Fire extinguisher presence detection via OpenMV automatic inspection

Whether a fire extinguisher is in place often remains unnoticed until it is actually needed—by which time it is already too late. Relying on manual inspections results in low frequency and high risk of omissions, making it difficult to ensure continuous effectiveness. OpenMV transforms fire safety inspections into an “always-on” process through visual monitoring.

In public and industrial premises such as shopping malls, industrial parks, factory workshops, and office buildings, the compliance placement of fire extinguishers, whether they have been moved arbitrarily, and whether they are obstructed by debris directly affect the efficiency of emergency response in the event of a sudden fire. The absence of fire extinguishers or inability to access them immediately often results in missing the critical window for initial firefighting, leading to greater safety losses.

Traditional fire safety inspections primarily rely on manual periodic checks, which not only limit inspection frequency but also heavily depend on inspectors’ sense of responsibility and experience, making omissions, misjudgments, or situations where “inspections are passed but equipment is subsequently removed” prone to occur, thus hindering continuous and effective supervision.

The introduction of SingTown’s OpenMV smart camera upgrades fire extinguisher inspections from manual patrols to round-the-clock automated visual inspections.

The camera is fixedly installed at the designated location corresponding to the fire-fighting facility and operates stably over a long period to continuously capture on-site images of the fire extinguisher area without human intervention. OpenMV runs object recognition algorithms on the camera side to accurately identify the fire extinguisher itself and, in combination with pre-defined installation area rules, determines whether it is positioned as required. Meanwhile, through shape integrity and occlusion detection, the system can also identify whether the fire extinguisher is occluded, toppled, or exhibits abnormal appearance, thereby assessing its operational status from multiple dimensions.

Once an anomaly such as missing fire extinguishers, positional displacement, or obstruction is detected, OpenMV can immediately output an alarm signal at the edge side to trigger on-site audible and visual alarm devices or upload event information to the management platform, thereby achieving true “immediate anomaly detection and instant issue notification.”

Leveraging an edge deployment architecture and AI capabilities on the device side, OpenMV can perform recognition and judgment without continuously uploading video streams, thereby reducing network and storage costs while significantly enhancing system stability and response speed.

Fire safety inspections have thus been upgraded from “periodic manual checks” to “7×24-hour online monitoring”, effectively reducing fire safety risks and enhancing overall emergency response capabilities.