Where it earns its keep
- Warehouses, workshops and high-ceiling spaces where smoke takes minutes to reach a ceiling detector but is visible on camera in seconds.
- Car parks, EV charging bays and e-bike rooms where a lithium battery fire grows faster than the detection designed for a smouldering bin.
- Battery and solar storage rooms, switch rooms and plant rooms that are rarely visited and already covered by a camera.
- Outdoor yards, loading docks and bin areas where there is no ceiling to put a detector on.
How it works
- Frames from your cameras. The appliance pulls a frame about once a second from each camera it watches, from UniFi Protect today or over RTSP/ONVIF.
- Every frame is checked for flame and smoke by a detection model running on the appliance's own processor. Nothing leaves the site.
- Detections are confirmed, not just spotted. An alert is raised only after repeated detections within a short window on the same camera, and a cooldown stops one incident becoming a flood of messages.
- The alert carries the picture. Staff phones get a push notification with the annotated frame and the camera name, so the first decision is made from the image, not from a corridor.
Where it fits with the fire alarm
A supplement, by design
Point and aspirating smoke detectors and the fire indicator panel remain the certified detection and alarm system under AS 1670.1. Video detection is not a substitute for any of them and we will not sell it as one. What it adds is time and location: a visible flame or smoke plume on a camera is often minutes ahead of a ceiling detector in a tall or open space, and the alert says which camera saw it. Where a site wants the event on a building management or security platform as well as on phones, the appliance can raise a dry contact or send a webhook, the same outputs used by Southerly Vision and the Enterprise Gateway.
Compared with other ways of doing it
Dedicated fire detection cameras
Purpose-built units with on-board flame and smoke analytics are excellent, and expensive per camera. Our approach uses the cameras already on the walls, so the cost scales with the appliance, not the camera count.
Thermal cameras
Thermal imaging sees heat before flame and works in total darkness, at a higher price per view. For a few critical hotspots a thermal camera is the right tool; for broad early warning across an existing camera estate, video analytics covers more ground.
Aspirating smoke detection
Sampling-pipe systems are the gold standard for very early detection indoors and are often required by the fire engineer. Video detection complements them outdoors, in open structures and in spaces where pipework is impractical.
Cameras and site requirements
- Any camera that can deliver a snapshot or stream to the appliance: UniFi Protect natively, Hikvision, Hanwha and Axis via RTSP or ONVIF.
- A clear view of the area at risk, with enough light at night for the camera to produce a usable image. Infrared illumination is fine.
- One on-premises appliance per site, sized to the number of cameras watched. A small site runs on a fanless box; nothing goes to a cloud service.
- A tuning period of a few weeks in dry-run, so thresholds are set against the site's real lighting, reflections and traffic before alerts go live.
What's true today — honestly
- Detector running on-premises against UniFi Protect cameras, with confirmation window, cooldown, annotated event images and a review page. Pilot
- Push alerts to staff phones, dry contact and webhook outputs, RTSP/ONVIF camera input, per-camera zones and schedules. In development
- Field validation against real fires at customer sites. Until that is done this is an early-warning aid in evaluation, and we say so on every quote. In development
Questions we get asked
Is there a camera that can detect fire?
Yes, in two ways. Purpose-built fire detection cameras such as Bosch AVIOTEC or thermal cameras from FLIR and Mobotix detect flame, smoke or heat on their own hardware. Southerly Flame & Smoke Detection takes the other route: software on an on-premises appliance analyses the video from the security cameras a site already has, so no new cameras are needed for the areas they already cover.
Can CCTV detect smoke?
A normal CCTV camera cannot, but analytics running on its video can. Smoke shows up as a slow-moving, semi-transparent plume that changes the texture of the scene; flame as a flickering bright region with a characteristic colour. Our detector looks for both in every frame and only raises an alert once it sees them repeatedly over several seconds, which is what keeps car headlights, reflections and warm lighting from triggering it.
Does it replace smoke detectors or the fire alarm?
No. It is an early-warning supplement. Point and aspirating smoke detectors and the fire indicator panel remain the certified detection and alarm system under AS 1670.1. Video detection adds minutes of warning in spaces where smoke takes a long time to reach the ceiling, and it tells you where the fire is.
Which security cameras have fire detection capabilities?
Any camera that can deliver a snapshot or stream to the appliance: UniFi Protect cameras today, with Hikvision, Hanwha and Axis via RTSP or ONVIF. The detection happens on the appliance, so camera brand and age matter less than a clear view of the area and reasonable low-light performance.
What about false alarms?
Every site is tuned during a dry-run period before alerts are switched on. Detections are confirmed only when they repeat within a short window, there is a cooldown after each alert, and the operator gets an annotated image with each one so a nuisance alert can be judged in seconds and the threshold adjusted.
Can it watch battery storage, EV chargers and e-bike rooms?
Those are exactly the spaces where early warning matters: a lithium battery fire grows fast and produces a lot of smoke before it reaches a ceiling detector. A camera covering the bay or room gives the earliest visual indication, and the alert carries the image so the person responding knows what they are walking into.
Specifications
| Input | UniFi Protect snapshots today; RTSP / ONVIF cameras in development |
|---|---|
| Detection | On-appliance flame and smoke model, ~1 frame per second per camera, CPU only |
| Confirmation | Repeated detections within a short window per camera; cooldown after each alert; thresholds tuned per site |
| Alerts | Push to staff phones with annotated image; dry contact and webhook in development |
| Where it runs | On-premises appliance; no cloud, no footage leaves the site |
| Relationship to fire alarm | Supplement to AS 1670.1 detection and the fire indicator panel; not a certified fire alarm |
| Status | In development — pilot on live cameras |