“Many users get one camera, and they love it, and then suddenly, you know, they've got a dozen more right behind it. And it just becomes another tool of the trade to really help you excel at your job. And what we do is just make it easy for you to do that by making everything turnkey and simple.”

-- Roger Yarrow, COO of TrueLook Construction Cameras

Job site theft plagues the construction industry, causing monumental losses every year. TrueLook, a construction camera business out of North Carolina offers a feature-rich solution to this constant problem. Listen in as we interview TrueLook COO Roger Yarrow to get the details on how construction cameras can be more than just surveillance.

Roger shares his start in the con-tech field, noteworthy projects TrueLook has monitored, and a glimpse into the not-so distant future of construction cameras. Find out how TrueLook can help protect, monitor, and document your work.

Topics discussed in this interview:

- Roger’s background

- Discovering a passion for technology and turning it into a career

- The early days of TrueLook

- The impact of job site theft

- What does TrueLook offer?

- How can live viewing help your business?

- How do TrueLook cameras deter theft?

- What’s the next step for cameras on the construction site?

- Creating an adaptable product for rugged environments

- Details on TrueLook and their offerings

- Rapid fire questions

Improve your job site with TrueLook cameras. Visit truelook.com to learn how a construction camera can help your business.

This episode of Construction Disruption is sponsored by TrueLook, the easiest way to view, secure, and document your jobsite. Get your free, no obligation quote at TrueLook.com.

For more Construction Disruption, listen on Apple Podcasts or YouTube

Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn

This episode was produced by Isaiah Industries, Inc.

Todd Miller: Hey, Ryan, we have some pretty exciting news. I think Construction Disruption now has our first ever paid sponsor. There's this company that approached us about getting in front of our audience, and we're so pleased to have them now as a sponsor.

Ryan Bell: That's right, Todd. That company is TrueLook, and what they offer is pretty awesome. They've made it incredibly easy to view, secure, and document job sites with their construction cameras.

Todd Miller: You know, a lot of times I think we think of construction cameras as, you know, just being there for security. But with TrueLook, they also have features like custom time-lapse videos and remote live viewing.

Ryan Bell: Yeah. You know, a term we throw around a lot here on Construction Disruption is game-changing and TrueLook certainly falls into that category. Being able to document your progress on job sites and then go back and show your clients that high-quality, in-progress video is certainly something that I would call game-changing.

Todd Miller: You know, I absolutely agree. And at TrueLook, they also have unlimited users, free forever media storage, 24/7 support, no-contract service plans, lifetime equipment warranties, and no limits on 4G LTE data transmission.

Ryan Bell: And they integrate seamlessly with project management tools like Procore and Autodesk.

Todd Miller: You know, I don't think anyone makes construction cameras as hassle-free or feature-rich as TrueLook. Anyone can go and schedule a free, no-obligation quote at truelook.com. That's truelook.com.

Intro/Outro: Welcome to the Construction Disruption podcast, where we uncover the future of design, building, and remodeling.

Seth Heckaman: I'm Seth Heckman of Isaiah Industries, a manufacturer of specialty metal roofing and other building materials. And today, my co-host is Ryan Bell. Ryan, how are you doing today?

Ryan Bell: Hey, Seth, I am doing great for two main reasons. And it's not because it's Friday.

Seth Heckaman: No, two additional reasons.

Ryan Bell: Two additional reasons. Football started finally, and it's not 90 degrees outside anymore. So I have a smile on my face.

Seth Heckaman: Yes, that was a good Chiefs-Lions game to kick off the season last night. And yes, it's only 89 degrees and 90% humidity here in beautiful western Ohio, but awesome. I'm doing well, too. And really looking forward to our conversation and guest today on Construction Disruption. I think it's going to bring some great information to us and the rest in the construction industry. Really, because, you know, we find in our own business and in the business, all of our customers, you know, everyone is incredibly busy down to the wire constantly. The stakes just keep getting higher and higher for whatever whatever we're working on. And so no one can afford lost time equipment or materials on projects. And today, our guest, I think, can help us with that. He is a long-time expert in construction, jobsite cameras, and security. So we'll be talking to him about the role that cameras can play for a construction company, as well as how technology is driving positive advancements in this area. So our guest is Roger Yarrow, general manager and chief operating officer of TrueLook Construction Cameras based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. TrueLook has been a great sponsor of Construction Disruption, the first sponsor of Construction Disruption. So we are very grateful for that and is the easiest way to view, secure, and document your valuable construction job sites. Roger, welcome to Construction Disruption. Thank you so much for your sponsorship and being here. A pleasure having you.

Roger Yarrow: Yeah. Seth, Ryan Thanks for having me on. We love to be a sponsor and we definitely love to be number one. So the first to anything, that makes us happy and I'm also very happy it's Friday too, so definitely glad to be here chatting with you too.

