Fire extinguisher presence detection via OpenMV automated inspection

Whether a fire extinguisher is in place is often only revealed when 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 achieve continuous and effective monitoring. OpenMV uses computer vision to make fire safety inspections an “always-on” process.

In public and industrial premises such as shopping malls, industrial parks, factory workshops, and office buildings, the compliance of fire extinguisher placement, unauthorised relocation, and obstruction by debris directly affects emergency response efficiency during unexpected fire incidents. 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, misjudgements, or situations where “inspections pass but equipment is subsequently removed” difficult to avoid, thereby hindering continuous and effective oversight.

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

The camera is permanently installed at the designated location corresponding to fire-fighting equipment and operates continuously and stably to capture on-site images of the fire extinguisher area without human intervention. OpenMV runs object detection algorithms on the camera’s edge device to accurately identify the fire extinguisher itself and, in conjunction with pre-defined installation zone rules, determines whether it is positioned as required. Additionally, through integrity and occlusion detection, the system can identify whether the fire extinguisher is obstructed, toppled or exhibits abnormal appearance, thereby assessing its operational readiness from multiple dimensions.

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

Leveraging an edge deployment architecture and on-device AI capabilities, OpenMV can perform recognition and decision-making without continuously uploading video streams—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 “24/7 online monitoring”, effectively reducing fire safety risks and enhancing overall emergency response capabilities.