Sightline (Argus) vs Spot AI for a distribution yard
| Decision | Sightline | Spot AI |
|---|---|---|
| What stays in the cabinet? | Existing camera or encoder with a supported stream. A03 · Connection guide | Intelligent Video Recorder for local processing and recording. V01 · Spot AI recorder |
| What starts the work? | A configured person or vehicle rule. A02 · Icarian detection classes A04 · Rule editor | A search with Iris or a configured response. V02 · Spot AI workflows |
| What can staff retrieve? | Incident history with optional clips. A05 · Incident workflow A07 · Data controls | Recorded video available for investigation. V01 · Spot AI recorder |
| Which unit gets priced? | Detecting camera plus plan base. A08 · Tentative rates | Subscription per location. Ask for a dollar quote. V02 · Location subscription |
Friday’s gate and Monday’s complaint
At closing time the dispatch clerk knows precisely where the trouble might start: trucks use the east gate, and anyone walking in after six should get a visit from the guard. Come Monday morning, that tidy specification falls apart. A carrier wants to know where a pallet went after unloading, and the clerk has a delivery slip with a date and no bay number. Put those two requests on separate cards at the demonstration and hand each card to whoever would take the call.
Sightline, the Icarian product whose linked application is labeled Argus, lets the supervisor propose a rule and look back over the previous six hours. The editor shows how often it would have opened an incident and how much time detection ran. Try this at the end of the relevant shift — a preview run over a quiet Sunday afternoon tells the supervisor little about Friday’s changeover. Save the proposed hours alongside the count so the next person can reproduce the decision. A01 · Icarian product A01 · Argus sign-in A04 · Rule editor
What survives a wrong guess?
Suppose an operator starts at the truck entrance and learns that a van brought the pallet through the employee lot. With Spot, the next move is to look across recorded views using its dashboard or ask Iris to narrow the search. Local recording gives the buyer a reason to install Spot’s recorder even in a building with working cameras. For the demonstration, give the operator only the delivery window and ask for the sequence from arrival to handoff, then let a second employee judge whether the saved sequence answers the shipper’s question. V01 · Spot AI recorder V02 · Spot AI workflows
Sightline keeps the triggering rule with the incident and lets colleagues acknowledge it, make notes and close it. Icarian says it records no continuous footage, so a manager who needs the minute before an unrelated forklift turned a corner should identify the yard’s existing archive and its owner. The useful handoff is a camera name and a time that works in both systems. Put a shift worker at the two screens and see whether that handoff is practical. A05 · Incident workflow A07 · Data controls
Whose radio goes off?
An alert program lives or dies on the receiving end. A Sightline Starter buyer can use Seen and email; for a drawn zone or webhook, look at Pro. Within an incident, a continuing event or a return within ten minutes stays together, which can make the log easier to read — but a count of incident rows answers a different question from a count of people who entered the yard. Have the supervisor decide which number belongs in the morning report. A05 · Incident workflow A09 · Plan comparison
Spot describes configurable talk-down audio as well as alerts and scorecards. For a staffed desk that wants to address a visitor at the gate, that response belongs in the demo. Ask who authorizes the message, whether the visitor can hear it over an idling engine and what the operator sees afterward. A company that needs only an email can skip that part of the quote; a company paying for deterrence should have the overnight supervisor sign off on it. V02 · Spot AI workflows
Two warehouses change the arithmetic
For a concrete bid, draw three gates on the depot plan and put one non-4K detecting camera at each. Sightline Starter’s tentative monthly arithmetic is $49 + (3 × $129), or $436 under one plan. Switch off two gates and that falls to $178. Now change the remaining feed to 4K, and the total returns to $436 because the one detecting camera counts as three. Give Spot a second drawing with the third gate at a new depot and ask it to price both. Its subscription unit is the location, which the first drawing alone never tests. A08 · Tentative rates V02 · Location subscription
Choose Sightline if the specification fits on a gate schedule
Give it the advantage when the incumbent recorder remains serviceable, the selected stream is reachable by RTSP or can push RTMP or SRT, and staff will act on a defined event. Include one delivery that crosses shift change in the pilot. The handoff should say who owns the incident after the person who received the email goes home. A03 · Connection guide A05 · Incident workflow
Choose Spot AI if questions arrive after the truck has left
Prioritize Spot when investigations routinely start with partial information, span buildings and need a local video record. Ask for the promised retention per location and the price of expanding to a lightly used annex. The strongest case is a team that will actually use the archive and search workflow week after week. V01 · Spot AI recorder V02 · Location subscription
Frequently asked questions
Can either proposal keep our installed cameras?
Spot describes support for ONVIF IP cameras. Sightline needs a usable stream from the camera, encoder or recorder. Supply model, firmware, resolution and a network diagram to each vendor, and request a successful connection from a representative unit before using the estate-wide count for pricing. V01 · Spot AI recorder A03 · Connection guide
Can the preview tell us how many people the rule missed?
It gives a proposed incident count and detection time. To find misses, someone must independently review the same interval and mark qualifying entries, including entries that produced no incident. A walkthrough that starts with an alert list can only inspect what made the list. A04 · Rule editor