Seth Heckaman: There you go, yep. First, best, favorite, you get all of the qualifiers as our sponsor here. So let's start. Would love just to learn some more about you, Roger. You have a degree in Computer Science from Rochester Institute of Technology. I am the grandson of an alumnus of RIT. So we have kind of that in common. But after that, you worked at Xerox, IBM, and some other leaders in the technology space. Tell us a bit about your path in technology that's brought you to TrueLook then in 2005.

Roger Yarrow: Yeah. So I'm a self-professed nerd, basically a child of the eighties. So I grew up watching my dad build computers, put computers together. You know, I would sit on the chair in the basement and get the 'look but not touch'. Eventually I was allowed to touch and I basically started as a self-taught programmer. I caught the bug early. I was selling shareware programs at age 12, playing, you know, video games and just kind of enjoying this new thing, computers that were available to us. I sort of just followed that trajectory my whole life, that took me to college, where I did do the computer science degree. RIT is is MIT, but with the R, we like to say. So we have a lot of brick. The whole campus was made out of bricks, so it's not very tech looking. But I guess I got a good foundation there on how to do anything computer-y. You know, a lot of my jobs at these bigger organizations, IBM and Xerox, they were all about automation, how to improve tasks, how to make things more efficient and just how to improve processes. And that is something that I really enjoy doing. And I love that with technology, it just lets us improve things. I sort of bounced around between some of those larger companies, IBM and Xerox. Didn't really find something I liked. It was corporate environment, not really for me. I like just kind of innovating and doing things and, you know, those environments weren't really helping me excel. So I sort of bounced around and then just landed in this TrueLook opportunity, which we'll talk about in a bit. And then, you know, in addition to just kind of being a super nerd, I like to balance that out in the opposite with outdoor stuff. I'm a huge camper. I love mountain biking, hiking, waterfalls, anything that gets me to nature, just the opposite of tech. I'm sure there's nature tech somewhere, but I'm not a nature tech guy. I just love that fresh air. So I will take that any chance I get. And if there's live music or travel or beaches or mountains, I'm there as well. So it's good to have that kind of, you know, robotic part of myself and then the organic side. And that's sort of how, you know, that's me in a nutshell.

Seth Heckaman: Mm hmm. Awesome. So, yeah, you get enough screen time during the day. I think we, most of us do if we're in tech or otherwise, so. And yeah, you're in a great spot for that. I've always said that North Carolina would probably be in my top five relocation options. You got mountains and ocean and everything close by, so a good fit for you. So yeah, tell us more then that career in tech, you know, using technology to improve things, it seems like TrueLook is just a continuation of that for you in your career. But what attracted you to TrueLook? Curious, did you see, you know, kind of foresee this opportunity to advance and kind of disrupt job site security and documentation?

Roger Yarrow: So TrueLook, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time, so I'll just count that up to luck and destiny and all the good things that happen to people when they're lucky. So I did move to North Carolina to take an opportunity on a product that was a traditional video surveillance product. And this is right when there was a transition from analog cameras to IP network cameras. So that's sort of where I came in. My background prior had just been with Web hosting, Systems Administration, just anything with, you know, managing data and infrastructure. And with the advent of IP-based network cameras that brought a new layer of complexity to these implementations where you needed a lot of tech infrastructure networking to support, you know, this new camera tech that had just come out. TrueLook was sort of a forgotten, abandoned sub-product of this organization where it was just sort of left in disrepair. And it was just a side project. And I took it under my wing and sort of adopted it, and it went from being this tool that just provided connectivity between webcams and and the Internet. You know, the Internet was relatively new at that time. So it's a big deal to get a camera and get it online. And I was like, this is awesome. This is way better than a closed security system. So we sort of just messed around with the concept of what value can a webcam bring to the Internet, what can you do with the camera? And we did a lot with media and entertainment where a camera would go on a major event and, you know, people wanted to get exposure. And so a lot of truly cameras originally were at things like NBA Final Four or even on the base at the South Pole and in Africa or at a NASA launch event. You know, anything where you want to get eyes on the event. And we discovered that that was awesome and people were really into it. But what we then discovered is a lot of that media, you know, the owner wanted to control it so that tech was brought in house and rather than saying, let's hire someone to put this event online, let's do it ourselves and figure out a way to monetize it and keep it to ourselves. But throughout all this journey of discovering how do we use IP cameras and how do we get them online, we found a special fit in the construction industry where they needed eyes on projects. They needed a way to see them, document them and have a record of proof going back in time for the work. And so that's sort of how TrueLook was born. It was just a byproduct of what does video surveillance get you and what does a camera online get you? And I really loved everything about it because, you know, it tied into what I like, which is the visual aspect of it. When I went to college, I minored in computer graphics. I grew up playing video games. And so looking at a camera, it's basically like just playing a video game. In real life, you're seeing the world on your screen and that just drew me into it. And it evolved into lots of data and managing things. And that really fit with my tech background in just systems and web hosting. And that's sort of how right at this turning point of, you know, iPhones coming out and cellular Internet becoming a thing, all these pieces just fit. And so, you know, I had this this idea and we had the bits of technology. And at that point, we just sort of came up with this idea that construction really had a need for this kind of like convergence of pieces of technology.

