 Hey, hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Think Tech Hawaii studio for this episode of Security Matters. It's the post-ISC West episode. I hope, well, I know some of you got there. I saw about 8,000 of you tromping around. It was a little lighter than usual. But our guest today, Brad Solomon, is with our spotter RF, and he's the Global Director of Business Development. So maybe he can give us some perspective on how ISC was versus the rest of the shows. And first, let's get to know Brad a little bit. Brad, thanks so much for joining me today. I know everybody is still trying to catch their breath, at least in North America, you know, from the show. But for the folks who don't know today, tell everyone to kind of talk about compact radar and some of the things that it's brought to our industry that we didn't have. And I'm an old radar guy. Maybe, well, it doesn't matter. But Brad, why don't you give us, for those, for the folks who may not know you, kind of your background in the industry, and then we'll kind of start to get into technology and maybe a little bit about the show. Oh yeah, thanks. Thanks for the opportunity, Andrew. Yeah, just coming off the heels of the show, that was great. We can talk more about that. My background, a lot of you may know me, a lot of you probably don't, but I have been with spotter RF for 10 years now. Spotter being an 11-year-old company, I came in right at the beginning there. And it was my first real career job right out of college. I started interning for spotter RF. I did an undergraduate in integrated engineering and then a master's in mechanical engineering with a big emphasis in acoustics. And so oddly enough, that relates very well to radar and they pulled me in as an engineer on the design side. So I ended up finding this little startup company and decided to stay with that and stick with that. I just saw that they had something very, very unique. And it's ironic because I don't, I came from a small town in Southern Nevada where security wasn't an issue. Nobody locked their doors, cars, your keys are just left on the car seat and you just don't really think about those kind of things. But now we're in this world where everything is revolving around security. So I really like where I ended up. I evolved into more customer facing roles as time moved on at spotter RF and as we grew. Even six, seven years ago, all of our guys worked out of the Orem Utah main headquarter office. And so since then though, we have expanded and I think about 60% of our workforce is actually outside of the main headquarters at this point. We do have a global footprint and I've been able to just leverage all of the contacts within the industry and learn about security. For me, being an engineer, engineers like problem solving and this industry just drew me in and you can, I mean, there's a million problems. There's a million ways to solve a problem. And that's kind of where I get my joy out of everything is helping people solve problems, specifically just preventing harm in the industry. That's a little bit of my background. I love that. I love it. I think so many people fall into our industry. Kind of like you said, you come out as out of engineering background like, whoa, what's this startup doing? This looks unique. But at the end of the day, you realize, wow, we're protected property. We're saving lives. So it gives us this sort of, I think there's an advantage to being in technology in our industry that some of the other industries really don't get to necessarily rest on their laurels. We always know we could do more, but every day at the end of the day, we know those solutions that we put out there are still working to do that job that we are passionate about protecting people. So I'm, for one, glad you found our industry, sir. The young engineering folks are getting swapped up by the Amazons and Microsofts and Googles of the world. So I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for joining us in our industry. Let's real quick just talk a little bit about ISC West. So talk about how the show was for you and maybe as, you know, looking at global biz debt, you know, kind of maybe compare, contrast that for our audience for what's going on in the rest of the world. Maybe even, I don't know how much has been done this year, but maybe what you folks are looking to accomplish later on this year, where the world is opening up and if it is, I'm stuck on a little island. So I don't see much of it. Yeah, no. Well, ISC West was a big question mark going into it, right? I think for a lot of people. And for us as well, you saw a bunch of the big name vendors pulling out and you didn't have a lot of commitment from attendees. So it was kind of a big question mark. But what we saw and I think most of the vendors that we were there with experienced the same thing, the people that did come lower traffic, but high quality, they came with a mission in mind. They came with something they were trying to solve and sought out those vendors that were there. And we were hoping that, hey, with a few less of the bigger vendors, you know, we get a lot more traffic than typical and they get around to us. I think that definitely happened. We didn't have maybe the third day was slow, but that's typical for ISC West. I don't think we were complaining though. It was good to get out and just see people, right? Interface with some people that had been shut in for a while that I hadn't seen for two years, a year and a half, other than on a phone call or a Zoom call. So that was really great. You know, everybody