Blog

Practical writing on cameras, AI and operations.

Working notes for the people actually running the cameras — construction, industrial, municipal, retail, hospitality.

How-to

How to search CCTV footage by object using AI

Stop scrubbing video. Here's how object search across CCTV footage actually works in 2026 — and how to set it up on cameras you already own.

How-to

How to turn RTSP cameras into a dashboard

A practical walkthrough for taking RTSP cameras and turning them into a single live + searchable dashboard, with no port forwarding or per-camera SaaS.

How-to

How to build a public webcam system

Resorts, cities and tourism boards: here's how to set up a real public webcam system, with embeddable snapshots, YouTube live and a rolling timelapse.

Technical

How construction timelapse actually works

Behind the scenes of automatic construction timelapse — how the daily MP4 gets built, what cameras work, and what owners actually want to see.

Comparison

Best alternatives to Verkada in 2026

A practical look at the strongest Verkada alternatives in 2026, who each one is for, and where each one stops being a good fit.

How-to

How to monitor remote sites without a VPN

Outbound-only architectures, cellular uplinks and edge nodes — how to get live and searchable visibility on remote sites without IT setup.

How-to

How to stream cameras to YouTube automatically

A step-by-step on getting an RTSP camera onto a 24/7 YouTube live stream, including stream keys, encoding settings and what breaks at 3am.

Technical

License-plate recognition cameras, explained

How LPR actually works on cameras, what camera angle and lighting you need, and where it's realistic to deploy in 2026.

Comparison

Frigate vs cloud camera AI: a practical comparison

Frigate is a great open-source camera AI. When does cloud + edge architecture pull ahead, and when does Frigate alone do the job?

How-to

How to set up an RTSP camera without an NVR

You don't actually need an NVR. Here's how to capture, search and timelapse RTSP camera streams with a small edge node instead.

Comparison

AI camera software: a buyer's guide for 2026

A practical buyer's guide for AI camera software in 2026 — pricing models, lock-in patterns, and the questions to ask vendors.

Industry

Choosing a camera system for construction sites

What actually matters when choosing a camera system for construction sites — beyond resolution. Reliability, search, sharing, and total cost.

Industry

Camera system for oil and gas pads

Pad cameras need to survive cellular, weather and remoteness. Here's a practical architecture for oil and gas camera monitoring.

Industry

Camera system for municipal public works

How cities can extract more value from their existing camera infrastructure, without locking into a single vendor or replacing the network.

Industry

Camera system for farms and agriculture

Cameras + sensors + cellular = a real ag operations dashboard. A practical guide for camera systems on farms in 2026.

How-to

How to do license-plate recognition on existing cameras

You usually don't need a special LPR camera. Here's how to do plate recognition on the cameras you already have, and what affects accuracy.

Technical

How to search camera footage by natural language

Type "white truck after 6pm" and get the clip. How natural-language search across camera events actually works in production.

Comparison

Per-camera pricing vs flat-rate camera software

Per-camera SaaS sounds fair until you scale. A breakdown of when each pricing model actually saves you money.

Industry

Public webcams vs marketing video for tourism

Why a real-time public webcam now outperforms polished marketing video for tourism, resorts and downtown destinations.

Technical

Embeddable camera snapshot URLs, explained

A stable image URL that auto-updates is the simplest way to put a live camera on a website. Here's how it works and where it goes.

How-to

How to document construction progress automatically

Daily timelapses, snapshot archives and AI motion logs — automatic ways to document construction progress for owners and lenders.

Technical

Camera and sensor dashboards for operations

Most ops teams already have cameras and sensors in two different windows. A practical guide to merging them into one dashboard.

How-to

How to trigger automations from camera events

Open a gate on a recognized plate. Page on-call after hours. A practical look at no-code automations driven by camera events.

Technical

RTSP vs ONVIF camera protocols, explained

A short, practical explanation of RTSP and ONVIF, what each one solves, and what you actually need to know when buying cameras.

How-to

Camera coverage planning for jobsites

A no-nonsense guide to where to put cameras on a jobsite — gates, materials lay-down, tower cranes and lifecycle of the build.

How-to

After-hours activity detection on cameras

A practical guide to setting up reliable after-hours activity alerts on existing RTSP cameras without false-alarm fatigue.

Industry

Camera system for multi-site retail

A practical architecture for multi-site retail camera analytics — per-store dashboards rolled up to HQ on flat-rate pricing.

Technical

Camera retention policies, explained

How long should you keep camera footage? A practical look at retention policies, regulatory drivers and storage trade-offs.

How-to

How to future-proof your camera deployment

Cameras outlive the software stack. How to deploy cameras now in a way that keeps your options open in 2030.

Comparison

Operations cameras vs security cameras

Same hardware, different software. The difference between an operations camera platform and a traditional security camera system.

Want to do this without building it yourself?

Gobi runs this on the cameras you already own. Setup is typically under 1 hour.

Takes 2–3 minutes · No credit card required · No hardware replacement needed