CCTV monitoring for apartment blocks and property managers

Nobody watches a lobby camera. It records couriers stacking parcels by the pigeonholes, residents collecting them, and occasionally someone collecting one that isn't theirs, and all of it sits unwatched until a resident emails asking where their delivery went. Then someone in the office loses an afternoon scrubbing footage over one parcel. More often, nobody does, and the resident is told there's nothing to be done.

What Svid watches for in a residential building

These are checks from the Store, optional watchers over the cameras already in the building, each priced from your own usage. The set property managers start with:

• Package Watch flags a delivered parcel left unattended in an exposed spot, and someone who doesn't appear to be staff or the recipient walking off with one. The alert comes with a timestamp and a description of the parcel and the person, which is what the police ask for anyway.
• Parking Violation flags a vehicle blocking a fire lane, an exit or a marked bay while it's still there, so the note goes under a wiper instead of into a dispute thread.
• Vehicle Log keeps a written record of vehicle activity on the forecourt: one line per vehicle with its type, colour and markings, what it did and when. Descriptions, deliberately not number plates; there's no ANPR in the product.
• Fire & Smoke Watch flags visible smoke, flames or a fire-like glow on whichever cameras it runs on. Bin stores and parking decks are the usual candidates, and a camera often sees smoke before a point alarm trips.

One manager, many buildings

The Library is a folder tree, so the obvious layout works: a folder per building, subfolders for the lobby, the bin store, the car park. The search bar reads whichever folder you're standing in (subfolders included), so “courier with a trolley in the lobby on Tuesday morning” typed inside one building's folder searches just that building. A check runs across a whole folder in one action, which is how Package Watch ends up covering every lobby you manage in an afternoon.

Alerts from every building land in one filterable tab, on screen, by email or as a JSON webhook into whatever the office already runs. One event fires one alert, and a check re-firing within two minutes is logged as the same event continuing, so a busy lobby doesn't bury the one alert that matters. For the question that arrives weeks later (the scraped car, the disputed visitor), the footage is searchable in plain English rather than an afternoon of scrubbing.

Pricing is worked out from your usage rather than a rate card for your cameras, hours and watch level, with a $9 a month minimum and the whole derivation shown on screen at signup. Every level is motion-gated, and residential cameras are quiet most of the day, so a lobby that sees twenty minutes of movement costs a fraction of a busy one. Each further check is priced in the Store as the extra it would add at your usage.

Getting started

Create an account at app.svid.ai and answer four questions: business type, what to watch for, camera count, hours a day. Onboarding suggests a check bundle and a watch level (both editable) and shows the price with its arithmetic before Stripe takes a card. Then make a folder per building and point Svid at the RTSP feeds from each recorder, or upload exported clips if you'd rather trial it on last month's footage. The ordinary CCTV obligations (signage, a retention policy, a lawful basis) stay yours, as with any recorder.

Can it tell us who took a parcel?

It can show you the moment and describe the person: clothing, what they did, when. It won't identify them, because there's no facial recognition in the product, deliberately. In practice the timestamped clip and the description are what you'd hand to the police anyway.

Does it read number plates?

No, and that's a decision rather than a gap. Vehicle Log records vehicles by description and activity (a dark SUV parked across the loading bay for an hour), which answers the management questions without taking on the privacy exposure that plate matching brings.

How does one person cover several buildings?

A folder per building in the Library. Checks run across whole folders in one action, every building's alerts land in one filterable tab, and search reads the folder you're in, subfolders included. Adding a building means adding a folder and pointing its cameras in.

What does it cost for a small block?

The minimum is $9 a month. Above that it's based on your own usage for your cameras and hours, discounted for motion gating (quiet lobbies cost little) and shown with its full derivation at signup before you pay.

Do we need to change anything in the buildings?

No. Svid reads the RTSP feeds the existing recorders already produce, or uploaded files if you'd rather start with last month's footage. There's no proprietary hardware and nothing new goes on the walls.