FLIR to release new camera family

WILSONVILLE, Ore.—FLIR will publicly launch new cameras under the name Saros at ESX this year, which include a thermal sensor, analytics and an optical sensor.

“Saros is really a product that was created to target that mainstream perimeter protection market directly, by combining a lot of technologies into a single, unified device. Everything is fully integrated, everything works together,” Brian Karas, FLIR's director of vertical market development, told Security Systems News. “Integrators don't have to worry about choosing the right compatible equipment and synchronizing a thermal camera field of view and an optical camera field of view and bolting all of this stuff to the wall of a building.”

The company will be publicly launching Saros products at ESX—to be held June 19-22 in Nashville, Tenn.—and it will start shipping in production quantities near September, Karas said. The initial product is a dome camera, with other form factors to follow.

FLIR has solutions that fit larger applications, like prisons or airports, but those products are not well-suited for the SMB space, Karas noted. “A lot of those products were somewhat too expensive for a car dealership … or a landscape supply [company] that has inventory outside and has some risk of theft but can't afford to spend tons of money on a protection solution.”

He continued, “What led to the creation of Saros is we've combined some of our lower cost, lower resolution thermal sensors with our own in-house analytics algorithms, and then an optical sensor as well. So, we've created this device that allows you to get really good detection from the thermal and analytics, and really good detail from the benefit of having a 1080p or a 4k imager on board.”

Thermal images can present strong contrast, which is beneficial for analytic purposes, but pairing this with an optical imager in the same device is what makes Saros stand out from other offerings from FLIR, according to Karas.

“Something else that I think really differentiates Saros is that it has two thermal sensors; it's basically a thermal multi-image. So, it gives a very wide … 90-degree-wide field of view, but also gives a strong detection range of up to 50 meters. By bringing all of that together it helps reduce design complexity and things like that for integrators,” Karas said.

Research and development behind the Saros offering goes as far as three years back, Karas said. FLIR started conversations with integrators and end users that were using FLIR thermal cameras with other analytics technologies and asked them for input on what they like or don't like, and what they would want to see in a mainstream product. “That's what went into the design of Saros,” said Karas.