Triangulate source of gunfire

[JasonInRva]

I am interested in using the video / audio recording from multiple Nest cameras in my community to attempt to locate the source of periodic gunfire. I have a good understanding of the math involved in the calculation, but one unknown is the accuracy and consistency of the Nest cam clocks

Obviously these devices are getting their time hacks from a central source, so they should be synchronized. My question is does anyone have any detail about how closely they are synched? If the error rate is in within a few hundred milliseconds, and I can get recordings from a sufficient number of cameras spaced widely-enough apart, I should be able to come up with a pretty good location of the source of the gunfire.

Has anyone else attempted this? Any feedback from Google on how well the clocks are synched between different cams on different accounts?

[mdr2]

Hi JasonInRva.  This is a GREAT idea and what a cool feature especially if GOOGLE were to support it.

But I'm thinking you will never get the answer from anyone inside Google on this.   

I was also thinking could try out your approach by going down the street and honking your horn?  Then going down the street in a different direction and honking again.  But I think the problem is you can't see when event happens with resolution beyond 1 second.  

... please keep posting here if you have any headway on this.

[JasonInRva]

The time stamp on Nest recordings only resolves down to a single second, but I can import the video into an editor and extrapolate the time with much more granularity since the recordings are temporally linear. I can’t really think of a reason it won’t work. 

Good idea with the horn honking. Lightning also provides an excellent opportunity to test this approach since it contains both sound as well as a bright, easily-recognized visual event. 

[Brad]

Hey there, JasonInRva.

Sounds like a really cool idea, and project to start. However, I am afraid there wouldn't be anything that I would be able to assist you with here. All I can do is collect your feedback if you wish, and send it forward. I understand that is not helpful, but what you're wanting to do would not be a possibility for me. 

Best Regards,

Brad.

[GarrettDS]

Hey folks,
It looks like we haven't heard back from the OP so I'm going to go ahead and lock the thread. If you have any further questions or concerns, feel free to create a new thread.

Have a great day,
Garrett DS