Eurotech Solutions for Passenger Security in the Public Transportation System

Eurotech was established in 1992 as an ideas factory and has now become a leading international group strongly focused on research and development. Eurotech prides itself on implementing cutting-edge technologies to make our everyday lives better, safer and more comfortable.

To that end, and with the main goal of passenger security and peace of mind, Eurotech has created intelligent, interconnected, pervasive and unobtrusive solutions for video surveillance applications within the public transport networks.

Cutting edge devices for video surveillance applications

Developing advanced and effective video surveillance systems onboard public transportation vehicles requires a careful evaluation of video processing, storage and transmission, with the possibility of sending data to a remote control centre. Eurotech has recently released the Alphabox DVR, a reliable and rugged solution that perfectly targets the requirements above.

The intelligent video-processing engine of the Alphabox DVR performs the real-time analysis of acquired images. It is capable of including on-line discriminating functionalities and dynamic data transmission through wired or wireless networks, allowing for fast decision-making in the case of illicit events, and allowing a real-time response from emergency services.

The Alphabox DVR is IP65 and EN50155 compliant, compact, lightweight and low power. It combines the advanced functionalities of a digital video recorder with the ability to acquire and store high-resolution video streams (NTSC and PAL) coming from up to 16 analog / digital channels (BNC composite video, USB, FireWire and Ethernet) onto an integrated fixed or removable storage device.

Sending the maximum information with minimum data loss

The Alphabox DVR takes advantage of the MPEG4 or JPEG2000 compression technologies, and can dynamically use all the available bandwidth to continually ensure that the maximum possible amount of information can be sent with minimum data loss. Users can select from an array of wired and wireless interfaces to transmit the data for analysis. These include GPRS, UMTS, WiFi 802.11.X and Fast Ethernet.
In any case, a rugged internal storage device stores all the video streams made of high resolution frames – analysis can be made later from a remote operating centre.

Compatibility with standard commercial vehicle electrical systems

The Alphabox DVR has a small footprint and a fanless cooling system. Ease of integration has been guaranteed by the use of industry standard circular connectors and a wide input voltage range. This ensures compatibility with all standard commercial vehicle electrical systems.

Maintenance is easy, with no need to remove the device from the vehicle. Furthermore, the Alphabox DVR offers advanced auto-diagnosis features that allows for complete monitoring of critical parameters and remote status monitoring with pre-alarm features, thus enhancing the system’s security and simplifying maintenance. Eurotech is one of the first companies to supply this technology as standard.

Advanced video security network

Thanks to the versatility and modularity of the Alphabox DVR architecture, several units can be interconnected together, or systems can be expanded to include the other members of the Alphabox family. These currently include the automatic vehicle location (AVL) for precise localization and real time vehicle tracking applications, and the vehicular data server (VDS) for enhanced communications and data flow management. This creates a complete, intelligent and fully customisable video surveillance network with advanced localization and communication capabilities.

Eurotech has developed BSP packages for all the Alphabox systems, covering the most commonly used operating systems present on the market. This simplifies the integration of the system – speeding up customer software development, reducing the interval between the initial vision and the final realization, and minimizing time-to-market.

In this way entire fleets of vehicles can be equipped with Eurotech Alphabox devices. These can then all be accessed from a central command centre in real-time – improving security, public safety, coordination and planning.