We’ve been filming construction sites since 2007.

Work on the Helsinki Music Centre was well under way. A web camera hidden in a window of the Kiasma museum of contemporary art watched the site. You could view the images online, but none of them were saved.

The City of Helsinki turned to a small and efficient software company. Enlapser, then Nemesol, built a cloud service for the images before most people used the word in everyday speech. When the Music Centre opened in September 2011, our first timelapse video was ready too.

The major new development projects of New Helsinki were interested in the new service that filmed the site. That began an exceptionally long continuous record of Helsinki. We bought cameras and mounted them on the highest chimneys and towers in the city centre. Residents followed online as their future homes were built and the cityscape changed. We named the service Raksakamera.

The cameras we bought were clumsy and expensive. We ordered camera modules and single-board computers from the Raspberry Pi Foundation and assembled our first own site camera. We coded it to talk to our services over the mobile network.

The camera worked faithfully all winter, then drank half a litre of water and switched off.

We drove all over Finland to present the new technology. Purchase decisions were weighed for a long time. If a camera really helps, why don't other sites have them?

Circuit boards and cardboard boxes drifted around the office. Our developers climbed onto apartment block roofs to install cameras. We needed new partners.

Electronics all-rounder Sulaon started developing the camera with us. Electricians and network professionals mounted them on sturdy stands and masts. New camera generations stayed in place for years without maintenance.

One second of timelapse video equals hours or days in reality. But speed the picture up that much and problems appear: days flicker, and the slightest camera movement makes the video restless.

Other suppliers had the same worries. We wrote our own algorithms and brought in video producers. Timelapse became one of our main products.

We believed the same service would sell just as well abroad. Our financiers believed too, and two new brands were born alongside Raksakamera: Byggkameran and Ehituskaamera.

Selling in new markets was surprisingly smooth. Customers' worries and wishes were familiar. We learned new things too, especially from pilots. A camera filming in the Indian heat survived a remote update, then lightning struck it apart. Delivering one service to Norway meant two days of paperwork.

We rebuilt our whole service platform and developed new features, such as recorded video for surveillance. Our new camera model can run face blurring and other smart features directly on the device.

Raksakamera grew into a challenger to international competitors offering site monitoring, timelapse filming and surveillance.

We launched the new brand Builder.Cam, and we now serve all of Europe from Helsinki. The cameras keep filming as before, and you get help from the same familiar people.