had to cut their hair and get out there and put on their pants and go actually to work, right? So that was great. And I think for us, at least for spotter, we haven't really seen many global shows that at least that we have participated in the past 18 months. Nothing of note. This has been the largest one since the pandemic that we've participated in and actually seen some turnout. And you're right. I think there is eight, 9,000 attendees, probably 25%, 30% of what they typically get. But you had to have the first introductory show in my mind that gets people back on their feet and a sense of, hey, we can do this again. And wow, I think we forgot a lot of the value of that in person, right? Being there, standing, talking to them and hearing the issues they're dealing with, hearing the successes they're having, hearing the new problems up and coming right there in person makes all the difference in the world. So I was extremely excited about the show. It was really good for us. I think the next big show that we're eyeing that everybody probably knows about is the GSX one coming up in here in September. I think that one will be bigger than ISC West, which I think has never happened before. But it's just the progression, right? Of, hey, we started with one show, now more people came, so hopefully more people show up at the next one. That's the way I see it. Yeah, let's talk a little bit just briefly on that quality of interaction because there was a lot of people were discussing this that, and I think you've probably read, we've all read that 80, 90% of our communication is nonverbal. And so when you've got those folks at that booth, what was your sense of engagement compared to trying to give them a Zoom call presentation on what SpotRF's all about? Well, some of our guys were a bit rusty, right? Hadn't been in person for a while. Yeah, no, it was good. A lot of people came really excited and got right to the point. They had been meaning to get to you guys. I wanted to get to you last year, of course, the show was canceled. So we had a number of new engagements. And then for us too, that show in particular, you know, we're based in the West in Utah, Vegas is a four or five hour drive for us. We have a lot of customers around the region in there. And we were happy to just engage with those existing customers, see what they're doing these days, and hear about some upcoming projects that they're working on. So engagement was great. You get those follow on customers, and you get those new customers. And meeting someone person is always worth the wait. Yeah, 100%. So I just have to ask about the budget real quick, since you have that director of, you know, global biz dev there, what was it like to get a budget? You know, when we saw the big gas pulling out, I mean, was it a was it a was a difficult discussion? Was it a metrics based kind of give us if you could peel that layer back for those of us, you don't have to have those discussions? No, that was very interesting, right? Because we always try to track, you know, how much what's the ROI of any event or any marketing expenditure, right? Are we going to get the exposure we need, meet the right people that we need? Obviously, we, for us, it was the same spend as it would have been in 2020, and less traffic. So in that sense, it was less of a return for us. But at the same time, I always look at it to, you know, what else could we have done in that week and spend that would have done something better for us? You know, could we have met that many people in a week's period of time in person and engage with them at that level? Have we done something else? And that's where I think for us, the decision was pretty easy. I think we were committed to go when they we wanted to get back to a show. We wanted to get back with those people. And we're not, you know, we don't have a million dollar booth, like, you know, the the honeywells, the bosses and the big guys. And so a little bit easier for us, still an expense, but definitely worth it from my perspective. Right on. Well, I'm glad it was a success. I, a lot of people just said that the quality of the meetings and themselves made it well worth it. And I've had a few, a few interactions with some of the big guys who just sent a team didn't have a booth. And they, they, a lot of people use Leo Desa's lounge, you know, to go up there and kind of hang out and have meetings and things like that. So that was a nice addition. I think there's a lot of ways to conduct business, but the hunger to get back together was there. And then, having been around this for a decade, you've, you've probably built a quite a few relationships with our industry players. Were there, were there anyone missing any folks or anything that you think that, you know, struck you like, wow, I'm surprised not to see this, these folks here or that group here or something like that. Oh yeah, I think there was one, you know, if you look at the major video management systems and camera providers, there was one or two at the event, you know, three or four missing. Now I know a lot of the sales guys that we work with within those companies came and they buddied up with us. And that was actually quite successful. So I'd be fine. I'd be fine if they continue not to come and we just get their sales guys within, you know, working with us on a lot of these discussions and conversations. I like, like you said, you learn to work with a lot of different companies and people over the years. And, you know, spotter RF is just a piece of the puzzle when it comes to solving the security