The NVR13 is a lightweight video recorder suitable for applications with low footprint in terms of size, computation, power, and cost. Examples of such applications includes on-board recorders for the automotive industry (e.g. railways, light trains, metro, buses). The product is based on a standard Debian Linux OS, customized to the installation on solid state media such as SD/CF cards, or SSD drives. It has been succesfully ported to a variety of devices, such as Intel Atom, Celeron, Pentium M and similar families of x86-based devices. On a reference platform based on a low-end Intel Atom 600Mhz Cpu, the system easily captures 12 H264 video streams at 6fps each.
The video recording software is able to acquire and store video coming from a variety of sources, such as IPcameras and video servers provided by all major vendors, video capture and compression boards.
Other key features includes:
- Practical and easy to use user web interface for system settings, monitoring, and video download
- Layered filesystem for in-memory operations (avoid problems to due abrupt loss of power)
- Remote API for all the major functionalities (record, download, diagnostic, etc.) based on web services and/or xml-rpc for easy integration with an existing VMS software
- Support for a variety of video compression schemes and transmission protocols, such as H264 or Mpeg4 over RTSP/RTP, MJPEG over HTTP, analog video inputs, frame grabbers
- Support for video analytics through a plugin system (e.g, for utomatic camera tampering and fault detection)
- Audio recording (AAC, MP3) from Axis audio encoders
- Tight integration with Axis products (cameras, video and audio servers)
- Any form of customization possible (appearance/logo personalization, diagnostic, interfaces with other subsystems, etc.)
The software has been running in production since 5+ years in mutiple applications. The following table summarize the various configuration and helps understand the capabilities of the system:
| Application | Years of operation | System integrator | End customer | Hardware | Cameras | Audio/video formats |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Milan tramway (on-board recorder for line 2) | 6 | Knorr-Bremse | Ansaldo Breda | Advantech DVS 350 | 7, analog | MPEG4 Video (sw compression) |
| Dubai metro (on-board recorder for red and green lines) | 4 | Thales | Dubai RTA | Kontron Interparlo server | 12 SMS-Lan cameras | MPEG4 Video |
| Kaisery tramway (on-board recorder for trams) | 3 | ISE srl | Ansaldo Breda | Custom rack | 8 analog camera acquired through Axis video encoders | MPEG4 Video |
| Milan tramway (on-board recorder for line 3) | 4 | Knorr-Bremse | Ansaldo Breda | Diamond systems Pluto SBC+AMP MPEG400WA | 7, analog | MPEG4 Video (hw compression) |
| SBB (on board recorder for SZ4/S10 trains) | In deployment | FELA AG | SBB | MEN F19P SBC | 25 Axis 209MFD or M3114 | MJPEG, H264 video |
| Vanaheim EU research project | 1 | Thales | Thales | x86 server | Approx 50 between Axis H264 cameras, Funkwerk MPEG4 video encoders, Axis AAC audio encoders | H264, MPEG4, AAC |
Screenshots of the web user interface
 NVR system monitor |
 Download files |