Intelligent Video Recorder

The IVR is a purpose-built on-premise appliance that does everything a traditional NVR/DVR does — record video from your IP cameras, encrypt it, store it locally — and adds the AI engine and cloud connectivity that NVRs lack. Traditional recorders are dumb storage: they capture footage and you go review it manually after something happens. The IVR runs deep-learning models on every frame as it's recorded, indexes footage by detected objects (people, vehicles, license plates, motion events), enables instant search, and connects to spot.ai's cloud dashboard for remote viewing. Same form factor; vastly more capability.

Each IVR appliance supports up to 32 cameras. For deployments larger than that — multi-floor offices, warehouses, retail chains, schools with many buildings — you scale by adding more IVR appliances. Each one handles its local cameras independently, but they all report to the same central spot.ai cloud dashboard. So a 96-camera deployment across three floors might use three IVRs (one per floor), and the user experience in the dashboard is identical to a single-IVR site.

Three reasons. First, latency: real-time detections (PPE violations, intrusions, queue alerts) need to fire within seconds, which means processing happens where the cameras are, not after a round-trip to the cloud. Second, bandwidth: streaming continuous high-resolution video from every camera to a cloud GPU farm 24/7 would saturate most office internet connections. Third, privacy and reliability: video stays on your premises by default, you control what does and doesn't go to the cloud, and the system keeps working even if the internet drops.

Local storage typically holds 30 to 120 days of continuous footage, depending on the IVR model, camera count, resolution, and frame rate. Higher-resolution cameras and more cameras consume storage faster; lower-resolution cameras and motion-only recording extend retention. We size the right IVR storage tier during the assessment based on your camera mix and how far back you want to be able to search. For longer-term archival, video clips can be selectively uploaded to the cloud.

Recording keeps running. The IVR records and stores video locally regardless of internet status — that's a deliberate part of the architecture. AI analytics keep processing on the device, alerts queue up locally, and when internet comes back, everything syncs. You can also still review footage on-site through a direct connection to the IVR. The cloud is for remote access and unified multi-site management, not for the recording itself.