I work in the recycling industry, we work with many other scrap yards and facilities, and as metals values climb we're finding meth heads and other druggie type people trying to break in and steal stuff to scrap elsewhere.

We've had 3 attempted break-ins in 4 months which is rather unusual, but I've spoken to another local company about their camera systems to see what they're using. Here is what they've used the last few months as recommended by another yard...

Unintentional ad: Coram AI.

So I do a little homework. They're really new to the market (2022), and funded by several VCs (booo). They're hardware agnostic which is nice, but if you know anything about 3rd party camera systems, they mostly cross-communicate over ONVIF or RTSP. They have locally hosted PCs or servers rebranded as Coram AI servers or you can go fully cloud. No pricing on their site, only "setup a demo" which sounds very "Verkada"ish where you'll endlessly be hounded by salesmen.

Anyone have personal experience with any similar company or system? We upgraded camera hardware a few years ago, they're UHD resolution, record to local storage, external access blocked, and license free. I wish we just went Ubiquiti in the first place, but I was trying to avoid vendor lock in because we were getting that with Verkada (before my start) and just had issues with that whole experience.

I know it's not "ai" in the sense everyone knows current LLMs, but it all feels very fake and is really just relying on frame and pattern detection to analyze stuff. The company who recommended (or the guy on particular) sounded like a stakeholder or higher up who doesn't understand it but praised it for it's speed at "producing information". I don't want a bunch of false readings for the sake of "fast" and I don't like the idea of a 3rd party having access or oversight to our facilities.