Whether the fire extinguisher is in place, automatically inspected by OpenMV

Whether a fire extinguisher is in place often remains undetected 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 continuous and effective monitoring extremely difficult. OpenMV transforms fire safety inspections into an “always-on” process through visual detection.

In public and industrial venues—such as shopping malls, industrial parks, factory workshops, and office buildings—the proper placement of fire extinguishers in accordance with regulations, whether they have been moved arbitrarily, and whether they are obstructed by debris directly affect the efficiency of emergency response 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 inspection primarily relies on manual periodic checks, which not only limits inspection frequency but also heavily depends on inspectors’ sense of responsibility and experience, making omissions, misjudgments, or situations where “inspected items are approved but subsequently removed” prone to occur, thus hindering continuous and effective supervision.

Introducing SingTown’s OpenMV smart camera, which 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 the fire-fighting equipment, operating stably over the long term to continuously 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, determine whether it is positioned as required. Additionally, through shape integrity and occlusion detection, the system can also identify whether the fire extinguisher is obstructed, toppled, or exhibits abnormal appearance, thereby assessing its operational readiness from multiple dimensions.

Upon detecting anomalies such as missing fire extinguishers, positional deviations, or obstructions, OpenMV can immediately generate an alert signal at the edge, trigger on-site audible and visual alarm devices, or upload event information to the management platform—achieving true “immediate anomaly detection and instant issue notification.”

Leveraging an edge-deployment architecture and on-device AI capabilities, OpenMV performs recognition and decision-making without continuously uploading video streams—thereby reducing network and storage costs while significantly enhancing system stability and response speed.

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