Seth Heckaman: Well, absolutely. Interesting how yeah, you're working on that tech and and developing it and kind of figuring out what the applications and best applications are going to be forward as you go. So that's a neat story. So yeah, and definitely those of us in the industry, it resonates with us that need for having eyes on the ground and being able to monitor anything. Tell us, do you have any facts or statistics on jobsite theft or vandalism and how it's impacting our industry as you've dug into that and been researching it?

Roger Yarrow: Yeah. So TrueLook originally just evolved as, you know, we're a market leader in professional construction camera systems. And what we did originally is we did great, great work in time-lapse photography and then we added live streaming video and then we added security recording and now we even have professional monitoring of that security feed. And what this basically is all just the natural progression of the needs of the industry. And security is a huge part of the business now because it's a problem. There's a lot of theft going on and a lot of our customers pick up the phone and call us asking for security. That's how a lot of people find their way to TrueLook. We did some internal surveys to our customers. There's a lot of trade material out there about theft in the industry. But if you're looking for some some shocking numbers, basically there's estimates by the National Equipment Register that up to $1,000,000,000 in equipment is stolen every year.

Seth Heckaman: Goodness gracious.

Roger Yarrow: Yeah, the number one target of that theft is construction and work sites, followed by like car dealerships and then storage facilities. So these are locations where stuff is just sitting around and there's nobody there and they're easy targets. And the fact that construction sites are first on that list screams opportunity.

Seth Heckaman: Oh, absolutely. No question. So, and obviously, stopping that from happening just saves everybody time, energy, you know, time, money, energy, angst. And it keeps things going smoothly. So, you know, and that makes total sense. But beyond security, what other ways are your cameras helping folks? It seems like, you know, it can help, you know, maybe documentation, time-lapse of what's being done for, you know, reference and additional, you know, documentation or what are the other benefits that TrueLook is offering?

Roger Yarrow: Yeah. So there's quite a few. And so like our key components are that live viewing, the time-lapse, and the security. And users will come to us usually seeking one of those things and then discover the camera can do multiple things and they get value out of those other services. So there's some immediate, you know, direct ROIs that you can get with a camera. Obviously there is reduced theft, just meaning either you're going to deter someone with that camera being there or you're going to catch them and get a faster resolution, whether that's an insurance claim, a police report or actual police response. So, you know, theft and having a camera, those don't really need much of a explanation. They speak for themselves. But another huge value add is monitoring progress. And that's real-time watching your site. And we saw definitely during COVID when there was a lot less travel, cameras were very, very valuable. A project manager, travel was done so a project manager would have to remotely manage their site. They couldn't go on property anymore and you could basically get your whole team on the camera to look at the site and make decisions. So what a camera with that live viewing does is it helps kind of everybody just operate more efficiently. You're gonna be able to make decisions without having to travel or wait for someone to see something. You're going to be able to collaborate in real time. You're going to catch mistakes before they happen. We have a great case study on our site. Someone caught a $50,000 mistake right before it happened. So, and that's because of a camera. They were watching and they said, Stop, you know, something bad is about to happen. So that live viewing, just being there and seeing, you know, delivery comes in, you can direct it from the comfort of your desk. So there's a lot of value in being able to see your job site decisions and reducing rework. On top of that, there's the, you know, the the tail end where you have documentation now. You have as much imagery as you want, you have as much video as you want. And what can you do with that? Well, you know, CYA, we'll say. If you have a dispute, you have something you can refer back to as evidence. If you have a weather delay, you can justify that. It's either weather data or real imagery showing your entire site was underwater. You can also use it as training tools. So, you know, something interesting happens, you have it captured, whether it's a cool event, an accident or anything of between, you have footage of that and that's valuable for either quickly resolving an insurance claim or protecting yourself from liability or using as a teaching tool for the next time it goes around. There's more things you can do, like maybe minimize waste. You can see something is sitting there unused and just hanging out equipment that's been in one spot for a month. You know, it helps keep you clued in to the pulse of your job site. So you have all this footage to either look at or go back and review to make better decisions. And the next time you work on your project. And then of course, there's other fun stuff, like if you have time lapses, you're you're, you're making time-lapse movies and those become powerful tools. You can use them for community outreach. You can engage the public and share the progress of your job. You can provide movies to owners or other stakeholders who want to know what's going on. And, you know, in a weekly, weekly check in, it's easy to just pull up the camera and be like, here's the progress we've made this week. Here's the movie showing the differences between, you know, last month and now. So having documentation, there's all these different ways you can use it beyond just security. And, you know, we got robbed, that kind of stuff.

Ryan Bell: What you just said there kind of made me think of something. And maybe this question's not relevant, but is there a way to take that live feed and embed it in a website or online or a live stream too, like a social platform, like what you were saying about showing the public what's going on? Is that functionality there or is there?

Roger Yarrow: Absolutely.

Ryan Bell: Is there privacy?

Roger Yarrow: Yeah, yeah. So sharing is is a huge part of the platform and you know, we want people to engage and collaborate. So sharing is collaboration and you have many people working on a project. You want to share information because that obviously has a million pros to it. Specifically to your question, yes, you could put the live video feed on your website. You could put just specific images, you could do just specific movies. And so, you know, for a marketing organization, you know, say you're building apartments or homes, you could use that footage to help showcase your project for a builder or a GC. That footage and movies and video feed is now part of their portfolio. We do some cool stuff, like maybe an environmental study where where there's a live feed of, you know, things like a bald eagle nest nearby a site. And so that's able to be shared. And so, you know, we're building with nature in mind and not disturbing, you know, this other animal living here. So there's there's definitely all these different ways you can share the content from the camera to a variety of means. And then, of course, the grand finale is I built this great project and I want to post it on social and I've got this cool movie with music from beginning to end, and it's just a great way to finish off a build.

Seth Heckaman: Very cool. So I have to ask Roger as the tech guy, have you seen the HBO show Silicon Valley? Did you ever watch that?

Roger Yarrow: Yes, there are many, many, many parallels I can throw out of that.

Seth Heckaman: So. Well, that's what I keep thinking of here, is where they have that eagle's nest cam that the zookeeper gets up there and then he falls and it turns into a camera watching something else. But anyway, that's a good YouTube clip. If someone can look up, that's a little funny. But anyway, so. Great ways to leverage that, you know, that footage and you know, not just cover your bases for the job site, but turn it into a marketing opportunity and beyond. I'm curious what TrueLook offers the technology. Is there functionality beyond video? Is there, you know, alert features? If a theft is going on in action, does the camera start blaring a Rottweiler bark or anything like that to deter it real time or an alarm function of notifying the authorities or anything like that?

Roger Yarrow: Yup, absolutely. So the camera is a deterrent in its own. You know, someone's going to see that camera and think twice. And then on the software side, you know, all of our cameras, 24/7 intelligence, security. So the camera's always recording video 24/7 HD, 30 day loop. It's always available for you to fetch on demand if anything happens. So that's like the base level. The next step is you can then add, we have an additional service where humans are now monitoring your video feed. And basically the camera using AI is watching after hours for you. You will set a schedule, you know, Monday through Friday from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. weekends, whatever you need. And you can basically the camera will then watch the site for you, identify negative activities, someone on site, a vehicle, whatever you need, and it's going to send a clip to human monitoring who will then make the decision. Is this a threat? It'll then alert you as needed and then we can also dispatch police. So now and instead of you being responsible for your site security or having to pay for a security guard, this optional service that you can add with TrueLook lets someone verify clips reported by the camera suspicious and react according with emergency services. On top of that, we have a strobe and siren feature that pairs well with that service. So you're going to have a strobe that's basically blinking blue every 15 seconds, let's say. And that is another deterrent. You know, if your site is large and you don't intend saying you don't have a guard on site, you have this blinking light indicating there's a camera there. So that strobe is another deterrent. But when that human monitoring service determines there is a valid threat, they can trigger the strobe that goes with that siren. And basically it's a loud car alarm going off, you know, instantaneously triggered by human to further deter anybody on site. So we do have these additional hardware capabilities, lights and sirens and more stuff coming very soon where a human is making the judgment call to either scare some away and or call emergency services. So it's definitely some options with us on that.

Seth Heckaman: Awesome. You mentioned other functionality coming. Looking into your crystal ball what's next? What is TrueLook working on and dreaming about that could be the the next level of the evolution?

Roger Yarrow: Yeah you know some stuff is secret but obviously you know the future for construction especially there's a lot of technology coming out. You know, we like to look at the job site. Our expertise is job site visibility and that's documenting, seeing your project. And we, our cameras are meant to be around or maybe inside your project or build. But in the future, you know obviously drones, body-worn cameras, 360 cameras, you're going to see more and more kinds of cameras, camera on every piece of equipment moving, camera on every container. Just anything on the site is going to have a camera. Additionally, it's going to have a sensor. There's going to be some kind of IoT network of construction where everything is tracked. You know, we have sensors you can put in a concrete floor and it sits there relaying data while the concrete cures. We don't have those, but the industry does. But you're going to start to see that on every aspect of a build, every piece of equipment and cameras and sensors. Those are all going to be incorporated on a platform of some kind. So you can get you know, we have digital twins now. Everything is a BIM model and then the physical version. But you're going to have more data in the physical build to map back to that digital twin you've created. And pretty soon these sensors and devices are going to be part of the building and the project long after the construction is completed. They'll live inside the building, they'll report data back, and that that data is going to be used to improve future builds. So what we're going to see in the future is, is all this data coming out of all these different little doodads and gizmos and widgets that are part of what goes into a construction project and the output of it. Where TrueLook fits in is we're going to be really good at helping you see what that data looks like. So we're starting with cameras. We're going to have cameras everywhere and then we're going to help you. What can you learn from all this data you've collected? There's so much visual data. What is looking at a picture tell you? Not much. But what does looking at 3000 pictures over a day tell you? Maybe a little more. And then what is looking at 3 million pictures over three months of construction tell you? Maybe a lot. So the future holds a lot more media and data. But on top of that, you're going to see a lot more insights into what you're capturing because, you know, billions of pictures that we've collected over our lifetime have a lot of insights in them. And so that's what the future holds, is how do we communicate those insights to you and then how do we help construction operate more efficiently and get to a better place where you have immediate insight and immediate known action to that insight?

Seth Heckaman: Well, fantastic. And yes, look forward to how all that data, what that data will reveal. As opportunities for improvement and efficiency, safety, profitability. You had great, great forecast for all of us in this industry. You had mentioned earlier that a case study of the customer who caught a $50,000 mistake that obviously had a huge impact on their bottom line, or caught a, you know, before it was made. So they prevented a $50,000 mistake. So obviously had a huge impact on the bottom line for that project for them. What other case studies or stories of, yeah, TrueLook out in the real world and what it's meaning for your customers?

Roger Yarrow: Yeah, we are. A lot of our success comes on the security side. We regularly have arrests of trespassers and vandals, obviously a lot of material theft. We have some great footage of someone just backing up their truck to a construction trailer and literally trying to drag the entire trailer away. Didn't go well for them, but, you know, entertaining to watch on film, you know, So there is tons of success on that side. And we've had some cool things we've documented in the past, you know, right when I started with TrueLook, we there was the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge. So originally when you drive across Hoover Dam, that's all you could do was drive across Hoover Dam. I actually lived in Las Vegas briefly, and the only way to get there was to drive over the dam. But then shortly after that, there was construction of the bypass bridge across the Colorado River on the river side of the dam. And we were fortunate enough to be the ones to document that project. It was a pretty cool technical lift because there was no cellular coverage out there, was a lot of like radio waves and transmitting the imagery in very complex ways in a pretty harsh environment. So that was a really cool project. Our cameras have been used in unique ways. We had cameras on an icebreaker going through the Northwest Passage because they just wanted to document that. And then all sorts of other interesting ways people use the camera just to document public events, engage with their community and again, like monitoring wetlands and wildlife, these are all unique, interesting applications of TrueLook technology. So we're seeing, you know, we're really good at you need to see somewhere where you don't have a lot of infrastructure and that's typically a construction site. It's green and you just need to go in and start seeing. And that's where TrueLook really shines. And so some of these other cases where where we've excelled or just someone needs visibility in an area with zero infrastructure and that's our sweet spot. So I guess finding more of these unique things would definitely be helpful to the business. And then finally, we just completed the National World War Two Museum in New Orleans just opened and we were fortunate enough to be working with the builder on that one to document that project. So I think that's another great case study on our website. I would recommend people check out.

Seth Heckaman: Awesome. Yeah, we'll have to go read up on that. So for the contractors out there who are hearing about your services and products and definitely are starting to envision ways that you could be of help to them, what does the process look like for them to get set up with TrueLook and start getting those benefits?

Roger Yarrow: Yeah, so we make it very easy. Basically TrueLook is a turnkey system where everything just works right out of the box. So everything's built and assembled right here in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. So we're fully US-based and we'll ship all over the US, Canada, and beyond. And basically, like I said, turnkey. So you're going to get a camera system. If you don't have power to plug it in, we have solar for that as well. Basically, you just fire up the camera and walk away. It'll come online automatically. It has a built in cellular modem. So you don't need any connectivity, no IT knowledge, nothing. You literally just hang the camera, point it at what you want, hit go, and leave. It's going to come online automatically and it's going to be accessible. Obviously, like any software tool, browser or mobile app, you would just log in with the credentials we give you and you'll be looking at the camera within 5 minutes from powering it up from there. You know, we have a great team who can train you to support you. And then on top of that, you know, while we make it very easy, very turnkey and everything's in the box, we also offer full service installation. So the simplicity of our system and then we also make it very standardized, meaning you're not really going to have to make many decisions in the buying process. Almost all our cameras have a standardized feature set. You basically, you just have to choose between which kind of camera you want, which we can guide you with. And then it's unlimited. And we love to say unlimited, meaning you only build it once. So you need to use TrueLook as much as possible. And that's unlimited time-lapses, unlimited users, unlimited video. You know, we don't want to get in the way of you succeeding, so we want you to use the platform as much as possible. We back everything up with the lifetime hardware warranty, money back guarantee. And then another important part is we have free forever storage of your data. And so what that means is, you know, years later, even if you've come and gone, you can come back and refer to your data if you need to for any reason, just for historical purposes or a dispute or any of the other reasons I mentioned. Like your data is always safe with us forever. And so what we find is many users get one camera and they love it, and then suddenly, you know, they've got a dozen more right behind it. And it just becomes another tool of the trade to really help you excel at your job. And and what we do is just make it easy for you to do that by making everything turnkey and simple.

Seth Heckaman: That's awesome. So yeah, that was a question I was sitting here getting ready to ask. So if someone wants to start with one camera, it's just a matter of buying one camera and then scaling from there.

Roger Yarrow: Absolutely, yeah. You'll see projects with one camera or a project with ten cameras. Every customer, every user, they get a dashboard and it's going to show all their active cameras, all their completed projects, and you can easily switch between them, share a specific camera or invite people to your project. So all the normal access that you would expect.

Seth Heckaman: I mean, is there a wide range of models on the camera or is it pretty more just a few sizes kind of covers all the bases or what does that look like?

Roger Yarrow: Sure, so we typically just have two kinds of cameras. There is a fixed camera, which is usually going to be a very high resolution camera that you just point at one spot. And then there is a robotic pan tilt zoom camera, which is actually mechanical. And that camera can move up or down, left, right, zoom in and zoom out. And that gives you the ability to really like zoom in 30+X on specific things and view a very large area. The trade off is you may not have as high of a resolution option on that kind of camera, but depending on what you're building and how close the camera is and where it's going, we can guide you on is a fixed camera or a ptz camera of better benefit to you? Beyond that, you know, there's just minor variations on resolution or maybe the power source.

Seth Heckaman: Awesome. And then that monitoring functionality, that TrueLook offers, is that just a subscription? That's an add-on turn on and off depending on if that's enabled.

Roger Yarrow: Yep, absolutely. TrueLook is a subscription model. So you're going to buy the camera and just move it from project to project. So you know, there's cameras out there that have been alive for ten plus years and that customer is still moving it from job to job and they just turn it on when they need it and turn it off when they're done. You know, no contracts. Again, everything's simple and easy. And then if you want to add on that other service, it's just, Hey, I want that.

Seth Heckaman: Awesome. Well, as I'm curious, that's yeah, tons of great information and definitely great value to many of the players in our industry, you know, make our lives easier and solve all sorts of problems. But here's going back to to you personally, personally a little bit what you would say, what your advice would be for someone with that tech or tech background, maybe other self-professed nerds who might be thinking about something that gets them construction-adjacent or maybe even more ingrained in our industry? What your advice would be or thoughts.

Roger Yarrow: Advice for fellow nerds? That's a tough one. As a nerd, you know, you think you're pretty smart. I like to think I'm pretty smart. One thing I learned on my journey, it's not what you know, it's who you know. So definitely, no matter how smart you think you are, you've got to know some of the right people to help you succeed. I'm fortunate enough that I've met some really equally smart people who helped me succeed on my journey with TrueLook and in back to, you know, my origin story. I was just in the right place at the right time. I knew what I liked, which was this automation in the video and in the Internet. And and and I just was like, I like these things. And I found an opportunity that sort of encompassed a lot of the things I like. And it just worked out for me. And along the way, you know, my smarts got me halfway there and then the people I knew got me the rest of the way there. And if you're looking, you know, specifically in construction tech, this is a relatively new field. You know, ten years ago, not a lot of tech options; today, tons. So you find an area where you have interest. For me, it was just the graphics, the gaming, the vision, the, you know, the web aspect of it. But find an area you love and, you know, figure out where you can fit into and add value. There's so many areas like design and supply chain and field tools and and modeling and mapping and even financial and project management. There's a lot of areas where there's room to introduce something that produces efficiency, adds value. And a lot of the tech tools that are available now in construction. Some of these are going to become industry standard. So, you know, if you look at the industry, we're even seeing it with cameras. There is builder's risk insurance where there's very stringent surveillance requirements to get funding to build your project. And so, you know, we're lucky that we're sort of leaders in camera technology and the industry is now demanding cameras. So I would say look where the industry is heading. Figure out, you know, what do I like and what does the industry need? And then, you know, jump on it because the solution you come up with might actually become a requirement, a standard, you know, something that everybody needs. And if you're the guy, you know, providing it, kudos to you.