problems that people deal with. And so we have to work with camera manufacturers, video management system providers, access control, even just typical hardware providers on a switch network configuration, right? So we think there's key strategic relationships that we've built up over the years and we love working with those partners. We value our partnerships and we even plan, you know, it's one thing I think is unique about spotters. We don't plan forward with our blinders on here like this. We look it open and we see who's in this lane and who's in this lane. We've got, you know, boss cameras over here, access cameras over here and see what they're doing. And we plan forward in junction with them because we work with them on virtually every project, right? So we don't try to compete so much against them, but work with them. And at an OEM level, we even plan forward. And that was great to have that we had a lot of that reigniting at the event for those that were there that we could meet with. And that's really carrying us forward. I was really happy to see that. I love what you're talking about that the integration necessity of our technologies, right? Because none of them stand alone. I mean, there may be some standalone things out there that they do, but the value of all of our propositions is almost always built on some sort of an integration backbone. And the fact that you bring that up, that looking forward with our partners, I love that they're in your booth. I think that's the best thing of all. Like, yeah, bring your customers, just come on over and hang out. That's great. But that being that component and being willing to partner, I love that piece. I just think it's super valuable. And it talks, it talks to what I think excites us all when we get together, because we talk, hey, man, I got this customer, the problem, what do you think we can do about this? And then typically at your level, maybe you know of another application that's going on similar to that. So you can borrow and it gets us to quicker sorts of solutions, you know, when we're working together. And you know, it's an integrator's industry, in my opinion. So I love it that that's that was working out for you folks at the show. Well, we've got to get into the technology of Sparta RF and we're about halfway through. So I got to pay some bills. We'll take a one minute break and we will be right back with Brad Solomon. So hang tight. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, host of Beyond the Lines on ThinkTech Hawaii. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years. And we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. My show is based on my book, also titled Beyond the Lines. And it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence, and finding greatness. I feature a wide range of amazing guests who share valuable insights about how going beyond the lines leads to success in everything you do in life. I'm looking forward to you joining me every Monday at 11am. Aloha. Hey, Aloha and welcome back to Security Matters. We're talking with Brad Solomon here today, Global Security Director of Sparta RF. And if you haven't played with radar technology, there is a lot of power there that a lot of people aren't familiar with. But if you've got some space to cover, you need to get engaged with these types of solutions. And Sparta has been around a long time. Brad's been with them for a decade, coming out of engineering school. So Brad, take us through, like, let's talk about some capabilities first to get people an idea of what's possible with Sparta. What did radar bring to our industry? Things that we really just couldn't do a decade ago. Even it's not been that long ago. Let's put it that way. Well, no, that's a great question. And really, a decade ago, there was not a lot of options for radar commercially. There wasn't an option. We kind of forged that path and we brought the technology of radar and made it accessible to the market. As you mentioned earlier, you're a radar guy from back in your days. But those were big military, engineer-required type systems. Very expensive. 10 years ago, you did have some, FLIR made some radars that were standalone type systems, but all of them had that military government slant and bent to them. And it wasn't an option. So we dealt with, 10 years ago, your options were some kind of fence disturbance, fiber on the fence, video analytics. And really, that's it, physical barriers to intrusion. You didn't have radar. So what Sparta did, we brought a lot of things first to the market. We were the first IP-based radar. And so right as our owner was deciding how to launch this, IP had just sort of taken root and there was still a lot of analog, but in terms of radar, everything was analog serial, right? So nothing available. And so we went IP, which was weird and not, we were engaging with other radar companies and they didn't understand why we were doing that. But obviously that was the way to go. So first IP, and then we were doing all the processing at the edge. Now that was unheard of in terms of radar. And then we packaged it into this little, hopefully that will come through on the screen here, but this little textbook size box, right? So looks kind of like a Wi-Fi antenna. And you package radar technology in there. You do all the processing in the unit at the edge there, IPs, and you plug it into a PoE switch. And now you've got radar data. I can detect and track you a kilometer away if I need to. That's a little bit less of a comment of an application, but the idea that I can cover a wide