Denver Business Journal
OCTOBER 14-20, 2005
ENTREPRENEUR
Denver company puts auto thieves on candid camera
BY AMY BRYER
Perhaps the word “smile” should be imprinted on the warning label of OBS Inc.'s new car security system.
After all, with as many as four dime-sized cameras and two microphones — all hidden — constantly recording what's going on inside and outside the vehicle, would be thieves will want to look their best.
Denver-based OBS' new InSight car security video and audio surveillance system records break-ins and vandalism — and few other car-alarm systems can rival it, according to Popular Mechanics magazine.
“They have taken technology you can buy off the shelf and packaged it in a way that gives somebody who owns a vehicle stupendous control of what goes on,” said Mike Allen, the magazine's senior editor.
The company, after several years of testing, is rolling out its consumer-ready version of InSight. With the help of 45 contract workers — many of them engineers — OBS began developing the patent-pending system in 2001, and has sold 20 units since 2003. But now the big push begins.
When an event occurs, such as someone breaking the glass or keying the door, the incident is recorded on a memory card that's hidden under the dash or in the glove box. The removable card is just like a memory disk used in digital cameras, and most computers can read it.
Unlike conventional car alarms that just blast the horn and annoy nearby people, InSight provides owners photos of the crook and the incident. The system also records accidents on the road and can tell authorities what happened in the moments leading up to the crash.
OBS CEO Brian Singer, 31, came up with the idea in his college M.B.A. program when his car was broken into and his stereo equipment stolen.
“It was a painful experience,” Singer said. “I kept wondering: ‘Was it someone from campus? Was it someone I knew?'”
The InSight system gives Singer the peace of mind of being able to answer the questions, “what happened?” and “by whom?”
The system costs about $1,000 for one camera and about $1,500 for all four cameras. They're aimed out the front and back windows and at the driver-side and passenger-side front seat. The system is always recording 10 photos a second, and can pick out license-plate numbers in the case of a hit and run, for instance.
It takes an incident that triggers the system to save the photos to memory. Triggers are similar to those that set off traditional car alarms, such as broken glass, or like in more sophisticated systems, when someone approaches the car.
There's also a button inside the car the driver can push to record an incident. Singer uses it when he's cut off in traffic or another driver makes a dangerous maneuver. The memory card saves two minutes before and after an incident and can save hundreds of events on one card.
Even if the card is tampered with or stolen, there's a second one hidden in the main computer behind the dash as a backup.
InSight grabbed the attention of the Popular Mechanics staff at the SEMA (Specialty Equipment Market Association) auto parts show last year in Las Vegas and received the Editor's Choice award.
Allen said the system is great for businesses that own a fleet of vehicles and for anyone who wants to re-create what happened before and after an accident.
InSight is working with a mobile phone company to enable the system to send photos from the car to the owner's cell phone and also onto the Internet so the owner can watch his car in the parking lot while he sits at his desk.
“Once this can be uplinked to the Internet, there becomes tremendous possibilities,” Allen said.
InSight also can be connected to satellite tracking systems such as OnStar.
Parents can use it to keep track of their teenage drivers by recording what goes on inside and outside the vehicle.
Allen said he's seen only a few systems with single cameras attached to the dashboard recording seconds of information that's saved on recorders in the trunk. But he said OBS is the first company that's developed this type of commercial use with a 360-degree view of the car.
OBS investor Drew Warot, who met Singer in a college M.B.A. program and is a commercial real estate developer, owns 5 percent of the company.
Warot was at the SEMA show and said the company received a lot of interest from RV dealers, car dealers and the auto racing industry. He sees consumers ranging from car owners who want to protect expensive stereo equipment to commercial package shippers.
Basic “black box”-type recorders have been available for years that record a few seconds of information leading up to a crash, but that collects only electronic impulses in the car like speed and braking — not video and audio.
Amy Bryer 303-837-3527
abryer@bizjournals.com