Motion Search results, returned as Motion Recap images. We can see the toy is on the ground in the top left image, and on the couch in the bottom middle image. In the fourth result, the bottom left, we can see an individual reaching down to pick up the toy and place it on the couch.

Motion Recap images offer answers without watching video.

Motion Recap images are grouped by events, and each image contains up to 30 seconds of motion. Longer events are made up of multiple images. By selecting any Motion Recap image, we can scroll through to view other images, or watch the corresponding video for that event.

Want to see the demo in action? Check out this video to find out how Motion Search and Motion Recap solve the mystery of who stole the MV Gnome in our office.

Motion Recap image from an MV32 fisheye camera

Motion Recap is now available to all customers with second generation MV smart cameras (models ending in -2). Users can toggle between Motion Recap and list view results using the buttons on the right-hand side. Or, if you prefer the list view, disable Motion Recap completely on the “Quality and retention” tab.

Let us know what you think about the new Motion Recap feature in the Meraki Community or request a risk-free evaluation to try out MV for yourself!

CÁMARAS MÁS INTELIGENTES PARA ESCUELAS MÁS SEGURAS

Hacer que los colegios, institutos y universidades sean más seguras con cámaras inteligentes y confiables, es posible con Cisco Meraki.

Imagine administrar las cámaras de seguridad de su escuela desde un tablero intuitivo basado en la web sin NVR, sin descargas de software y acceso remoto seguro. ¿Suena demasiado bueno para ser verdad?

Las cámaras de seguridad de Cisco Meraki MV están cambiando la forma en que las escuelas piensan acerca de la videovigilancia. Con Meraki MV, las escuelas pueden mantener a los estudiantes más seguros al ayudar proactivamente con la detección de amenazas y la seguridad, y los equipos de TI pueden tomar decisiones informadas con análisis integrados, que no requieren servidores. MV es fácil de implementar y administrar, y está específicamente pensando para los equipos de TI.

 

 

Aquí tiene 5 razones por las que debe considerar las cámaras de seguridad Meraki MV para la próxima implementación de su escuela o campus:

  1. Implementación simple: con la implementación de cero toque, usando solo números de serie, un administrador puede agregar dispositivos al Dashboared de Meraki y comenzar la configuración incluso antes de que el hardware llegue al campus. Envíe cámaras directamente a cada escuela o espacio y póngalas en funcionamiento rápidamente.
  2. Sin NVR: todas las imágenes de video se almacenan y se cifran localmente en la cámara, lo que elimina la necesidad de los costosos y complicados NVR o DVR. Esto no solo agrega seguridad adicional, sino que también permite una sencilla implementación y administración de la cámara. También significa que el equipo de TI  puede escalar fácilmente sin complicaciones.
  3. Monitoreo basado en la Web: administre sus cámaras de seguridad desde el mismo panel de control intuitivo y basado en la web donde administra el resto de sus productos Meraki. MV elimina la necesidad de una sala de monitoreo de seguridad o una configuración de VPN compleja, todo lo que necesita es un navegador web para ver y monitorear secuencias de video. Además, el Dashboard reduce el tiempo de capacitación para los administradores y el personal que interactúan con el sistema.
  4. Controles de acceso granular: ya no es solo el guardia de seguridad el que necesita acceso. Desde el director hasta el maestro pueden tener acceso personalizado a todas las cámaras de la escuela, o seleccione las cámaras por etiqueta, con solo unos clics.
  5. Análisis integrados: MV va más allá de la seguridad; utiliza un potente procesador integrado para analizar el video y proporcionar información valiosa sin la necesidad de enviar esos archivos de video a la nube o un servidor local. Vea fácilmente dónde los estudiantes se congregan o caminan con mapas de calor de movimiento. Detecta cuántas personas hay en un aula o en un pasillo con la detección de personas.

Las escuelas de todo el mundo están implementando Meraki MV para mantener a sus estudiantes más seguros de forma sencilla y eficiente. En Estados Unidos, el Distrito Escolar de Reading utiliza la herramienta de búsqueda de movimiento para aislar incidentes y encontrar lo que están buscando en menos de 20 minutos, en lugar de pasar buscando durante  horas de video almacenado. Además, los guardias de seguridad, los directores y los administradores escolares pueden ver imágenes desde una tableta o PC, sin tener que ir a la sala de monitoreo de video.

Conozca más de Meraki MV conversando con su representante de ventas y participando en nuestro próximo webinar en vivo. 

