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Engineering notes from the awkward layer
Standards move, and most of the cost lands on the people who did not see it coming. Written for engineers who have to make the decision, not for procurement.
Martyn's Law and Your CCTV: What Enhanced-Tier Premises Actually Have to Evidence
The Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 does not mention CCTV once, and that is exactly why so many venues will get it wrong. Here is what the enhanced-tier duty really asks of a camera estate, what the SIA will want to see on paper, and how to tell whether the system you already own can carry its share of the evidence.
Profile S to Profile T: The Engineering Migration Guide for Camera Manufacturers
ONVIF stops accepting Profile S declarations on 31 March 2027. For a manufacturer with a Profile S only product line that is not a paperwork problem, it is a firmware project with a fixed end date. This guide sets out what Profile T actually requires, where the engineering effort sits, how to size it, and how to sequence it against the deadline.
How Much Storage Do 40 Cameras Need? A Worked Answer, With Sources
The same forty cameras, the same codec, the same thirty days, sized two defensible ways, come out at 12.7 TB and 36.9 TB. That 2.9x spread is the real answer — and three rules of thumb the industry repeats are measurably wrong.
What a VMS Really Costs: Per-Camera Licensing Over Five Years
Most video management software is priced per camera, per year. That single decision, compounded over a five-year contract, usually costs more than the cameras did — and it quietly moves the customer relationship from the installer to the software vendor.
Build vs Buy: What It Really Takes to Build a Cloud CCTV and AI-Video Platform
A cloud video platform looks like a web project and isn't. Where the real engineering lives, what to build versus buy at each layer, and how to reach a commercial MVP without over-building the first release.
Automating EV Battery Disassembly: The Missing Link in the UK's Battery Circular Economy
EV battery packs are still taken apart by hand. Disassembly — dangerous, high-mix and unautomated — is becoming the bottleneck of the UK's battery circular economy, and perception-driven robotics is what unblocks it.
How EU Cleantech Companies Can Enter the UK Market with Government Co-Funding: A Guide to DRIVE35 Partnership Structures
The UK's £2.5bn DRIVE35 programme co-funds up to 50% of industrialising zero-emission vehicle technology in the UK — and EU and Swiss companies can take part without setting up a UK entity. The partnership structures, explained.
Embedded Systems in Harsh Environments: What Actually Fails
Roadside, trackside and factory-floor electronics rarely fail the way the datasheet suggests. The failures come from condensation, power quality and thermal cycling — and they arrive eighteen months after deployment.
Case Study: ONVIF Edge Gateway with Edge AI for UK National Infrastructure
An embedded CCTV gateway with edge AI for a UK national infrastructure environment: embedded Linux and OpenWrt, ONVIF device integration, RTSP/RTP streaming, computer-vision processing at the edge, Source Specific Multicast and system-level verification.
The Cyber Resilience Act Nobody Is Planning For
Everyone is budgeting for December 2027. The obligation that bites first arrives on 11 September 2026 — and it applies to products you shipped years ago.
Zenoh vs DDS for ROS 2: Choosing the Middleware
For more than a decade, building on ROS 2 meant building on DDS. That is no longer true, and the choice now sitting in front of robotics and industrial teams is harder than a simple middleware swap.
Your Machines Speak OPC UA. Is Anyone Listening?
You have added OPC UA to your device. The datasheet says so. And your customer's integrator is still emailing to ask what DB12_INT3 means. That gap is where most integrations stall, and it is rarely the protocol's fault.
ONVIF Profile V: What the New Cloud Video Standard Means
ONVIF has released the draft of Profile V, a standard designed to bring cloud video surveillance out of proprietary silos. What it does, why it matters for anyone specifying cameras in the next two years, and how to prepare.
ONVIF Profile S Deprecation 2027: What It Means for Your Estate
The industry’s most widely deployed camera-interoperability standard has a shutdown date. Most estate owners do not yet know their exposure, and the real risk arrives earlier and more quietly than the headline deadline suggests.
Yaskawa Cockpit — Industrial IoT & Device-to-Cloud Engineering
Prior engineering experience of DevSpark's lead engineer: contributing to Yaskawa Cockpit, an Industrial IoT platform connecting robots, controllers and production systems with Microsoft Azure and AWS cloud services.
Embedded Linux vs RTOS: Choosing the Right Platform
Get this decision wrong and you tend to find out about eighteen months later, usually at certification or the first time a customer asks for a security patch. How to make it defensible before you commit to silicon.
The Future of Embedded Systems in Industrial Automation
Predictions about embedded systems tend to be lists of technologies. The more useful exercise is working out which constraints are actually changing, because those are what force design decisions.
Why Edge AI is Transforming Industrial Engineering
"Edge AI" covers a lot of ground, much of it marketing. The useful engineering question is narrower. Where should inference run, and why there rather than somewhere else?
We Are Now Taking On ONVIF Conformance Work
A short note on a practice we have opened formally: conformance engineering, third-party device validation and protocol-level diagnosis, aimed at the manufacturers and platforms carrying a dated Profile S problem.
Azure DevOps vs AWS DevOps: What Each Does, and How to Do It in the Other
Azure DevOps is one integrated suite; AWS 'DevOps' is a toolbox of separate services — and two of its pieces are now frozen to new users. A practical, capability-by-capability comparison, with how to do the same job in each.
Is OpenWrt Still a Reliable Base for a Commercial Product?
OpenWrt has spent twenty years as the default answer for anything that routes packets on embedded Linux. The engineering arguments for it are as strong as they have ever been. The commercial arguments are the ones that have changed.
AWS, Azure or Google Cloud? The Differences That Actually Bite
Most cloud comparisons are feature grids nobody reads. The decisions that hurt later are about identity, egress, and whether the vendor will still be running the service in five years.
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