At the time of this writing (Dec 7th 2021), we've made 3,086 improvements to the platform in 2021 alone. Many of these improvements were internal: to make the platform more stable and scalable. As well as to make the product perform quicker and remain secure. Other changes were either improvements that you asked for, or something we felt would really improve the value the platform can bring to you and your customers.
While a detailed log of improvements is available inside of TetherX, this is a list of highlights from 2021:
Alarms and Notifications
TetherX is first and foremost an investigation and audit tool, allowing you to quickly find and share relevant past activity with a GDPR compliant audit log. However this year, a lot of our focus has been on providing realtime notifications with actionable information:
Alarm Receiving Centre Integration - compatibility with IMMIX, Sentinel, HikCentral, CONXTD and more. This means TetherX can now directly notify your control room or ARC of choice with minimal setup.
TetherX Simple Alarm Handling - when you don't have a need for a fully fledged alarm handling system, TetherX provides a real-time event view, highlighting important events in amber or red when your TetherX system is armed. Those events can be dismissed with a tick and TetherX will track SLAs (e.g. how quickly events are handled). This allows taking simpler control room operations in-house.
Advanced Machine Learning / AI - integration with DeepAlert and Calipsa allows enabling machine learning with a single tick on any camera, regardless of manufacturer. For example, be notified if someone is climbing a ladder unsupported.
Notification Improvements - fine tune which notifications are sent to each user, e.g. system health notifications as well as many additions to the integrator report.
Video Surveillance
TetherX is a visual platform so it is no surprise that video was always at the heart of the platform and where a lot of effort was spent:
Monitor Mode - while TetherBoxes can only record a set number of cameras, they can now monitor the health of, provide live view, and provide the ability to tunnel and remotely manage many more cameras and other network devices.
Audio Challenge / Horn Speaker support - TetherX now supports 2-way audio by either plugging a speaker directly to your TetherBox, or connecting to existing IP speakers. TetherX can also play a pre-recorded message with several to choose from, including a dog barking.
Camera Time Sync - TetherX keeps the time on your cameras in sync with the TetherX cloud, so when you export your footage, you always have the correct timestamps.
PTZ Improvements - TetherX now supports more advanced pan/tilt/zoom camera features including lights, wipers, presets, relays, continuous PTZ and more.
ANPR Improvements - TetherX now has the ability to add whitelists/blacklists and trigger relays. With the recent improvements, TetherX can be used to run a full parking automation system. We also have plans to integrate with ZatPark to support traffic enforcement, PCNs, etc.
Access Control
Our vision for TetherX has always been an app to combine all security in one place. Now we are proud to add Access Control to TetherX by building first deep integration with Paxton Net2:
Paxton Net2 Integration - fully automating a Net2 server, keeping users in sync with the TetherX cloud, backing up Net2 config to the cloud, enrolling users to multiple Paxton servers, automating interaction between alarm, video and access (e.g. when a person enters the building using a Paxton fob, take a snapshot, disarm their alarm and send a push alert to the manager), and much more.
The above integration allows building a full time and attendance system, e.g. automatically granting access to a tennis court, switching on the lights, disarming the alarm and notifying a billing system.
Alarm Panels
The other critical component of any physical security system is the alarm panel. TetherX integrates with Texecom and Eaton panels but we are in the process of adding Honeywell Galaxy, DSC and others. In the meantime, these are the improvements we made in 2021:
Texecom Improvements - show detailed information about every area set up on your Texecom panel and many other fixes and improvements for Texecom.
Other Devices / Network Management
TetherX helps you build a solution for the customer. While the following are not necessarily physical security devices themselves, they are important facilitators to build a complex turnkey solution:
Packet Loss & IP Clash Detection - we detect packet loss and IP clashes on the network and add this to your integrator report.
Corporate Environments: TetherX can now work in even more restrictive networks by not requiring HTTPs access. TetherX requires a single outbound connection on port 443 to a single whitelisted address, meaning no port forwarding or a complex network setup.
Partners
We wouldn't be anything without our integrators and partners. We have built a powerful service engine that allows managing your customers and their subscriptions, as well as ensuring you are never invoiced for anything unexpected:
Brand new TetherX Quote Tool - new competitive cloud pricing, ability to customise your mark-up, even more customisation options.
Pre-Billing Report - we notify you 2 weeks before your invoice of anything upcoming, you are given until the end of the month to make any changes for anything you no longer need before we send an invoice. You can also access all subscriptions under the new Subscriptions Page in the Admin section.
API / Integrations
One key focus for TetherX in 2021 was integration with other systems. We are excited to report that we now have a published RESTful API allowing any developer or company to integrate with TetherX. We also provide tools to make this really simple like ability to add video verification or even live view to your app or website by just copy pasting a snippet of code:
New RESTful API - supports triggering recording, extracting license plates, submitting black/whitelist anpr, accessing live view and recordings, opening and closing tunnels and much more.
Camera Live URLs - copy/paste special camera URLs to add live view to any existing control room or application, e.g. Sentinel
Code Snippets - ability to copy/paste some code to add TetherX live view and video verification to your website or application.
Documentation
One common criticism we get from our customers is TetherX has so much, but a lot of this isn't well documented. We tried to address this with a brand new knowledge base as well as a compatibility table:
New Searchable Knowledge Base - automatic page suggestions from hundreds of new pages when going on live chat.
New camera and recorder compatibility page - listing over 12,000 models.
UI/UX & Other
The following doesn't begin to scratch the surface of the 3,000+ improvements we've made, but it hopefully gives a sense of how busy we have been and hopefully you'll see some items that will make you go "ah, I've noticed this one!":
Mass Event Handling: Drag+Select multiple events for mass: flag, share, delete, etc.
TetherBox Firmware Improvements: Significant internal improvements to synchronise the TetherBox device health information to the cloud quicker and more accurately. For example, each TetherBox now has a powerful independent database which keeps a history of states should the unit go offline.
Significant infrastruture improvements - every line of code changed is tested on 10 separate live environments automatically as well as manually through a new QA process.
Better Forms: Every form now shows up in a modal window, to keep you on the same page
Better Tables: New powerful tables allowing selecting columns, full screening, full text search, exporting to Excel and more.
App Improvements: Significant improvements to the iOS and Android apps
Live Improvements: Significant improvements to the live view experience. E.g. immediately preview while HD is loading, PTZ improvements, fix layout issues on some devices, better very large and very small screen support, etc.
Offline Improvements: Significant improvements to the TetherX offline interface
Summary
TetherX is constantly improving and adding more integrations to help you provide turn key solutions to your customers. It can be used in situations as straightforward as giving your customer 1 app to access their CCTV, as well as alarm and access control, to more complex situations such as streamlining the operations of a 15,000 branch financial institution.
We feel TetherX fills a unique and important gap in the market to help you Monitor, Manage and Maintain all of your installations, and ultimately helps you run a more efficient business. Speak to us today to see if TetherX can help you with your next project: https://tetherit.io/contact