Reading School District: An MV Case Study

With locations all across the city of Reading, Pennsylvania, the Reading School District is one of the largest in the region. The hallways in the high school alone span an impressive five miles. This sheer physical size, coupled with over 18,000 students and 2,000 faculty and staff across the district, make apparent how challenging — and crucial — it is to ensure the safety of these individuals.

“The goal for us is… to make sure that every individual in this building feels safe… And they know that we’re on top of every situation that could arise in the building.” – Eric Turman, Reading High School Principal

CTO Jeff Haas and his colleagues knew precisely what their security objectives were, but they found the challenges were mounting. Their existing camera system was highly failure-prone, often lost footage, and was so cumbersome that training new team members was hugely time consuming. With a 15-person security team and a lean IT squad to manage all of this, the district knew it was time to evaluate alternative solutions.

Original Challenges:

  • Ensure the necessary infrastructure was in place for just 15 guards to secure all 18,000 students and 2,000 faculty members, making them feel safe and comfortable while in the schools.
  • With their traditional security camera solution, all camera footage was stored on an NVR. If one hard drive failed, it would crash a unit of 20+ cameras, with no way to alert them that cameras had gone down.
  • With no way to identify that cameras were offline, it was often only discovered that they hadn’t been recording when footage was requested to review an important incident.
  • When cameras went down, they relied on their installer to come on site and assist with the repair process, delaying fixes and keeping their cameras offline longer.
  • Due to the complexity of the video management software, members of their security team could not  easily access feeds or footage, and training new team members was complicated and time consuming.

“Typically, when one hard drive would die, it would take the whole unit down — that was about 20 cameras we would lose. And that’s just not appropriate.” – CR Hiestand, Network and Systems Administrator

The Meraki Camera Deployment:

  • ~400 cameras were deployed across five sites, with standardization across the district planned.
  • A combination of MV12, MV21, and MV71 cameras were used to provide coverage both indoors and outdoors.
  • Just one team member — CR Hiestand, Network and Systems Administrator at Reading School District — was initially trained to use the camera tools in dashboard, he was then able to train other members of the IT and Security teams.
  • Security and administrative users were assigned particular camera-permissions, based on the requirements of their role.
  • Without having to rely on NVRs, Meraki cameras were deployed and online extremely quickly.

“Now that we’re on the MV platform, training has been a lot simpler than what it needed to be previously. We’ve done one training session, and I was able to cover all the features.” – CR Hiestand, Network and Systems Administrator

The Results:

  • The small security team at Reading School District provides a more secure and safe learning environment for the district.
  • Security team members can more effectively monitor different sites in case of a crucial event.
  • Rather than having multiple cameras crash at a time, failure is always limited to a single camera, and the IT team is alerted when a camera goes down so there is never a loss in coverage.
  • Everyone at Reading School District who required camera access was trained in just a few minutes to access video streams, historical feeds, and camera analytics — a dramatic drop in the time and resources required to onboard users.
  • The district’s IT team is able to govern camera access for different users more effectively.
  • With the success they’ve had at the deployed locations, Reading School District is planning to triple the number of cameras they have deployed in the next few years.

Have a story you’d like to share with us about how you’ve used MV cameras? We’d love to hear it on the Meraki Community!

Smarter Cameras for Safer Schools: Exclusive Education Pricing for Meraki MV

Imagine managing your school’s security cameras from an intuitive, web-based dashboard with no NVR, no software downloads, and secure remote access to video footage from anywhere. Sound too good to be true?

Cisco Meraki MV security cameras are changing the way schools think about video surveillance. With Meraki MV, schools can keep students safer by proactively helping with threat detection and security and IT teams can make informed decisions with integrated analytics, which require no servers. MV is easy to deploy and manage, and specifically built with lean IT teams in mind. Here are five reasons why you should consider Meraki MV security cameras for your school or campus’ next deployment:

  • Simple Deployment: With zero-touch deployment, using just serial numbers an administrator can add devices to the Meraki dashboard and begin configuration before the hardware even arrives on campus. Ship cameras directly to each school site and have them up and running quickly.
  • No NVR: All of the video footage is locally stored and encrypted on the camera, removing the need for expensive and complicated NVRs or DVRs. This not only adds additional security, but allows for simple camera deployment and management. It also means districts can easily scale from one school deployment to 50, without breaking a sweat.
  • Web-Based Monitoring: Manage your security cameras from the same intuitive, web-based dashboard where you manage the rest of your Meraki products. MV removes the need for a security monitoring room or complex VPN configuration; all you need is a web-browser to watch and monitor video footage. Easily make custom video walls and find important events with Motion Search all from the dashboard. Plus, the dashboard cuts down on training time for the administrators and staff interfacing with the system.
  • Granular Access Controls: It’s not just the security guard who needs access anymore. From the principal or president down to the teacher or custodian, give different people customizable levels of access to all of the school’s cameras, or select cameras by tag, in just a few clicks.  
  • Built-in Analytics: MV goes beyond just security; it utilizes a powerful onboard processor to analyze video and provide valuable insights without the need to send those video files to the cloud or a local server. Easily see where students are congregating or walking with motion heat maps. Detect how many people are in a classroom or hallway with people detection.

