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Commercial vehicle camera systems are made up of numerous key components and electronic modules. This includes storage systems, GPS circuitry, communications circuitry, video processing circuitry, etc. The vast majority of vehicle camera systems are very reliable, especially those developed specifically for commercial vehicle use. ProVision’s systems, for example, are military-grade tested to operate perfectly even with high levels of vibration and shock.
But there is one major component of every vehicle camera system that has a major flaw. It is such a massive flaw that it could cause you to not have key footage or data when you need it most – after an accident!
The problem is, unfortunately, the operator. In other words, you, the human! A vehicle camera system, if properly maintained and used properly, will run fine pretty much indefinitely. The flaw is highlighted when someone physically engages with it in an improper way. Typically, that is to remove the media (SD Card or Hard Disk) in order to review or download footage.
The most regular issues we find is that a fleet manager doesn’t power down the system and simply yanks the media out. This can corrupt the disk/card, making the footage inaccessible. Equally, inserting the media incorrectly can mean that the device cannot write to the disk/card, but you may never know until it’s too late!
Linked to these human errors are procedural issues in monitoring and maintaining the equipment. For example, the cameras themselves have no moving parts and are very reliable. However, they are exposed to the elements and knocks and damage by debris and other road users. This can mean that they can stop working. But how will you know this?
It would require regular checks of the hardware on every vehicle. On larger vehicle fleets, that’s just not practical. So, what’s the answer?
Remote Access To The Camera System
ProVision developed a platform called ‘CameraMatics’ specifically to:
- Deliver more data to fleet managers
- Reduce the need to physically touch the hardware
- Ensure that the fleet manager always knows that the systems are fully operational or if one or more of them need attention.
The platform provides many other benefits, but for a small monthly fee, it means that you can login and see all your vehicles, search a specific vehicle’s footage and then download the video you need – all without ever touching the device itself. This also means that the vehicle doesn’t have to be back at base, which is a critical secondary benefit, as a damaged vehicle may never make it back to base in order to retrieve the footage.
Most importantly, it means that you can see, at a glance, that all the hardware is working and recording footage and data. This avoids the creation and implementation of very laborious processes to regularly manually check every device and footage, remembering that just by doing this, you increase the risk of it not reinserting media properly.
