City Surveillance Solution

This was published in the July, 2010 issue of SDM Magazine on pages 77-78. Unfortunately they have not published this online to view from their website. This is a project that I was heavily involved in with one of my customers and I think it's worth having a link somewhere on the internet for people to view (photos and captions at the bottom):

City Surveillance Solution

Safety and Security – A Walk in the Park

When you go to the park, your goal is likely relaxation, exercise, maybe a picnic, overall general enjoyment. Certainly, you don’t go expecting a pickpocket, vandal or even worse. And neither do the people of the City of Greer in South Carolina. A quaint, beautiful city, 25,000 strong, the leadership at the City of Greer wanted to create a new 14-acre city park for its citizens. And first on their mind was the safety and security of the park’s visitors.

Said Jim Ridgill IT Director with the City of Greer, “Safety issues were certainly top of mind when creating the park and implementing a security solution with total coverage. We needed to make sure we had all areas covered for the surveillance of potential crimes.”

And while security was the driving factor, it was also of utmost importance that the surveillance solution be aesthetically pleasing. With more than 100 ornamental lampposts on the campus, the end-user customer was adamant that there were no obtrusive-looking surveillance cameras hanging off of the posts. That directive could have made a difference in the entire project meeting completion.

To that end, the team at the City of Greer brought in their long-time reseller partner, Diversified Electronics, to guide them on the appropriate solution to implement. Together, the teams walked through the park to outline areas needing camera coverage and to find the best viewing angles.

Diversified Electronics and the City of Greer also worked with the local police department to ensure blanket coverage of the park was considered.

Once the site visit was completed and the objectives were in place, Tom Drake, sales representative for Diversified Electronics, and his team went to work. Said Drake, “We went to Nick Miller and ScanSource Security and told them what we were trying to accomplish. We asked what they would recommend and made sure that they understood that the project hinged on the proper cameras and views coupled with a pleasant outdoor housing that met the appearance objective.”

And for ScanSource, the goal was to come up with a design where everything fit – from the encoders to the cameras – while looking pleasant, in short, not being noticeable, and providing the highest-quality surveillance operations. After considering all of the available options, the team decided on a completely wireless security solution. Working with an already-constructed facility, a wireless solution made the best business sense versus having to dig up the property to run fiber lines and pull cable. What’s more, a wireless solution would allow the City to keep the beauty and aesthetics of the park in place.

To meet those requirements, ScanSource Security came up with an ideal solution that included Dotworkz D2 outdoor housing system, VideoIQ Encoders, analog dome cameras, Firetide Wireless Mesh, and Ditek Surge Protection. Working with Firetide’s high-performance wireless network to handle the bandwidth requirements of live video streaming and VideoIQ’s built-in storage products to provide storage with every camera in its own housing, Diversified Electronics was able to eliminate any bandwidth concerns.

And to keep the solution out of sight, the team even had a body shop paint the Dotworkz D2 housings and the antennas to match the color of the lamppost. In short, no detail was left unturned. Much of that credit goes to the Diversified Electronics team, including Gerald Culpepper and Marquis Scott. Said Drake, “Gerald and Marquis spent hours coming up with a design that would work and ensuring everything was done properly and professionally.”

As it is with all municipalities, budget was very important. Diversified Electronics and ScanSource were mindful of that in choosing the products for the solution. Diversified Electronics worked closely with the ScanSource Reseller Financial Services team to ensure the financing was available for the deal. And thanks to the design and functionality of the housing products, they were able to use indoor versions of the radio. Added Gary Pfeiffer, with VideoIQ, “Indoor equipment in the Dotworkz outdoor housing solution will save money and anguish during the installation.”

The icing on the cake for the City of Greer team was the video analytics with object recognition provided by the VideoIQ encoders. Said Ridgill with the City of Greer, “The ability to search all of the cameras for a particular set of criteria was a great tool for us. We had one instance in the park where someone threw toilet paper into the fountain and we were able to get more than 380 hits of various people walking around the fountain and decipher who the culprit was.”

The final project, at this stage, includes nearly 60 of the poles mounted with the surveillance solution, with more on the way.

Added Drake, “Selling the project is one thing. Making it happen successfully and fulfilling the customer’s expectations is another. And our team, led by Gerald and Marquise, along with the service and support from ScanSource, worked hard to make that happen.” Diversified’s contracted IT System Architect Charles Byrd designed the wireless network and worked closely with Jim Ridgill to integrate all five of the locations of the system into the City’s network.

So was the customer happy? When the City Administrator first saw the solution implemented and in place, his first words were, “You sure outdid yourselves.” Not only was the solution in place to keep visitors to the park safe, but it was created so that those visitors weren’t distracted by the ample number of surveillance solutions around the park. A key challenge was to ensure the solution – color, size, placement – didn’t detract from the beauty of the park. Overall, inconspicuous is what the team was looking for. And from all accounts, those goals were achieved. And then some.

Greer City Hall is protected through an

innovative wireless solution. A body shop

painted the housings and the antennas to

match the color of the lamp posts, keeping

the solution as inconspicuous as possible.

The Greer City Park banners are the

focus, not the surveillance solution.

Security is of the

utmost importance,

but it never detracts

from the aesthetic of

the park.

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF NICK MILLER

Meet the New Boss, Way Better Than the Old Boss!

