Digital Video In A Cigarette Pack
Tactical Surveillance, based in Chippewa Falls, Wis., has developed a new surveillance device called Tardis that incorporates several features into a single tool. Tardis functions as a digital video recorder as well as a wireless, two-channel FM audio/video receiver.
Bureau of Technical Services CEO and private investigator James Greenwold says he conceived of Tardis to decrease the amount of gear needed by law enforcement, such as a MiniDV recorder. The device also eliminates the need to upload tape to a computer hard drive to edit or zoom.
“Tardis records everything on a hard drive in the first place,” he says; the user simply takes the drive out of Tardis and places it into the PCMCIA slot on a notebook computer. The cigarette pack-sized Tardis allows 110 minutes of recording time at high resolution, and provides longer recording times at lower resolutions.
Tardis is currently offered in three versions: Radio frequency (RF); RF with a docking port; and Tardis SPI, which permits on-the-body recording with wired components (the latter is available only through Security Products International in Pottstown, Penn.)
These versions can operate as a regular camcorder, event recorder, delayed start recorder, and a time lapse model based on user settings, and also come with their own cases resembling Marlboro cigarette packs.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Law Enforcement Technology (10/03) Vol. 30, No. 10, P. 150; Kanable, Rebecca.