We make the whole camera system because we couldn't find anything on the market that allowed us to do the AI we wanted. The value for the customer is all in the AI tracking and security detection as well as the ability to just login live and see what's happening on site. So, yes, our core product is our software, but we had to make the hardware to capture market share.
Your website shows OEM cameras and an off the shelf plastic enclosure, along with basic LED floodlights. What hardware are you making? Not saying your product isn't cool, just not clear what hardware you are "making" vs. assembling.
If a software startup assembles a bunch of open source hardware together and packages it as a product, would you say they don't "make" software?
No, I'd say they are more of a software company than a hardware company though. All software runs on some kind of hardware, but these days it is pretty rare for that hardware to be very unique or custom.
I was mostly just curious what custom hardware you had, since that was the topic at hand. My curiosity comes from working in the surveillance AI space for the last ~15 years, and having done a number of custom (as in we made the whole thing) cameras with AI, but now there is a trend more towards using a lightly OEM'd camera with custom firmware in many cases.
Considering the availability of cameras with advanced SoCs capable of doing edge inference, I wanted to ask more about your hardware and your design choices in this market, but I think I'll just bow out. Good luck with your startup!
This is a bit like saying "I made you a birthday cake", when what you did is bought a cake and bought some candles, and stuck the candles in the cake. It's of course semantics, but I imagine people would look at you funny if you said you "made" them a cake when you clearly bought them one.
