The Safe Zone Gunfire Detection system took top honors last week as the Investor Audience Favorite among six promising early stage companies that participated in the second annual Raleigh Internet of Things (RIoT) RAP Pitch Night held on April 10in Raleigh, North Carolina.
More than 150 people heard pitches from a range of young companies that have a connection to the Raleigh, North Carolina technology community. According to Safe Zone Chief Technology Officer John Anderson, Safe Zone, developed by AVIdea Group in Melbourne, Florida, maintains an engineering and R&D team in Raleigh.
“We pitched against companies involved in a number of important product categories, from environmentally friendly products to smart lighting solutions, and we were thrilled to win the Audience Favorite Award,” Anderson said today. “The award is a recognition of just how important affordable and effective gunfire detection has become in our lives in every kind of public space. We’re honored to be meeting genuine community need.”
The RIoT Accelerator Program (RAP) facilitates entrepreneurial processes across the board, from research commercialization to startup growth, and including corporate innovation – with the opportunity for the industry to seed the accelerator with market-driven problems they are motivated to solve through entrepreneurial partnerships or internal startup teams. RAP increases the impact of traditional accelerator programming by partnering startups with an industry consortium of more than 75 companies across the IoT value chain. Partners provide access to resources and investment capital necessary to launch new products and services.
Safe Zone detectors are easily installed throughout existing buildings. Within seconds of a gun being fired, the detector sends the data to a cloud-based machine learning system, which analyzes more than 3,000 specific features of each gunshot.
Safe Zone then immediately sends the number of shots, type of weapon, caliber, and shot location (shown on a pre-programmed floor plan) to local law enforcement dispatch centers. At the same time, system users with the app receive an alert on their phones (similar to an Amber Alert), and teachers and others on a user-managed contact list receive an email and/or text.
This series of events occurs in less than 10 seconds, informing law enforcement so they can move directly to neutralize the threat, saving valuable minutes. As the company is quick to point out, saving minutes saves lives.
The Safe Zone Gunfire Detector is a small (3” x 3”) triangular unit that mounts in a ceiling corner and provides gunfire detection for an area of 30’W x 30’D x 10’H. Safe Zone can be easily connected to third-party alarm, surveillance, door lock and mass notification systems.
