Following our recent release of the SV20 Series Air Quality Sensors, we are excited to announce Sensor Zones for all devices and Audio Recording on our SV25. These releases will help our customers better understand, monitor and protect their indoor environments. Both updates will be available starting on December 15, 2022. 

Additionally, starting today, updates to device reboot, alerts and motion sensitivity functionality will be released in Verkada Command, allowing customers to better control and manage the functionality of their Sensors.

Let’s take a look at each of these new updates.

Audio Recording with the Verkada SV25

Building on the expanded Sensor readings available in our SV25 Air Quality Sensor, we are pleased to announce the launch of Audio Recording capabilities for the SV25. Starting December 22nd, every SV25 Sensor will be capable of recording audio - including units that are already deployed. 

Audio Recording is powered by a high-performance, omnidirectional digital microphone that comes standard with every SV25 unit. Additionally, Audio Recording includes privacy and security features that provide organization admins with the tools they need to protect and monitor their organizations while respecting individuals' privacy. 

With the new Audio Recording capability, customers can enable up to 365 days of audio recording on their SV25s and can easily review, save and download audio clips directly from Verkada Command. Audio Recording pairs natively with the other Sensor readings on the SV25 as well as Verkada Cameras and other devices, giving important context into your environment.

With Audio Recording, SV25 customers will be able to protect, monitor and manage their environments across a range of use cases including: 

• Adding audio context and verification to noise and motion alerts. 

• Complying with state regulations that require audio recording in certain school settings.

Privacy Features with Audio Recording

We recognize that organizations and their admins want visibility and control over which devices make use of audio recording. To help address this need, we have implemented the following steps and processes to help ensure that audio recording is deployed in a way that respects individuals' privacy:

1. All audio recording capabilities will be disabled by default on all SV25 units. This means that no SV25 will record audio out of the box. 

2. To enable audio recording, an Organization Admin will need to enable the feature within Command. Only Organization Admins can enable the feature, and in order to enable it, Admins must review and accept a set of Terms and Conditions from within the Privacy and Security page within Command. 

3. Once the Terms and Conditions have been accepted, Admins simply need to enable audio on a per device level - this ensures that Audio Recording is enabled only on an as-needed basis. 

4. Admins can also choose between “live only audio”, meaning no audio is recorded for historical playback, or “live and recorded audio,” meaning up to 365-days of audio is recorded on the device and is available in Verkada Command.

5. There is also a ‘kill switch’ available at the Organization level. This control, available on the Admin page, allows Organization Admins to disable audio recording on all Sensors with the flip of a switch. The control also deletes any audio already recorded on any SV25 device.

Customers should also note that audio recordings are stored on the device and can be downloaded from the device through Command when needed for investigations.

Verkada’s Air Quality Sensors allow customers to enhance physical security and environmental understanding while also respecting individuals' privacy, and we look forward to rolling this update out to existing and new customer organizations across their security and safety use cases. Customers interested in learning more about how to deploy Audio Zones can view this technical support article.

New Sensors Homepage

Another exciting update comes to the Sensors homepage. Today, our customers use the Sensors homepage for navigation or to get a quick glimpse of their current environment. As our customer base expands and our product portfolio grows with the new SV20 Series, we wanted to make it even easier for customers to understand, at a glance, what Sensors the customer should be looking at or what alerts are active, if any. 

To address this need, we’ve decided to redesign the user experience of our Sensors homepage. With this design, we made it easy for customers to identify Sensors with active alerts, and have reorganized and prioritized the Sensor readings our customers care about most by making them easier to digest and act on.

Introducing Sensor Zones

With the large-scale adoption of Verkada Air Quality Sensors, we’re seeing organizations frequently deploy more than one Sensor to sufficiently monitor large bathrooms and other large areas. We’ve also seen this request with our manufacturing customers, who often have multiple Sensors covering a specified zone in a warehouse or manufacturing facility. With this kind of coverage, some Sensors may overlap and occasionally generate multiple alerts for the same event. To provide better response time and allow customers to quickly identify these areas, Verkada is proud to announce Sensor Zones.

Sensor Zones allow customers to group Sensors into a Zone and receive one unified alert if any of the Sensors in the Zone generate an alert. For example, if a bathroom has four Sensors spread across a bathroom, alerts will be generated based on each Zone, not each Sensor. When configured, Sensor Zones will send a single “Zone Alert” to the administrator specifying more detailed information on the alert than a single Sensor alert can manage. This enhanced notification system will prevent notification overload and will give customers an easier way to respond to events.

Enabling Sensor Zones

Like the rest of Verkada’s Sensor line up, Sensor Zones are easy to set up and configure in a specific environment. To configure these Zones, an administrator simply needs to select the Sensors they want to group together. Once selected, users are given the option to bulk edit the Sensor alert configurations to adjust alert thresholds. Finally, the customers can subscribe to the newly created Sensor Zone to add a device-based alert.

The benefit of this new functionality is that customers can set up alert thresholds on a group of sensors, not just on a per-device basis. For example, one side of the bathroom may be more sensitive to vape whereas the other side may be less sensitive. With the new Sensor Zone feature, customers can adjust the alert thresholds separately to fine tune their alerts per device while still receiving alerts as a group.

We’ve also allowed customers the ability to subscribe to both zone alerts and device level alerts. This allows customers the granularity to subscribe to a specific Sensor on top of a zone alert if they so desire. Customers who would like to learn more about setting up Sensor Zones can read more in this technical support article.

Motion & Reboot Device Updates

As we continue to expand our product portfolio, we’ve received a lot of feedback from customers asking for even more control over their Sensors. To address this need, we’re happy to announce that customers can now adjust the motion sensitivity of their SV11 or SV20 Series Sensors Motion Sensor, as well as reboot their Sensors directly from Command. These two highly requested features are available starting today.

Introducing Bulk Notification Configuration

One of the things customers love about Verkada is how simple it is to set up and manage our Sensors within Verkada Command. From installation and configuration to day-to-day use and management, Verkada is constantly working to further simplify and improve the administrative experience. 

As part of the December software release, Verkada is pleased to roll out another simplification to the Sensor admin experience: bulk notification configuration capabilities for all Air Quality Sensors (SV11 and SV20 Series Sensors). 

Previously, administrators had to set up events individually per Sensor. However, we’re increasingly seeing customers who order and install hundreds of Sensors at a time, where manually subscribing to alerts on each Sensor can become time consuming and error prone. Today, customers will be able to apply notification settings for multiple Sensor readings for as many Sensor devices as needed, with a single click. 

With this update, customers can bulk subscribe to alert notifications without having to go to each Sensor and apply these settings individually, thereby improving configuration quality and freeing up valuable time. This can all be achieved through the “Devices” page in Verkada Command. To learn how to set up bulk notifications, please see this technical support article.

Features Available in December 

We are excited to announce this exciting new lineup of features.To learn more about any of the features here ahead of the December 15, 2022 launch, or to learn more about Verkada’s Sensor lineup, please contact [email protected]. To see how Verkada Sensors fit into the rest of Verkada’s cloud-based air quality system, please visit verkada.com/air-quality.