Why Real-Time Surveillance Needs AI at the Edge – Meet Flare

Surveillance has become a cornerstone of modern security, but the expectations placed on these systems are growing faster than the technology that supports them can keep pace. Whether it’s a smart city monitoring traffic patterns or a corporate campus keeping an eye on multiple entry points, the demand for real-time response is critical.

The challenge? Traditional surveillance systems rely heavily on cloud infrastructure to process video feeds, analyze events, and generate alerts. While this approach has been effective for years, it struggles to keep pace with the demand for instant responses. Latency, data overload, and lack of contextual awareness can result in missed threats or delayed actions.In environments where every second counts, these weaknesses can’t be ignored.

Introducing Flare: A New Paradigm in Experience Analytics

Enter Flare—a smart device designed to make real-time surveillance smarter, faster, and more proactive. Unlike traditional monitoring tools, Flare doesn’t just passively collect data. It actively emulates end-user behavior and experiences, then uses that insight to deliver immediate, actionable feedback.

Think of Flare as a digital field agent. It can simulate how users interact with networks, test application performance, and monitor the performance of video feeds and cloud platforms—all in real-time. This makes it a powerful tool for spotting performance issues, detecting network failures, and optimizing surveillance systems before problems affect security.

What truly sets Flare apart is its ability to provide these insights across different layers of infrastructure, from local devices to cloud networks. Whether you’re running physical cameras, virtual environments, or mobile surveillance apps, Flare helps ensure they all work smoothly and securely.

How Flare Powers Edge Intelligence in Surveillance

Flare takes edge intelligence to a new level by not just monitoring systems, but by actively participating in them. It does this through a process called end-user emulation—essentially mimicking how a real person would use a device or network. This enables Flare to understand performance in a practical, human-centered manner.

For example, if a security camera is streaming footage to a cloud dashboard, Flare can simulate what it’s like for a user to view that footage. Is there buffering? Is the feed delayed? Are network issues causing drops in video quality? Flare captures this information in real-time and turns it into clear, easy-to-understand insights.

This type of intelligence is crucial for surveillance teams that need to troubleshoot problems quickly. Rather than waiting for an issue to be reported or spending hours diagnosing vague complaints, Flare provides concrete answers almost instantly. That means faster response times, fewer disruptions, and better protection.

Key Features That Make Flare Ideal for Surveillance

What makes Flare stand out in real-time surveillance environments isn’t just what it can measure—it’s how intelligently it does it. Flare is packed with features that are especially helpful for security teams managing complex infrastructures.

One major advantage is proactive troubleshooting. Instead of waiting for things to go wrong, Flare can detect early signs of performance issues and alert teams before they turn into bigger problems. It also reduces the need for physical visits, saving time and resources.

Flare can be managed remotely, meaning teams can reconfigure, update, and even repair the system without needing to be on-site. Its self-healing capability ensures that many common issues fix themselves automatically. This is a game-changer for large surveillance setups where managing hundreds of devices manually is nearly impossible.

Additionally, Flare supports both scheduled and on-demand testing, allowing security managers to regularly verify system health or run diagnostics whenever something appears to be off. With live alerts and outage notifications, problems never go unnoticed.

Deployment Flexibility with Flare

Another area where Flare shines is in its flexibility. Surveillance systems aren’t one-size-fits-all. They vary significantly in terms of location, scale, and complexity. Flare is built to adapt to these differences with ease.

It comes in three deployment modes:

  1. Physical bots – These are small devices that can be plugged directly into surveillance networks, making them ideal for on-site monitoring where reliable wired or wireless connections are available.
  2. Virtual bots – These can be deployed in the cloud or on private servers, ideal for managing virtual environments or large-scale video processing hubs.
  3. Mobile bots – Designed to run on smartphones or tablets, these are great for temporary setups or field surveillance.

This flexibility makes Flare suitable for almost any use case—whether it’s a single office, a large campus, or a multi-site industrial operation. No matter the environment, Flare brings the same level of precision, speed, and reliability.

Real-Time Monitoring of Critical Surveillance Metrics

In surveillance, knowing what’s happening is only part of the battle. What truly matters is knowing it as it happens—and understanding what it means. That’s where Flare’s real-time monitoring capabilities make a big difference.

Flare doesn’t just look at one part of the system. It tracks a wide range of metrics that reflect both the network’s health and the user experience. From video streaming quality on platforms like YouTube to load times on web portals, it gives a complete picture of performance across various applications used in security operations.

In terms of network monitoring, Flare dives deep. It measures factors such as signal strength, frequency bands, and radio access performance for LTE and 5G networks. It even analyzes DNS server responsiveness and overall network speed. These data points help surveillance teams understand how external factors, such as mobile signal drop or slow data centers, may affect video transmission or system responsiveness.

This level of insight is especially important in large or complex environments, where a single point of failure could go unnoticed until it causes a major disruption.

Enhanced Security and Reliability at the Edge

Surveillance systems can’t afford to be reactive. They need to be proactive, resilient, and fast—qualities that traditional cloud-dependent systems often lack. With Flare operating at the edge, security operations gain real-time awareness and much stronger reliability.

Edge-based AI gives Flare the ability to detect potential issues immediately, without waiting for data to travel to a central server and back. For example, if a camera feed goes down due to a network issue, Flare can capture that moment, identify the cause, and alert the relevant team in real-time. In critical environments, that speed can mean the difference between preventing an incident and reacting to it after the fact.

Flare also supports organizations in maintaining KPI compliance and meeting their service-level agreements. Whether it’s ensuring that camera feeds meet a certain quality standard or that alerts are issued within set response times, Flare helps teams stay on top of their targets.

