Data911 introduces BX1 body-worn camera that integrates into company’s Verus video solution

Data911 this week unveiled its BX1 body-worn camera that leverages Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technologies to connect to a vehicle, as well as a coordinated two-way triggering mechanism that lets the body-worn camera begin recording at the same time as the user’s in-car camera.

Data911 CEO Abigail Baker said the philosophy behind the capabilities of the BX1 body-worn camera is to help an officer capture as much video evidence as possible—from as many angles as possible—without requiring the officer to take several separate actions that may not be practical, because of proximity or pressure factors. With the Data911 solution, an officer activating the body-worn camera also turns on the in-car vehicle—the reverse is also true, with in-car video activation turning on the BX1—without additional work by the officer, she said.

“What’s unique about our system is that, if you trigger the light bar or other trigger, it will trigger the in-car video, which in turn triggers the body-worn camera to turn on,” Baker said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “We’ve developed our products with the officers’ safety and focus on their job in mind.”

This two-way camera triggering capability is especially helpful when an officer is in a facility and sees a potential suspect run to leave the area, Baker said.

“The officer can turn on his body-worn camera, and that will turn on the in-car video,” Baker said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “So, if someone is running out of a store [that the officer is in], they can capture that . The idea is to get as much video capture as possible.

“We like to look at things from the standpoint of getting as much information for that court case as possible.”

Data911’s new BX1 body-worn camera also provides a microphone that can be used in conjunction with the in-car video camera. Video from both the body-worn and in-car cameras can be uploaded wirelessly while the vehicle is parked in a designated hot-spot area, according to Michael Baumann, Data911’s digital video product manager.

While some body-worn-camera vendors require customers to subscribe to their cloud offerings, Data911 also is designed to support storage on servers owned and maintained by the public-safety agency, Baumann said.

“We allow them to see [the video] in the car,” Baumann said during an interview with IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “When they get back, they can upload that directly to their own video server—we offer that as an option, where they can see it and manage their own video data. They don’t have to wait for the cloud, and they’re not having to pay storage and user fees to view their own video.

“We think cloud storage is nice, and we do offer it for some of our body-camera clients, but we certainly encourage people to have their own server for storage—it’s much, much more cost effective, by a factor of 10 or more.”