One of the most important parts of the conference is the training sessions. We held one of our day-long exacqVision technical reseller training sessions on Tuesday, where we had a pre-registered full house as well as some dealers who added the course on-site.

Wednesday morning was the Vendor Awards Banquet, the result of PSA member surveys ranking vendors on overall products, support, pricing, and service to the membership. We were very honored to receive the "Superstar Vendor Achievement Award" this year, the highest award PSA offers. Our sincere appreciation goes out to the entire PSA member base for this award.

After the awards breakfast was the trade show. This was the first year at the Rosemont Convention Center, and the upgraded facilities were a great change of pace. We had a packed booth the entire show, and the increased space and wider aisles were most welcome. We showed our latest exacqVision Version 4.1 features, as well as a sneak peek of the upcoming Version 4.2 features, including Sanyo IP camera support and ONVIF support, using Bosch and other ONVIF-compatible cameras. We also were using IP cameras from Axis, Vivotek, IQeye, Panasonic, ACTi, Sony, and Arecont Vision, who was also right across the aisle from us.

Additionally, we also featured our iPhone & iPad surveillance app, which allows full connection to all exacqVision servers, live viewing with multiple camera layouts, and search and playback of recorded video.

Sam Pfeifle of Security Systems News gave his take on the show in this blog post. Wednesday night was the popular PSA-TEC Jam Session, and Sam was live-streaming the band over his iPhone via ustream.com. He posted archival video of that event here.

Our thanks once again to the entire PSA organization for the great job they did with this years’ well-run event. Below are some pictures and a video from the show floor. Click on each for a larger image.

The ACTi server is running on our new exacqVision EL embedded Linux Hybrid NVR appliance.  There are eleven ACTi IP cameras connected, including their new H.264 models. Since the exacqVision EL is a hybrid server, we additionally have 16 analog cameras connected, for a total of 27 video sources on this demo server. As with all of our demo servers, audio channels, POS inputs, and user-activated triggers are also connected.

If you currently have a login to our exacqVision demo serves and would like to add the ACTi server, just e-mail us at info@exacq.com and we’ll add your login to that server.

Zone was showing their full line-up of products, including ICx thermal imaging, intelligent sensors and radar surveillance systems; ioimage video analytic cameras; and ACTi IP video cameras. But certainly a highlight of their booth was the exacqVision IP video surveillance systems combined with the new Arecont Vision h.264 megapixel IP cameras.  These new h.264 compression-based megapixel cameras (Arecont models AV5105, AV3105, AV2105 and AV1305) provide a tremendous benefit in reducing both storage space and network traffic.  Since these cameras have become available, we’re seeing upwards of 10x average file size reduction with the h.264 models vs. the corresponding MJPEG models.

Bill Nolan, Managing Director of Zone, reported that the new cameras with the exacqVision software were a hit: “The customers GOT it and so it made megapixel much more interesting.”  One visitor to the booth said this combination was “the first real megapixel management system I’ve seen.”  The fact that the exacqVision software runs natively on Windows, Linux and Macintosh, as well as browsers and mobile devices, was also a big draw.  Bill summed up the exacqVision response at the show by saying “it was instantly understandable by the trade and will migrate IP systems to the forefront of the buyers mind by its great management of megapixel cameras.”

Our congratulations to the crew at Zone for yet another successful show.  Zone will exhibiting the exacqVision products at two additional trade shows this month, the JAA Australian Jewellery Fair 08 in Sydney next week, and the Security in Government 2008 show in Canberra in two weeks.  Zone can be reached as follows:

Web: www.zoneaps.com.au
Phone: +61-2-9894-7025
E-mail: sales@zoneaps.com

Version 2.10 can be downloaded here.  Key Features in the Version 2.10 Release:

• ACTi Megapixel – Support added for the new line of megapixel IP cameras from ACTi
• Vivotek – new Vivotek IP camera models supported
• Axis & ACTi – New resolution modes supported
• New Media Formats – DVD+R and DVD+RW formats now supported for exporting video
• New System Configurations – New 4U chassis, up to 8 TB storage

Here are some of the new features in detail:

ACTi Megapixel Support
ACTi has recently launched a new line of megapixel IP cameras.  We support this entire new line, which includes the following models:

ACM-5601
ACM-5611
ACM-3401
ACM-3411
ACM-4200

Vivotek New IP Camera Support
We also have added support for the latest models in the Vivotek IP camera line, which includes these models:

IP7151
IP7152
IZ7151

Axis & ACTi – New Resolutions Supported
exacqVision now supports 1280×1024 and 1280×720 resolutions on all Axis and ACTi megapixel cameras, in addition to all of the other previously-supported resolution modes. 

Both the Axis and ACTi megapixel cameras produce faster frame rates when running in the 1280×720 mode vs. higher-resolution modes.

New Media Formats
Support has been added for the DVD+R and DVD+RW media formats for exported video.  exacqVision also supports DVD-R, DVD-RW, CD-R and CD-RW formats.

New System Configurations
We have expanded the chassis offerings for our exacqVision NVR servers and Hybrid Servers.  A new, matching 4U-height chassis configuration is now available, in addition to the 2U chassis and the space-saving desktop chassis.  The new 4U chassis allows for increased storage options up to 8 TB on storage, as well as RAID-5 storage options.  The spec sheet for this new offering is here, or you can click below.

Recent Releases
We have continued to make rapid progress with exacqVision, with incremental releases hitting about every 2 months.  Here are some highlights of the most recent releases:

exacqVision Version 2.9 release (January 7, 2008)
exacqVision Version 2.8 release (October 31, 2007)
exacqVision Version 2.7 release (August 8, 2007)
exacqVision Version 2.6 release (June 19, 2007)
exacqVision Version 2.5 release (May 7, 2007)
exacqVision Version 2.4 release (March 27, 2007)

As always, the latest versions of exacqVision client and server software can easily and quickly be copied over existing versions while retaining all user settings.  The latest version can always be downloaded from our Downloads page, or you can click on ‘Check for Updates‘ within the ‘About‘ box in the exacqVision software.

The next release, Version 3.0, will coincide with the ISC West show in Las Vegas, April 2-4, and will have some major feature additions.

We’ve recently added support for the latest ACM-series, we have audio support for some of the product line and we’ll have full audio support for ACTi cameras in our upcoming Version 2.5 exacqVision release next month.

Our  lineup of ACTi IP camera support in exacqVision is here: