Intelligence infrastructure
for corrections.
Opticon is a distributed IoT sensor fusion platform that augments correctional staff capacity through continuous, passive monitoring of housing units. Multi-modal sensor nodes — integrated into existing light fixtures and utility chase closets — deliver real-time vital signs verification, acoustic threat classification, contraband communications detection, and behavioral pattern analysis.
Designed by a founder with eleven years of corrections environment experience. Every design decision prioritizes simplicity and durability — because anything that requires more than two steps is a point of failure in a prison.
Correctional facilities are failing at their most basic function.
A nationwide staffing crisis has left correctional facilities operating with skeleton crews, creating dangerous blind spots where violence, contraband, and medical emergencies go undetected. Existing technology solutions — from video surveillance to phone monitoring — operate in silos, producing data that no one has time to watch.
The vendor dependency trap: Current corrections technology (JPay kiosks, GTL phone systems) requires contractors to travel on-site and shut down normal operations for maintenance. Facilities have no control over scheduling, creating unacceptable downtime. Opticon eliminates this dependency entirely — maintenance is fully organic to existing facility operations.
Dual-Node Architecture
Two complementary node types, each optimized for its deployment environment. Together they provide triple-redundancy on the critical "alive and present" determination and comprehensive acoustic, thermal, and RF intelligence from every cell.
Direct Line-of-Sight Sensing
Integrated into existing high-strength cell light fixtures. The only facility-standard hardware with direct, unobstructed line-of-sight to the cell interior. Slides into a holster behind the polycarbonate lens — visually indistinguishable from a standard fixture.
Edge compute: ARM Cortex-M33 + Ethos-U55 ML accelerator · 2-3W continuous · 45×30×12mm
Through-Wall Sensing & Mesh Gateway
Mounted in the utility chase corridor between every two cells. Powered by dedicated chase circuits. A sergeant with a chase closet key can swap a Beta node in under 30 seconds — no tools, no contractor.
Hardened: IP67 enclosure · anti-tamper mesh · measured boot · 8-12W continuous
Why two node types? In standard maximum-security construction, every two cells share a utility chase corridor containing plumbing and electrical — accessible only to staff, with constant power, and separated from cell interiors by 8-12 inches of reinforced concrete. UWB radar reliably penetrates this wall thickness at the 3-5m chase-to-cell range. The Beta node in the chase provides redundant vital signs for both adjacent cells while serving as the mesh network backbone. The Alpha node in the fixture provides the high-fidelity sensing modalities (acoustic, IR, SDR) that require direct line-of-sight. Together: triple-redundancy on presence, comprehensive threat detection, and a self-healing mesh network.
Acoustic Threat Classification
Edge ML models running on each Alpha node classify acoustic events in real time. Alert tiers are calibrated by operational reality — designed to prevent the false positive floods that make officers ignore alerts entirely.
Physical altercation, sexual assault. Medical emergencies promoted to Critical only when corroborated by anomalous vital signs (tachycardia, respiratory arrest, sudden postural change) — preventing exploitation by inmates seeking cell extraction during lockdowns.
Metal sharpening on concrete (weapon fabrication), improvised tattooing machine signatures, destruction of property. Cell door anomalies classified only with sensor fusion context — aging infrastructure produces identical acoustic signatures to intentional manipulation.
Elevated verbal conflict (pre-violence indicators), keyword detection with contextual vetting (inmates manufacture diversions — keyword alerts feed analytics, not the response queue), anomalous silence, coordinated multi-cell activity patterns, contraband communications device RF signatures (scoped to cellular only — inmate-issued tablets excluded to prevent false positives).
From Sensor to Actionable Alert
Six-stage intelligence pipeline. End-to-end latency target: under 3 seconds for critical alerts, under 30 seconds for pattern analysis.
Sense
Raw sensor acquisition — UWB, IR, MEMS mic, SDR
Classify
Edge ML inference on Alpha node — acoustic event typing
Correlate
Multi-modal fusion at Beta node — cross-validate with UWB/IR
Enrich
External data integration — video, phone records, commissary
Analyze
Pattern & threat detection — network graphs, trend analytics
Act
Priority-ranked alerts to staff terminals and dashboards
The fusion engine correlates sensor events with existing data streams — video surveillance, inmate telephone monitoring (how money moves in prisons now: CashApp to CashApp via proxies), and commissary transaction records — producing intelligence products that no single data source could generate alone.
Unbox. Tap. Slide.
The most sophisticated sensor node in the world is worthless if the staff can't maintain it. Opticon node replacement is a 30-second procedure that a DOC sergeant can perform during rounds.
Remove new node from sealed packaging. No configuration required — ships pairing-ready from factory.
Hold node against the Pod Gateway NFC interface. Single LED blink confirms mutual authentication, key exchange, and network registration. One gesture — like tapping a credit card.
Pull old node from holster. Slide new node in. Spring-loaded power contacts engage automatically. Node boots, attests firmware, joins mesh, begins sensing. Old node's keys auto-revoked.
Facility-Scale Deployment
Modeled on VADOC supermax facilities — Sussex I State Prison (~1,139 capacity) and Red Onion State Prison (~800 capacity). Both feature podular housing with 24-48 cells per pod, poured reinforced concrete construction, and chase corridors between cell pairs.
Total nodes for an 800-cell facility
Full facility installation with 4-person crew
Projected production-volume hardware cost per facility
Four-Layer Secure Architecture
Zero-trust at every layer. Designed around the assumption that every network segment is potentially compromised — inmates with smuggled electronics, staff under coercion, physically accessible chase closets.
AES-256-CCM per-frame encryption. NFC tap-to-pair commissioning (ISO 14443 challenge-response). Automatic 24-hour key rotation. Self-healing mesh routing.
ChaCha20-Poly1305 authenticated encryption. Curve25519 key pairs per gateway. Public key allowlisting — unauthorized devices cannot establish tunnels.
X.509 certificates signed by facility-local CA. HSM-backed root keys. Automated certificate rotation via air-gap-compatible ACME protocol.
Pulls from external sources (video NVR, phone monitoring, commissary) but never exposes internal state. Staff terminals on separate VLAN with 802.1X port auth.
Strategic Positioning
Shared Technology Stack
Opticon shares core technology with AF Labs' first product, Foxhunt — passive RF sensing, signal classification, sensor fusion software, and distributed edge compute. Foxhunt is the near-term revenue play building infrastructure applicable to Opticon. Investing in Foxhunt accelerates both.
Founder-Market Fit
AF Labs' founder brings eleven years of corrections environment experience, including successful pro se litigation that changed statewide corrections policies in Virginia. The same analytical rigor and tenacity applied to policy reform is now applied to engineering platforms that solve the problems he observed firsthand. This isn't a technology solution searching for a problem — it's a problem owner building the technology.
Dual-Use Platform
The Opticon sensor fusion architecture has applications beyond corrections — immigration detention, military installations, psychiatric facilities, and any environment requiring continuous passive monitoring of human occupancy and activity without visual surveillance. The core platform is a universal intelligence infrastructure layer.
Competitive Moat
Existing corrections tech vendors offer point solutions — cameras, phone monitoring, cell phone detection. None fuse multiple sensor modalities with external data streams into a unified intelligence platform. Opticon's multi-modal sensor nodes, purpose-built for corrections environments, create a data advantage that single-modality competitors cannot replicate.
Architecture document available for qualified investors.
The full Opticon system architecture — dual-node design, deployment topology, secure protocol stack, intelligence pipeline, and bill of materials — is documented in a detailed technical specification available under NDA.
contact@aflabs.kiwi