Seth Heckaman: Yeah, huge opportunity for sure. So great advice. And so thank you, Roger. This has been super informative and and interesting here and all that you and the TrueLook team are doing for our industry. Thanks so much. And I guess we're close to what we call the business end of things in this conversation. But is there anything else we haven't covered or touched on that you would like to make sure we do before we wrap up?

Roger Yarrow: No, you know, we're we're based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. So and we service the whole U.S., obviously, if you're interested or curious, we have an amazing team of account executives who would be happy to help you and educate you with a lot of resources on our website. And we would invite you to come and visit our office. We're very proud of what we've built. You know, TrueLook is about 90 strong right now and everybody here is awesome and happy to help. So, you know, we would love to work with anybody who's interested. And of course, you know, we're glad to be working with Construction Disruption and, you know, participating and just helping grow what con-tech is becoming.

Seth Heckaman: Awesome and happy to help. Sounds like a great team. And yeah, everyone we've been interacting with at TrueLook has been great. So before we wrap up, Roger, though, I need to ask you if you would like to participate in what we call our rapid fire question round. So we like to finish out with our guests with seven questions. That range may range from silly to a little more serious, but just let our listeners get to know you all the more here before we wrap up. Are you willing to be subject to our rapid fire questions?

Roger Yarrow: Yes, just make me look good no matter what you do.

Seth Heckaman: All right, you got it. So, Ryan, let's alternate asking these. You want to ask the first one?

Ryan Bell: Sure, I would love to. Question number one. Would you rather be able to speak ten languages or talk to animals?

Roger Yarrow: Animals all the way.

Seth Heckaman: Really.

Ryan Bell: Nice.

Roger Yarrow: Yes, I have I have two cats and actually a new puppy. He just turned 11 weeks old. He is a psychopath. And I would love to understand what is on his mind.

Ryan Bell: What type of dog is is?

Roger Yarrow: He is an Australian labradoodle.

Ryan Bell: Okay, so we have an Aussie doodle too. That is. She's crazy. She's actually has to be medicated. She takes Trazodone and Prozac, now.

Roger Yarrow: I feel like I might be doing that after this puppy.

Ryan Bell: It makes a huge difference with her. But we could not. We, we almost had to get rid of her because she was just so psychotic and just would run around nonstop, just barking at nothing nonstop all day. So the medicine helps.

Roger Yarrow: Oh, okay. Well, we're not there yet, and actually an Australian labradoodle. It took me a while to learn this is not an Aussie doodle. It's actually two different breeds. So maybe, maybe I'll be okay. But I still want to be able to talk to them to just kind of understand.

Ryan Bell: I'm with you there.

Seth Heckaman: Okay. Our Australian shepherd is nuts too. We have a puppy who's a little bit older, but yeah, well, I may have to start slipping him some Prozac, but anyway. Slipping one of us some Prozac, like you said. Roger. Question number two. If you could travel back in time, what period would you go to?

Roger Yarrow: That's tough. I'm on the spot. I wish, you know, I don't have a good answer. This is a total fail in my spot. The eighties keep coming to mind. I was a little too young to fully embrace the eighties. You know, part of me wants to be a child of the seventies, you know, free love and all that good stuff. But I'm just going to land on the eighties. I feel like that's when a lot of the cool, fun, retro stuff that everybody loves now was at its prime. And so I just wish I was a little older during that time period to enjoy it, so I wouldn't really be traveling that much further back in time, maybe just 5 to 6 years earlier. Yeah, pretty, pretty lame answer on that one, I feel like.

Seth Heckaman: If Todd was here, he would tell you that was not at all a lame answer because Todd is plenty old enough to have fully embraced the eighties and he has a 87 Fox body Mustang with white leather interior, red exterior back in the back of our building. I think a Tears for Fears cassette tape in the tape player, too.

Roger Yarrow: So, you know, that all sounds really good to me. I was just a little shy of being able to capture all that.

Seth Heckaman: There you go. So, yeah, that sounds fun.

Ryan Bell: Okay, question number three. What's your favorite carnival food?

Roger Yarrow: Uh, I would say I love a hot dog. I just love hot dogs. And we'll go with hot dogs.

Seth Heckaman: Okay. Question number four. If you were given the opportunity to fly into space, would you take it?

