Seon has unveiled two new mobile surveillance offerings for school buses: a compact, high-resolution digital video recorder (DVR) and a web-based version of the company's video management software.

The Trooper TL-HD is a compact, full-featured DVR offering high-definition recording of four analog and one high-definition camera views at 30 frames per second simultaneously across all five channels.

Features of the TL-HD include a built-in inertia sensor, which triggers an alarm in dangerous driving conditions. The system is also GPS-ready, enabling it to provide the exact vehicle location and route at the time of video recording.

Company officials said that the TL-HD’s dual streaming feature allows for recording a high-quality version of an event while providing a low-resolution stream necessary for viewing live video over a low-bandwidth cellular network. It is also WiFi-ready for automatic video downloading without having to go out to the bus to retrieve video.

“With the high-definition video channel, plus all of the other features, this DVR is a great investment in student safety and a great value,” said Peter Simmons, director of marketing at Seon. “And when combined with vMax Commander, it’s also a powerful solution for automated stop-arm violation detection and enforcement.”

Seon's new vMax Commander Version 5.0 is a web-based version of the company's video management software designed to reduce the time and effort required to locate, download and review video of an on-board incident.

The new vMax Commander version is accessible from anywhere with Internet access. It offers a dashboard view of video system health status, alarms and downloads. It also lets users schedule video to automatically download when the bus returns to the yard, and adjust DVR settings remotely, all using a web browser.

“One of the coolest features is the ability to find video footage by location,” said Carlos Chicas, transportation director at Capistrano Unified School District in San Juan Capistrano, California. “First you can display the vehicle tracks of up to five vehicles that traveled through a particular incident location area on a map, and then click on the tracks to set a start and endpoint for a video download. Finding the right bus and scheduling a download now only takes seconds to do.”

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