Infrared technology security application colorful

In order to meet the needs of all-weather monitoring, as early as 2001 to 2003, China's monitoring manufacturers began to explore infrared camera technology. From the early camera and infrared light module to the integrated design of the camera and infrared light, from the LED infrared light manual mode to automatic control of the photoresistor, and then to the introduction of the camera dual filter applications; from the most basic video Surveillance requires infra-red cameras with various functional requirements such as waterproof and riot protection, strong light suppression, face recognition, and privacy shielding, all of which have witnessed the rapid development of the infrared camera technology and market in China. In recent years, with the rise of safe city construction, the demand for camera night vision has gradually expanded, and the application of infrared cameras has become more popular.

Infrared technology security application colorful

From statistical data, compared with 2009, the market for HD cameras increased by more than 200% in 2010. However, analog cameras declined in volume in 2011, and the market share has dropped to 60%. Most monitoring equipment manufacturers also optimistically estimate that in 2015, megapixel digital HD network cameras will surpass the analog cameras and become the overlord in the field of security monitoring.

With the ever-increasing social security monitoring requirements, the drawbacks of analog surveillance have become increasingly prominent. Under this circumstance, high-definition surveillance is leading the development trend of security surveillance with its clear and outstanding surveillance quality. Not only in the technical aspects of high-definition monitoring is the current trend of security monitoring in the mainstream and the future, in the market, the demand for high-definition monitoring is also increasing, from the government's safe city, to real-time monitoring of port traffic, from factory and mine management to chain stores With safe operations, more and more projects and contractors are beginning to adopt high-definition and digital surveillance.

Infrared technology has been widely used in the field of security monitoring in recent years due to its ability to achieve clear shooting of images in a zero-light environment at night. Infrared cameras need auxiliary light sources to complete monitoring work in night view or zero illumination environment. From the early high-power halogen lamps to the current LED array infrared lamps, the infrared camera technology is increasingly developing and progressing to meet security monitoring. Market demand.

In the past two years, the trend of high-definition, network, and intelligentization of security monitoring has been significantly accelerated. As a front-end device for security monitoring, infrared cameras are also moving in the direction of high-definition, networking, and intelligence. In 2012, in addition to new breakthroughs in infrared technology, infrared cameras will also develop in the direction of high-definition, network, and intelligence. Of course, from the current point of view, infrared cameras still have many shortcomings, such as stray light interference, short LED light source life, uneven image brightness, long-distance product volume is too large, color distortion and so on. This is also a technical problem that needs to be overcome and resolved.

Night monitoring needs push the infrared camera market

In recent years, the rapid development of the domestic economy, the city’s comprehensive security and traffic monitoring have also suffered the pressure of space brought about by the rapid development, technological bottlenecks, limitations of scale, market chaos and so on. Nowadays, important considerations in the monitoring of security monitoring at night are implemented. In many places, 24-hour monitoring is required. To achieve 24-hour monitoring, the current surveillance cameras generally employ low-light and infrared camera technologies, which have been widely used in the surveillance field. Here I will introduce the development of low-light and infrared camera technology in the monitoring field.

With the development of society and the need for monitoring at night, the development direction of the monitoring technology is determined. For this technical analysis, we discuss four situations. The first is the basic part of the high-sensitivity CCD and the low-illumination function; Infrared lighting and black-and-white cameras are not currently available for Sony China; the third is direct infrared cameras; the fourth is higher-end cameras such as image-enhanced CCDs or electron multiplier CCDs. One of the most direct features is that the sensitivity has to be greatly improved compared to other cameras, for example, a thousand times or thousands of times, but the cost will be greatly increased.

In the field of surveillance, there are many places in the country that require 24-hour day and night surveillance. Therefore, infrared cameras, including infrared night-time low-light cameras, are widely used. This is a trend. For infrared cameras, I think this is also the case, and the market situation will get better and better. At the beginning of its entry, the infrared market was still using low-light and infrared cameras. This is our starting point. Began to think that the infrared lamp installation problem is a big problem. With the advent of market demand, more than 95% of the cases occurred at night, which is an international statistic. Therefore, nighttime monitoring is more important than daytime monitoring. Therefore, real monitoring and nighttime monitoring are the most important factors. Lighting in big cities like Beijing is sufficient, and imaging resolution is even better than that of foreign countries. But most cities in China are dark after 12 o'clock, so the application of infrared lamps is inevitable.

Infrared lighting installation is a big problem. Industry insiders said that entering this market infrared one machine is on the market, and developed to today's very fast, because of its cheapness, convenience, the current market is unparalleled, of course, Sony CCD in terms of demand is very large, and now is your CCD Breaking the market, the market for China should be very large.

For the infrared one machine has been developed to a stage, the current price and other aspects are very good, but there is a big problem, that is, imaging is not clear. Because the wavelength of infrared is totally different from the wavelength of visible light, I have seen infrared lamps from many homes produced abroad. All imaging is unqualified and cannot pass national standards. So put forward higher requirements for the infrared camera. For us, the infrared effect is not only the infrared light, but also the photosensitive wavelength of the camera chip. The clear range is not the same in the clear range of visible light and infrared.