Roger Yarrow: The younger me would have in a heartbeat. My 18th birthday present was to go skydiving. I look back at that now and there is just no way I can do that now. I don't know what part of my nerve I've lost, but I'm a pretty, pretty big sissy now, I feel like. We just went riding on rollercoasters not too long ago. I did not enjoy that. I did it, but I was not having fun. So I just don't, I don't think I'd enjoy going into space anymore right now. 20 year old me in a heartbeat, you know. Older me? No.

Ryan Bell: Did you like skydiving when you did it at 18?

Roger Yarrow: So we got like, the full package. I had video cassette tape of that. You know, VHS, if anybody knows what that is. You know, with Shook Me all Night Long music playing. And it's just great. You can see on the film, right as I step out of the plane, my eyes roll back on my head and I almost passed out. And we did like a forward flip out of the plane. And once that initial trauma was over, it was amazing. But like the process and the the anxiety building up to step out of the plane, all of that was just absolute terror. So it was enjoyable. But I guess the first step was a doozy.

Ryan Bell: I'm sure.

Seth Heckaman: My wife went skydiving the same day her first time flying. It was the same experience. Her first time in a plane, she jumped out of the plane. I can't imagine that.

Ryan Bell: That's impressive.

Seth Heckaman: Quite the combo.

Roger Yarrow: Yeah. All the angles were covered.

Ryan Bell: What if she would have been up there and been like, I don't even like planes?

Seth Heckaman: I know.

Ryan Bell: That's risky.

Seth Heckaman: She's fearless.

Ryan Bell: Question number five. What do you consider to be the most boring thing ever?

Roger Yarrow: Oh, jeez.

Ryan Bell: That's a hard one.

Roger Yarrow: Yeah, that, that's tough. You guys may not like this, and probably the general audience may not, but professional sports. I really just have no interest. I'll go, you know, I'll humor it. But like, I just have zero interest, so it may not be boring. Sports can be very exciting, don't get me wrong. But it's I'm just not into it. So I don't know if that's, if boring is the right word, but that's the only answer I got right now.

Ryan Bell: That works.

Seth Heckaman: All right. Question number six. Good one for the outdoorsman. What's your ideal outside temperature?

Roger Yarrow: Well, I'm going to go as, let's say, about 56 degrees in the evening after the sun is set when I'm in front of a campfire.

Seth Heckaman: There you go, perfect.

Ryan Bell: Final question, and I'm hoping you have a great answer for this. Being a tech guy, is there a product or service that you've purchased recently that you would consider life changing?

Roger Yarrow: Recently purchased. Interesting. Oh, boy. I don't have an answer on deck. I do regularly say I think anything Google does is like one of the greatest tech things ever. Like, I'm a huge Google proponent and at TrueLook we use all Google everything. Just the impact Google tech has had on the world is is unmeasurable almost. Something I've bought recently would be a backup camera for my RV and that actually that was life changing. Instead of having to listen to my wife and I yell at each other constantly while I'm backing in, I can just use the camera. So it was an add-on wifi backup camera.

Ryan Bell: That's life changing for sure.

Roger Yarrow: How about you guys? Any good recent tech purchases you'd recommend?

Ryan Bell: Gosh, see, we're not good at these questions when you throw them back at us.

Roger Yarrow: The tables have turned. Same questions, go.

Ryan Bell: Well, we just bought a new dishwasher with a third rack, which our previous one had this third rack, but it is the largest third rack dishwasher available and it's incredible. We took out the third rack on our previous dishwasher. Never used it, but this one we love. So that's going to be life-changing for us.

Roger Yarrow: And I can agree with that. Like, dishwashers are where it's at.

Seth Heckaman: The most important thing in the kitchen. Well, awesome. Roger, thank you again, this has been a lot of fun and certainly informative for us and the audience about what all TrueLook can help the construction industry with. For folks who want to get in touch with TrueLook and start the conversation on getting some cameras set up, what's the best way to do that?

Roger Yarrow: Yeah I would recommend, go to truelook.com, T-R-U-E-L-O-O-K. You can click, call, everything's right there. A lot of information and a lot of videos to get you started. Maybe my information is on the website, feel free to reach out directly. Anybody here is happy to help, so truelook.com.

Seth Heckaman: Well thank you again Roger and thank you our listeners for tuning in to this very special episode of Construction Disruption with Roger Yarrow of TrueLook Construction Cameras. Please watch for future episodes of our podcast. We are always blessed with great guests, and if you would, don't forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or YouTube. Until the next time we're together, keep on disrupting and challenging designers, builders, and remodelers to better ways of doing things. And don't forget to have a positive impact on all you can. Thanks so much. Take care and God bless. Until the next episode of Construction Disruption, this is Isaiah Industries signing off.

Intro/Outro: This podcast is produced by Isaiah Industries, a manufacturer of specialty metal roofing and other building products.