Schools across the world are deploying Meraki MV to simplify security camera management and keep their students safer. At Reading School District, CR Hiestand and his team use the Motion Search tool to isolate incidents and find what they are looking for in under 20 minutes, rather than searching through hours of video footage. Plus, security guards, principals and school administrators can view footage from a tablet or PC, without having to go to the video monitoring room. At Sweet Briar College, Aaron Mahler has indoor and outdoor MV security cameras deployed across the campus to keep students safe, while providing network admins with an easy to manage solution through an intuitive web-based interface they can access from anywhere.

From May 9th until October 27th, 2018, Meraki is offering exclusive pricing for MV security cameras for education in the United States. Just contact your Meraki sales rep to get started!

To learn more about Meraki MV for education, watch the webinar recording.

For more information about Meraki MV, read our Meraki MV for K-12 Solution Guide or Meraki MV for Higher Education Solution Guide.

More Analytics, Less Infrastructure

In keeping with the age-old Meraki philosophy of empowering our customers to do more with less, people-counting analytics on MV12 has finally arrived!

We’re excited to see this new set of tools build on top of an already impressive (and necessary) security product. Now, MV12 can act not only as a great security camera, but also as a sensor for businesses big and small — no servers or extra infrastructure needed.

Sound familiar?

If you’re already familiar with our wireless product line, this rollout might feel reminiscent of our WLAN Location Analytics tool, and it should! At Meraki, we love the notion of providing our customers more intelligence with less infrastructure, an idea especially apparent with MR and now MV.

How does it work?

Using the advanced processor on our recently launched MV12 security camera, and built-in, anonymized person detection (not to be confused with unique facial recognition/identification) software, video is stored and analyzed on-camera, at the edge. This metadata is sent to the cloud and aggregated into people-counting metrics independently of the video itself. Plus, over time this software will become more accurate using machine learning.

To see this functionality in action, just click on the ‘Analytics’ tab for an individual camera and select the time resolution (minute-by-minute, hourly, or daily) and timeframe of interest. The ‘People count’ section of this page shows an at-a-glance overview of your busiest time period, estimated peak occupancy over that period, and the total number of entrances. Remember that the ‘Total Entrances’ value will double count individuals if they leave a frame and then return, since this data is anonymized. Consequently, we encourage thoughtful placement of cameras intended for use as sensors to minimize both double counting (place them in an area with restricted traffic flow moving in one direction, like an ‘Entrance Only’ door) and occlusions (where two people or objects pass in front of one another, making it difficult for the camera to see what’s going on).

Clicking on the ‘Most Utilized’ and ‘Peak Occupancy’ results will jump directly to that moment in the camera’s historical footage so you can quickly analyze what events may have driven that spike in traffic. Drilling down into each bar in the people counting bar chart will also take you to the corresponding piece of footage, making it simple to investigate anomalies.

So what?

You’ll now be able to observe and quantify granular foot traffic patterns through a given frame.

For retailers: monitor the ebb and flow of customers throughout the day, optimize staffing headcount to make sure your customers get the attention they need, and increase the efficacy of marketing campaigns by targeting days of the week with the greatest or least traffic.

In schools: track general attendance patterns, see which areas of campus are used most frequently, and make a business case for updating facilities and equipment based on usage patterns.

At offices: figure out whether it makes sense to add more common spaces, or repurpose these areas based on popularity with office-dwellers. And are those pricey espresso machines actually getting used anyway?

Of course, these examples represent only a fraction of the uses cases now available with this additional functionality. Coupled with motion heat maps (available on all MV models), it’s never been quite so easy to see the big picture quickly.

Does this mean my MR Location Analytics setup is now redundant?

Definitely not! Think of these tools as complementary. Because MR access points count mobile device wireless signals throughout a wireless network, they provide a broad “macro” level view of foot traffic through, say, an entire store location. People counting on MV only tabulates traffic within that visual frame, making it more accurate on a “micro” level, like an individual product display within that store. By pairing these two features, you can quickly gain insights across multiple levels of your business.

Learn more and see a live demo by signing up for an MV webinar or get in touch with your Meraki rep to try MV12 out for yourself.