Sacramento-based smart security camera company Rhombus Systems Inc. has added a coordinated line of audio speakers and microphones to its cloud-based property surveillance technology.
The new audio technology can identify keywords, noise levels and specific sounds, such as gunshots, sirens or breaking glass.
“Audio adds context to the video,” Rhombus co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Omar Khan told the Business Journal.
It can also add information that the company’s cameras and other sensors can’t capture, such as yelling or gunshots.
Since launching, Rhombus has offered wireless and artificial intelligence-enabled video surveillance cameras that can track movement, identify faces and count pedestrian traffic, all of which can be monitored remotely by computer or smartphone.
Rhombus in 2019 added a variety of sensors to its cloud platform. Those sensors can track movement of an object, the opening of a door or window and temperature. Last year it added air quality sensors.
Now with audio, the system can monitor more in real time, and with speakers it can speak to people in the room, with statements such as, “police have been called.”
Rhombus customers include real estate managers and owners, school districts, hospitals and clinics, city governments and Fortune 500 companies.
Founded in Oakland in 2016, the company moved to Sacramento a year later. At the time Rhombus moved, it had 10 employees. It now has 91, Khan said. He declined to disclose the company's revenue but said that it tripled in 2020 and nearly tripled again last year.
Rhombus developed the audio component because customers were asking for it, Khan said, adding that the company worked with existing customers to develop it starting about two years ago. The technology should have come out last summer, but supply chain issues stalled the rollout of what Rhombus calls the A100 Audio Gateway.
Adding the audio also allows the system’s other sensors to offer immediate feedback to people in the area under surveillance. For example, if a door to a temperature-controlled room is left open for too long, an automated voice will announce that there is a problem. The platform has a text-to-voice feature that allows users to program automated messages. That allows the system, which also can have an air analysis sensor, to tell people smoking that smoking is not allowed.
The audio suite can be added to existing client systems, Khan said.
In October, Rhombus raised a $10 million funding round led by Cota Capital, along with investors MSD Partners, Lemnos and Promus Ventures. That round brought the company to $20 million raised.
