AI and Portable CCTV Tower Trailers
CCTV-equipped portable tower trailers have been popping up lately. This particular unit was photographed in the parking lot near a Wal-Mart, about 200–300 feet away from the store entrance.
Similar trailers can be found near department stores, strip malls, schools, and car dealerships. Anywhere with a big parking lot, really. Some have large fences surrounding them and power backup options attached. It seems like they are set up to sit there almost permanently.
What are these things? And how are they being used to help keep these places safe?
Introducing the Portable CCTV Trailer
They have different names and come in many different varieties. But these systems share a number of common traits.
First and most distinctly, they are built on top of trailers. They can be hooked up to a truck and hauled to wherever they need to be. And once they get there, they can be locked into place so that they do not fall over during adverse weather conditions.
Second, these towers are complete platforms that can be outfitted with CCTV cameras, floodlights, or other security accessories. They are usually attached to the top of a pole elevated some twenty or more feet above the ground.
Third, these portable CCTV trailers have their own independent power source and communications linkages. For night time operations, they have batteries. And during the day, there are solar panels. The one pictured here had four CCTV cameras mounted on top.
These trailers are also frequently equipped with 4G cellular modems. They are not necessarily for transmitting live footage all the time back to the command center. The data costs of such would be prohibitively expensive — so usually all the video footage is stored right on the device. They are more for communicating with the operators in case something happens and an incident is detected.
Based on publicly available public tenders, one fully equipped portable CCTV trailer costs about $20,000 to 25,000. This does not take into account the daily costs of any data plans as well as the cost of maintenance for broken parts.
Potential upgrades are also available. These are very flexible, capable security platforms. For instance, floodlights for illuminating open areas at night, or loudspeakers for talking down intruders if they arrive. These can help enhance the trailer’s security offering. Though it is noted that the trailer itself already acts as a visual deterrent.
Where To Use Them?
Portable CCTV trailer sales have been on the rise. Why have they taken off? In recent years, there has been a greater need to monitor and secure certain remote areas for intrusion and theft. These areas have lots of valuable equipment, raw materials, and customer possessions lying around, making them vulnerable. Yet at the same time, the area of interest is too far away from a fixed and conveniently accessible power source like a nearby building.
Parking lots are a perfect example of this. In suburban areas of the United States, these lots are quite sprawling and extend far further than what most wall-mounted CCTV cameras are capable of monitoring. A trailer helps survey distant areas at the margins.
These trailers are especially suited for construction sites. This is because such work areas are isolated, have lots of valuable goods vulnerable to theft, and are inherently temporary. It does not make sense to do a lot of work installing permanent site cameras because the site vanishes after the job is done.
Other places where we have seen these trailers placed are oil and gas operations as well as large event gatherings.
Bringing AI Into the Mix
These CCTV tower trailers are beneficial to public safety in that people recognize them and can know that someone is watching on the other side. And this is where Umbo can help too.
More than a few of our customers have equipped the cameras on top of those CCTV tower-trailers with Umbo Light AI. These conditions are perfectly suited for Light’s specialities in handling CCTV video artifacts — with over a billion processed events. Light AI performs particularly well under outdoors conditions, ignoring wind, leaves, and weather artifacts.
Operators can benefit from all the powerful tools and benefits that Umbo provides for security monitoring companies: Accurate false alert reduction, alert review on a mobile app, and more.
For additional benefits, our AiBullet hardware use their on-board AI chips to process video footage for human detection and intrusion without needing to constantly upload data to the internet. There is no unnecessary uploading to the cloud.
Conclusion
CCTV trailers are helping to bring security cameras and other security deterrences to places where they had not been able to go before. These cameras will require AI to handle false positives from various outside conditions.
