SoundThinking
🇺🇸 US
The fusion vendor: gunshot detection, ALPR, and a person-records search engine chained in a single platform since April 2025.
The company
Publicly traded; formerly ShotSpotter (renamed SoundThinking in 2023), headquartered in Fremont, California. US agencies (ShotSpotter parent).
The platform: SafetySmart
Gunshot detection (ShotSpotter), ALPR (PlateRanger, powered by Rekor), and a person-records search engine (CrimeTracer) integrated in one platform.
- Sensor-to-person pipeline. An acoustic event, a plate read, and a records search live in the same workflow — escalation from sensor trigger to person file is the product design.
📎 On the record: Chicago ended its ~$49M ShotSpotter contract in 2024; about 70% of residents in covered neighbourhoods were Black or Latino.
Sources: SoundThinking-Rekor partnership announcement · SafetySmart integration release (April 2025) · The Record: Chicago ends ShotSpotter contract
The hardware — model by model
PlateRanger
Fixed + mobile ALPR (Rekor hardware, NVIDIA-based AI)
- Radios
- Inherits Rekor platform characteristics; retention defaults not published
- Imaging
- HD cameras with vehicle recognition (make/model/colour)
- Power
- Per deployment
- Notes
- Launched via the 2024 Rekor partnership; integrated into SafetySmart April 2025.
Sources: PlateRanger product page
⚠ The only vendor with native gunshot-detection + ALPR in one platform. Sources: The Record: Chicago ends ShotSpotter contract
Every specification above traces to a certification filing, teardown, carrier device listing, or the vendor's own datasheet — the full paper trail with links lives in the open research base.