Most importantly, by acting as both a watchdog and a guide, Flare makes surveillance systems more self-aware. That awareness results in smarter responses, fewer blind spots, and a higher level of trust in the system as a whole.

Use Cases: Flare in Action

To understand Flare’s impact, it helps to look at where it’s being used and what it’s helping to solve.

In smart city surveillance, Flare helps ensure that traffic cameras, emergency alert systems, and environmental sensors work in harmony. It monitors data quality and system uptime across sprawling urban environments, where manual checks are simply not possible.

In enterprise campuses, Flare supports IT and security teams in managing building-wide surveillance networks. Whether it’s ensuring that access points stay online or tracking application performance for mobile security devices, Flare provides the insight needed to keep systems running smoothly.

In industrial settings, such as energy plants or factories, Flare ensures that surveillance systems tied to safety protocols remain reliable. Here, downtime is not just inconvenient—it’s dangerous. With Flare in place, system health can be tracked down to the last detail, and alerts can be routed before small problems become critical failures.

In each of these scenarios, the common thread is clear: Flare empowers teams to be faster, smarter, and more efficient in managing their security infrastructure.

Flare vs. Traditional Surveillance Analytics Platforms

When comparing Flare to traditional surveillance analytics platforms, the differences are clear and significant. Traditional systems often rely on passive data collection, which means they wait for something to go wrong before responding. They also tend to operate in silos, analyzing only specific components, such as camera feeds or network uptime, without understanding the complete user experience.

Flare, on the other hand, is active and intelligent. It emulates user behavior and continuously tests system performance, providing a much richer and more holistic view. It doesn’t just say “this camera is offline”—it helps you understand why, whether it’s due to weak signal strength, DNS failures, or app latency.

Also, traditional platforms often depend on centralized cloud computing, which can introduce delays. Flare operates at the edge, reducing latency and enabling real-time decisions. This is crucial for modern surveillance, where even a few seconds of delay can result in missed events or slower response times.

In short, Flare offers a level of contextual awareness and speed that traditional tools simply can’t match. It brings proactive intelligence into a space that has long been reactive.

The Business Case for Flare in Surveillance

Beyond its technical advantages, Flare delivers clear business value. One of the biggest cost drivers in surveillance management is the need for on-site troubleshooting—what the industry often calls “truck rolls.” Every time a technician is dispatched to diagnose or fix an issue, it costs time and money.

Flare significantly reduces this need by enabling remote diagnostics and configuration. Problems can be identified, analyzed, and often resolved without the need for anyone to be physically present. This saves organizations thousands of dollars annually, especially those with large or distributed infrastructure.

Additionally, by improving system reliability and reducing downtime, Flare helps businesses maintain better customer and stakeholder trust. When surveillance systems work as expected, security improves, and operations run more smoothly. That leads to higher satisfaction scores, a stronger reputation, and fewer liability risks.

Flare also contributes to improved NPS (Net Promoter Score), a key metric for customer experience. Because the system enables proactive responses and minimizes disruptions, it reflects positively on the service providers and IT teams responsible for maintaining performance.

Scaling with Simplicity – Centralized Management

As surveillance networks grow, managing them becomes more complex. That’s why Flare was designed with scalability and simplicity in mind.

It offers centralized management for all deployed bots—whether physical, virtual, or mobile. Teams can manage everything from a single dashboard, which includes test profiles, live alerts, upgrade controls, and system performance metrics. This unified view makes it easy to see what’s happening across multiple sites, systems, and devices.

Flare also supports zero-touch provisioning, allowing new devices to be added and configured automatically. There’s no need for a technician to set up each unit manually. The system can automatically discover new bots, apply the correct settings, and get them running in minutes.

This kind of seamless management is ideal for large enterprises, municipalities, or security firms that oversee multiple locations. It reduces the workload on IT and security teams while increasing confidence that everything is running as it should.

Future-Proofing Surveillance with Edge AI

Technology moves quickly, and surveillance must keep pace. With the rise of connected devices, 5G networks, and smarter cyber threats, traditional monitoring tools are quickly falling behind. That’s why edge AI, like what Flare provides, is so important for the future.

Flare is designed to adapt and scale. It can support new network technologies, such as 5G, analyze more complex data, and integrate with evolving platforms in smart cities and enterprise security ecosystems. It also means your investment is protected—you’re not locked into outdated technology.

Its intelligence at the edge allows for real-time, localized decision-making, which is becoming a core requirement in modern surveillance. Whether it’s helping a city prepare for autonomous traffic systems or enabling real-time threat detection in an industrial facility, Flare is built for what’s next.

As artificial intelligence evolves, Flare’s ability to support dynamic, on-device learning models makes it a future-ready partner. It’s not just a monitoring tool—it’s a foundational element of next-generation surveillance.

Conclusion

The need for fast, intelligent, and reliable surveillance is only growing. But meeting that demand with traditional cloud-based systems just doesn’t cut it anymore. Delays, blind spots, and inefficiencies can pose significant risks.

Flare solves this by bringing intelligence directly to the source. With edge AI, real-time emulation, and proactive insights, it empowers security teams to act quickly, solve problems before they escalate, and maintain high levels of system reliability.

Its flexible deployment options, deep analytics capabilities, and centralized management tools make it a smart choice for any organization serious about surveillance. From cities and corporations to campuses and critical infrastructure, Flare is helping redefine what real-time security can look like.

Simply put, if you want your surveillance to be smarter, faster, and more future-ready, Flare is the edge AI solution you need.