space and I can basically plot you on a map, like you're holding a GPS tracker for me as you approach my site or walk through my site, there's a lot of information I can get from that and use just for situational awareness. And I can expand beyond the typical fence perimeter. As we know, there's been events for us, one of the milestone marking events that was tragic in the U.S. was the Metcalf substation incident. I think it was in 2013. But in that case, they shut down the entire substation without ever getting within 50 feet of the perimeter of the fence. And so it really kind of made people think differently about how they need to look at security. And that's great. I can put up my fence systems and we need that and that's wonderful. But we also need other protections, right? And so right, spotter comes into the game. And you're seeing the industry sort of validate that just one from the fact that I'm still here. And spotter has has gone more global. But you also are seeing other radars in the market space that weren't there as well and from big name vendors. The camera cup almost every major camera company now is offering some flavor of radar technology to bring to the table. Awesome. Yeah, and these these wide open space problems were typically expensive, right? If you even if you could get out to the fence, you know, five miles of fence perimeter protection was a super expensive, and it really didn't get you. It only got you once someone was at your fence, which was pretty grim in some cases, right? So the ability to look beyond that, we've always had the race, the response sort of problem, right? And being able to get out there and look at what's coming at your perimeter is super important. Are the I'm guessing that a lot of the early applications were DoD based and, you know, obviously, the airports places with big spaces make sense to me. But have we gone urban? Are we are we into, you know, stadiums? Are we into other places where we need some situational awareness that radar can provide us that we really just can't get because of the other environmental variables? Well, that I love that you asked that question, because a lot of people don't know a lot about radar still. And the ones that do, they may still think, Okay, when I have five kilometers, I'll talk to the radar guys. Well, that's not necessarily the case. And we've also changed that dramatically. In fact, most of the sites we do are I would call them short range radar systems. We're not doing the long range things. We're doing 100 meter radar systems. And they work, we have a product line that is tailored to be operational and provide tracking information in what we call cluttered environments. In the past, if you were to put up a radar in a bunch of metal or in a parking lot, you don't get good information off that it just bounces around, you get a lot of what happens is the noise floor increases. And so you don't get them enough signal to noise on a target and you just get inaccuracy and you know, it wasn't usable. But we've got a product family tailored to provide a very low noise floor, even in a high saturation environment, allowing you to detect and track people walking through cars, for example. So you could be in a parking lot. You mentioned airports and you'd actually think, Okay, yeah, big runways. That's not typically what they actually cover. With spotter RF, they'll put it in critical areas where people aren't supposed to be planting it, nothing's supposed to be there. Parking lots, economy lots, where there's a lot of activity going on, but they want to get a good feel for where ins and outs are, who's loitering around in there. And then in substations, man, that's one of our greatest verticals. I think we provide a huge amount of value there. And in most of them, believe it or not, they're not looking too much beyond the perimeter. It's really the radars are tracking all of that interstitial space, you know, that it could be a 500 meter by 500 meter substation. And if you want to go outside the perimeter, that's great, we'll do that all day long. And we're probably the best ones out there that can do that. But also, once they breach the fence, a lot of these big sites that are remote, they don't have a five minute response from police or anything. And so by the time the police are getting there, they've wandered around for 10 minutes inside the sub and you need to know where they are. You need to know how to engage maybe some lighting on a particular building or a top down speaker to address that individual to get them to stop what they're doing, or they're going to cause harm to the site shut it down or you know, whatever their intention is. And so we actually turn a lot of our smaller radars interior and we're just tracking people as they walk through the site that they're not supposed to be there. And we get you know, eyes on target for the customers in those situations. That's incredible resolution. So I wasn't aware that you're getting sort of that level of detail. My radar, when it was dusty in the Middle East in the sky, like all of a sudden we couldn't see anything. But it was from the 40s or whatever. I'll give the Navy a break on that one. We did our best. But when you're talking about site level resolution, so can you pull enough data to do and force like two man rules and things like that, say a vendor shows up at a site, a substation for example, and he's not supposed to be there alone. Make sure there's two people there and alert on that type of activity. It can, but it probably wouldn't be the primary means by which you should