Home › What is a Body Camera
A body camera is a small recorder that clips to a vest, a shoulder or a helmet and films the job from where the wearer is standing. It runs for a whole duty, and it seals each recording so the file still counts when somebody asks about it later.
It is a camera and a filing system in one case. The camera part captures sound and picture from the wearer’s own position, and stamps the time onto everything it makes. Most units last a whole working duty on one charge, and the case is built for the job as well: rain, dust, heat, and getting knocked about while the wearer is busy.
What separates it from an ordinary camera is what happens to the recording. Recordings are written where the wearer cannot get at them, and the device has no menu for renaming or deleting one. Docking the camera afterwards moves the footage onto a server you control, where it is filed against the person who wore it, the unit it came from and the time it was made.
Signed out to one wearer per duty
Sound and picture, time-stamped
Sealed against water and dust
Nothing on it can delete a recording
The parts you can see, and what each one is for.
Records what the wearer is facing. The angle is wide, so somebody standing off to one side is still in the picture.
Let the camera keep recording after dark. The picture turns black and white, and how far it reaches varies across the range.
Picks up sound as well as picture, which is often what settles an argument about what was actually said.
A single press starts recording. On most models the seconds before that press are saved onto the file as well.
How the footage leaves the camera. Nothing in the range takes a memory card, so the dock does the work, and some models can also offload down a cable.
Three things matter that a photograph cannot show: the battery, the storage sealed inside the case, and the mount on the back that holds the camera to a harness, a vest or a helmet.
From pressing record to a file you can find.
The wearer presses the button once. Picture, sound and a time stamp go straight into storage sealed inside the camera, and recording continues until it is stopped.
Each file is stamped with the time, the unit and the person who signed the camera out. None of that can be changed from the camera afterwards.
When the duty finishes the camera is put into a bay. The recordings move across and the battery fills again, without anyone opening the case.
Recordings arrive in software where they can be searched, attached to a case file and shared under permission, with every action written down.
What turns a recording into something you can rely on.
A recording only helps if it can still be trusted months later, in front of somebody who was not there. Five things make that possible, and none of them depend on the wearer remembering to do anything.
The practical reasons teams buy them.
When two accounts of the same incident do not agree, the footage is a third account, and it does not depend on anyone’s memory.
Someone pulls up the recording and watches it. Without one, the incident has to be rebuilt from statements taken weeks later.
Everyone at the scene can see the camera. What gets recorded, and who is allowed to watch it, is set out in your policy rather than decided afterwards.
Lone and after-hours work goes on the record. Where a camera has a SIM, somebody at base can watch the feed while the job is still running.
A recording of a real job is worth more in a debrief than a description of one, because the crew can see exactly what happened.
Everything sits in one place instead of on cards and drives, so a file can still be found when somebody asks for it months later.
Anywhere the job puts somebody in front of other people.
Patrol, traffic stops, public order and custody. This is the largest single use, and the one most published rules are written around.
Fire crews, ambulance and rescue teams wear them at scenes where the public is present and the order of events matters.
An officer is often the only person who sees an incident start. Cameras go out on manned guarding, mobile patrol, retail and event work.
Inspectors and licensing officers keep a record of the premises and of the conversation at the door.
The body camera usually works alongside cameras fitted inside the vehicle itself. Drivers, marshals and ground crews carry one.
Site supervisors and contractor escorts record work that gets covered up as soon as it is finished.
The cameras it gets confused with.
Point of viewWhat the wearer is facing, and what the wearer can hear
Who starts itThe wearer, with one press
Can the file be changedNo. The wearer cannot reach the storage
Where footage ends upThrough a dock, onto a server you control
Built forBeing worn all shift, and being used as evidence
Point of viewWhatever it is strapped to is pointing at
Who starts itThe wearer, with one press
Can the file be changedYes. The recording sits on a memory card
Where footage ends upOnto a card, then wherever somebody copies it
Built forSport and hobby recording
Point of viewOne fixed view of one place
Who starts itNobody. It runs on its own, continuously
Can the file be changedIt depends who can reach the recorder
Where footage ends upOnto a recorder or a server on the site
Built forWatching a fixed area day after day
Point of viewThe road in front of the vehicle
Who starts itThe ignition, on most installations
Can the file be changedOn many units, yes. The recording sits on a memory card
Where footage ends upOnto a card, or to a fleet server
Built forRecording a journey and a collision
Short answers to what people ask first.
No. Offline units record to encrypted internal storage and transfer everything when they are docked, with no connectivity required at any point. 4G/5G models add live streaming where operations need it, but that is an option rather than a dependency.
Across the range we supply, published continuous recording runs from 9 to 12 hours on one charge, and 13 hours on the helmet unit, which carries a detachable second cell. Models with a swappable cell extend past their figure without returning to a dock.
1080p is the working floor. Across the range we supply, recording runs from 1280 x 720 up to 4K. Higher is not automatically better.
No. Footage is written to storage the wearer has no write access to, and every file carries the operator ID and a tamper-evident timestamp. Once it has been extracted, every action taken on it is recorded in the audit trail, including who viewed it, who shared it and who exported it.
Six of the nine body cameras we supply publish GPS. Where GPS is present, position is written into the file alongside the operator ID and the timestamp, which is what lets an incident be reconstructed against a map afterwards.
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