Industry development is facing difficulties

Due to the demand for infrared cameras in the domestic market, the red fire of infrared cameras has also promoted the participation of many security companies. As the infrared camera market continues to mature, the infrared market has gradually formed a chaotic pattern of separatist disputes. The fierce competition in the infrared camera market has not promoted the development of the entire market. On the contrary, some of the product problems that have already been solved have often appeared. So, there are several factors that cause the infrared camera to shrink now:

1, hand workshops impact the regular vendor market is more chaotic

Due to the low production threshold of infrared cameras, and a considerable number of merchants on the market specializing in the production and sale of camera accessories, this has opened up fertile ground for the growth of handicraft workshops. Their ultimate goal is to pursue profit maximization. Obviously, quality has become empty talk. Because of its low price, the impact on some regular manufacturers caused the market share of regular manufacturers to gradually decrease. Due to the pressure of competition, in order to keep the market, some regular manufacturers can only reduce costs. Due to pressure from manufacturers, each raw material supplier can only gradually “shrink” the quality of materials, resulting in a decline in the overall quality of the product. Quality problems that have not previously appeared or have already been resolved have begun to rise, and the market is in a vicious price competition. The development of the security industry was only a short period of more than 30 years. At present, the market is in a period of “hundreds of contenders”. There is no leading infrared camera company to guide the entire industry. Moreover, many customers lack the correct understanding of infrared cameras, and the threshold of infrared camera technology is too low, which also makes many small workshops have an advantage.

2. Serious homogenization of a single product system

Since 2006, there have been few new types of infrared cameras, and most of the manufacturers' products are still products of 2006. If products from different manufacturers are not labeled, it is difficult to tell the difference between the two products in terms of appearance. In fact, during this period of time, there are companies updating their product lines, but it takes a long time for a new product to go from R&D to the market. Due to the price fluctuations in the infrared camera market, it is easy to create a new product. As soon as it is available, it will suffer price shocks. In the past few years, the new products developed have been mostly single-functioned, with no special highlights. This has made it difficult to promote.

3, lack of standards for the lack of industry mechanisms

The security industry has always been an industry with lagging standards. Since the early 1980s, the security industry started to take off in China. Until now, there is still no industry standard for restricting the domestic camera manufacturers. In this disorderly state, it is almost impossible to measure whether a camera is qualified. On the other hand, the national testing standard mechanism is not sound enough. The only authoritative organization for the quality inspection of infrared cameras in China is the product quality supervision, inspection and testing center of the Ministry of Public Security's security and alarm system. The standard used by the center for detecting cameras is the GB/T15865-1995 camera (PAL/SECAM/NTSC) measurement method. 》The tests are based on the detection of parameters such as resolution, resistance to voltage, brightness, and signal-to-noise ratio of conventional cameras. They do not involve infrared cameras and their infrared lamp power, launch distance, and night vision effects. The test. However, this detection does not have a threshold and a strong constraint, which is also one of the aspects that causes the infrared camera market to be more chaotic.

Future development towards network HD

The networked, high-definition, and intelligentization of security products have become an inevitable trend in the industry. The transformation of the product system architecture has prompted the need for corresponding upgrades of infrared cameras. Networking and high-definition of infrared cameras have gradually become the trend of choice in the industry. . Infrared cameras with networked and high-definition features can greatly facilitate the application of infrared cameras. On the one hand, it is reflected in the network to make the deployment of infrared cameras more convenient, and the networked applications also mean higher added value. Can realize the intelligent application; On the other hand, it is reflected in the high-definition that makes the infrared camera to monitor images more clearly at night, and has better detail expression.

For example, in the all-weather monitoring of large-scale factory areas, the entire infrared monitoring system adopts the standard TCP/IP protocol and can operate directly on the enterprise LAN. The monitoring center only needs to install the image monitoring system server and collaborate with the corresponding database to complete the on-site image reception, coordination of control signals, real-time image monitoring, user login management, video storage, retrieval, playback, backup, recovery, etc. The enterprise monitoring center can not only monitor the headquarters but also remotely and centrally monitor the branches and factories. Only the ADSL, optical fiber, telecommunication line or wireless network connection is used between branches, plant sites, and head office. Let the company not need to send more manpower to carry out 24-hour human observation on each monitoring point, and only need a small amount of personnel to be in the monitoring center.

However, although the visual experience brought by high-definition is analog products can not be compared, but at the same time we also have to realize the sensitivity problem of its core SENSOR: when the same pixel under the same area, the CMOS photosensitive area is relatively lower than the CCD, The CMOS low light effect is relatively poor compared to the CCD. Moreover, the CMOS amplifier has a different magnification, which causes excessive image noise at night and affects the night image effect. Therefore, an infrared camera using the CCD as a light sensing element in the same pixel is more effective than the CMOS. It will be better for capturing image clarity and low illumination. However, the reality is that most HD network cameras use CMOS sensors, which creates contradictions between the actual application and the ideal effect. Therefore, if we want to achieve a full-scale infrared high-definition surveillance, how to solve the problem of large noise in the night video, video snowflakes and other issues is the key.

In fact, in the current development of monitoring technologies, CMOS sensors are rapidly developing, and their noise signals are further reduced. Star-level CMOS sensors have also been introduced. Infrared cameras require low power consumption, high integration, small size, networking, and high-definition. The CMOS sensor is undoubtedly the focus of choice for the future. Furthermore, the performance of DSP chips equipped with CMOS is increasingly enhanced, which makes the video signal processing technology can most effectively reduce the gain amplitude of relative still pictures. This can greatly reduce and eliminate noise interference in signals, thereby improving the picture cleanliness. And reduce picture noise.

Conclusion: With the birth of market demand, the cost of laser products will be reduced, and the mysterious veil will be gradually unveiled. It will no longer be an exclusive product in a specific area and will gradually become popular. At the same time, in order to achieve the ideal application of infrared cameras, network, high-definition, intelligent is the inevitable trend of the development of infrared cameras.