do that. It still if you and I are walking together, we have about a one meter resolution on the system. Okay, if we're right together, we're going to look like one blob. But that's where when I was mentioning our camera partners, we do very tricky things with them where we can put that camera on target. They can run an analytic. One of our big pushes this past year during the pandemic has just been to use camera technology and analytics in another layer of validation. So spotter picks up a target and we assess it to be a human based on a radar analytic. That's great and wonderful. However, is it is it a man or woman? Do they have a blue shirt or red shirt? Beard, no beard. Gun, no gun. Radar can't provide that level of information, right? So that's information that you need. And so when we cue the camera on the target, we can also run a secondary analytic that might classify also as human. And now you've got dual verification on those intrusions. And the camera's on target following it. It's not reliant on video tracking. It's radar based, which is going to be more reliable. So as he's walking through where they are walking through the site, the camera is actually following in the entire time they're there. And you can figure out exactly what they're doing and watch their behaviors. So we are moving down that path as well with our partners. Yeah. And I love that ability to give that feedback to the responders, whoever they are, so they don't walk up on, you know, gunfire or whatever it may be. I saw, I saw you got AI, also capabilities. I don't know if these were native or if you're integrating to other machine learning type of platforms. Give us a little take on where that's at and where you think it's headed. I mean, it's obviously one of the bigger industry buzzwords. And I'm more of, we're in machine learning. We're not really not in AI yet. I kind of questioned those words, but, you know, give us your take on what's possible. Oh, yeah. Well, I always say with enough time and money, anything's possible in this world, right? So that's totally true. I think that's why I went to engineering path. But we do have an, we call it spotter AI. It's machine learning. It actually uses a neural network and AI, like you said, it's kind of a loaded word. You basically see that on everybody's website these days, but you don't really know what that means or what it provides to you as a customer. What it does for us is we basically analyze all of the metadata coming off of a target, which from a radar, there's quite a bit there. I've got an estimation of size there's a noise level that's different from when I'm tracking a human versus a vehicle that might be more reflective as an example, speed, direction of travel and heading. And we base, you know, if I'm, if I'm watching a system with my naked eye, I can, I can watch the target without a camera and probably tell you what it looks like just based on my experience with the system. Well, an AI in this sense, effectively is being trained to understand what it's looking at. Right. And AI's, you know, I don't want anybody to think an AI in any area is a silver bullet because I think we get that a lot. Like, oh, it's got AI. Now my, now my problems are solved, right? We've heard that a lot with, not just with AI, but with other things. AI is fantastic. And for us, it is helping us classify targets more accurately, more effectively. And you give it, you know, that we could do a whole interview on AI. But for us, that's, that's ultimately providing value to our customers because it's controlling the alarm rate. And it's giving them alarms on what they need to see and not, not the excess. Don't need to see that vehicle. Don't need to see that small animal. And so I'm going to use the spotter AI and only classify targets of interest and alarm on those, right? Yeah, I love the accuracy was, has been a problem for our industry, obviously with all the analytics over the years, and then effectiveness, those two, those two words should get any end user engaged in listening to this conversation. Brett, I really appreciate your time today. We may have a minute or so left if you want to throw your, your, your final pitch out there, give some guidance to the industry about spotter RF and what, what we can look forward to in the future. Oh, sure. Well, if you are hearing about radar for the first time, I look us up. I think that you should be considering radar any, any case where you have an area of high value or no one's supposed to be in that vicinity, radar should be something you consider and it can be. It's, it's very affordable. In fact, in many times, it's, it might be the more cost effective solution, even for 100 foot by 100 foot space. We don't have to just be used in large wide areas. That's, that's a more obvious one. But I'd be happy to show and demonstrate anything we can do. Our capabilities are show and tellable. We, when traveling is going on, we'd show up at your door and just show you right there in the parking lot what we can do. We can do that now on zoom just as easily. And we're open to either, either way you prefer to see it these days. Awesome. Thank you so much, folks. Get out there and get engaged with this, this radar detection. It's small. It's compact. A lot of intelligence there. A lot of ways to get engaged. Brad will make it easy for you. Give him a shout. Brad, I really appreciate your time today. Best of luck to you folks. The rest of this year. I hope to see you guys at some of the shows. Definitely see you at GSX, if not sooner. Take care of yourself. Aloha, everybody.