Funny how we forget how bad something is until we experience the better. At least, this happens to me a lot. But I'd be willing to bet it happens to most of you as well. For instance, ravioli out of a can tastes just fine growing up until you go to a fine Italian restaurant for the first time. Your car always seems to drive fine until a friend shows up to show off their new ride. Pepsi was fine till Crystal Peps...OK, maybe that isn't a good example.

It works that way with technology too. Think back...taking pictures with an old 35mm camera or a point and shoot with film used to work just fine. And, I bet you never thought twice about dropping of your film to be developed. Heck, I bet it never bothered you to know you had to wait a couple of days to get the pictures back before there was 1-hour-photo. Now we have digital cameras. Digital SLRs, digital point and shoots, and even underwater digital cameras that make all our lives easier. Now you don't have to wait to get all those pictures developed just to see if you got the shot you wanted. All you have to do is click the review button, don't like it, delete it. Remember taking some pictures and then you had to always take a couple of random shots of nothing just to finish the roll of film? Not no more, Billy! Now you can just download what you want from your camera/memory card and throw them in a folder. Extra space on your memory card isn't wasted.

Old standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio TV was great too. I never really complained about my reception with cable or satellite. I always thought it looked pretty good, especially compared to the old rabbit ears (ironic how those have made a come back). But the first time I saw a football game on a wide screen 16:9 aspect ratio TV, I said to myself, "That's the way football is supposed to be seen on TV." Then when I actually saw HD, I couldn't believe what I was missing with standard definition. How unbelievably crisp and clear the images were and how vibrant the colors were. Now I get to the point that if there is something on and it isn't available on a HD channel, I probably won't watch it.

So we get used to how things are and just expect them to be that way until the newer/better is presented to us. I think this is what has happened in the security world, more specifically with surveillance. We've all seen it. You turn on the nightly news and there's a gas station or a bank or a retail store getting robbed and evidently, this guy is doing one heck of a job because I see he never seems to get caught! Doesn't it look like the same guy all the time? It's just some pixelated image and the most you can usually tell is he's wearing a hooded sweatshirt and has a gun. And evidently he's as fast as Superman because one second he's robbing the place and the next he's out of the frame.

Of course I'm making light of poor resolution and low frame rates (which I'll discuss another time). But it's what we're used to seeing, right? That's as good as it gets, right? WRONG!!!! As with digital cameras and HDTV, surveillance video is newer and better. There are now mega-pixel and HD IP surveillance cameras (and yes mega-pixel and HD are two different things, again for a future installment). If you don't know, a mega-pixel is 1,000,000 pixels. So a 2 mega-pixel camera is 2,000,000 pixels. Most analog cameras have a max resolution of 640 x 480 (with a few exceptions) and that equates to a little over 300,000 pixels, or 1/3 of a mega-pixel. Or to put it another way, a 1.3 mega-pixel Camera has over four times* the resolution compared to an analog camera. Imagine what those video clips on the nightly news would look like if they were 400% clearer!

So why hasn't everyone jumped on this band wagon? For the same reason any new technology doesn't just immediately replace everything out today. Again, think back to digital cameras and HDTV. When digital cameras first came out, they were really kind of...well...crappy. They didn't look that great, the images didn't seem to be any better than prints from film, they were pretty cumbersome to learn how to use, not to mention they were really expensive. HDTV had some similar problems. Not everyone had it, you had to get a special antenna/equipment, TV's capable of displaying HD were really expensive, and there wasn't a whole lot of programming out there that was delivered in HD. But in both cases, technology got better, cheaper, and easier to use.

Mega-pixel and HD resolution surveillance have a lot of those same challenges. For starters, these are IP Cameras (note not all IP Cameras are mega-pixel or HD, but all mega-pixel and HD cameras are IP), so your infrastructure is different. A lot of integrators still aren't educated in networking products and so there is a big learning curve for a lot of people. When IP cameras first emerged, they didn't really look that great, were cumbersome, and really expensive. But now they look fantastic, a lot of them are very easy to use, and price has come down quite a bit.

But one more big challenge is still out there. The public still thinks that they are all watching out for a guy in a hooded sweatshirt and a gun. You as the integrator should educate your customer and explain to them that those images on the nightly news are bad and that there's way better out there...We have the technology! Purchase demo cameras and keep them with you to show them the quality first hand. Show them that just like their HDTVs, poorer resolution should be tossed out with their 4:3 rear projection TVs! Show them how better resolution can help protect their business and investments.

There's one more thing in common that these surveillance cameras have with digital cameras and HDTV. While price has gone down considerably, we still pay a premium for them. The older technology will always be cheaper and the newer technology will always be more expensive. But that doesn't stop you from grabbing that digital point and shoot because it's way more convenient than film. And I bet you don't want to watch your favorite sports team in standard definition. Remember, all it takes is for them to see the cool new thing that they didn't know they were missing.

Analog

1080i HD

*In the example here stating a 1.3 mega-pixel camera has over four times the resolution as an analog camera, that is assuming you are looking at the exact same field of view. Another way to utilize mega-pixel technology is to reduce camera count. If an end user is happy with their current resolution, a 1.3 mega-pixel camera could be deployed where there were up to four analog cameras installed in a given area and that 1 camera would give you the same amount of resolution as each one of the four analog cameras did. Of course I am speaking about 4 analog cameras side by side.

Nick Miller
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How Much Stuff Could You Stuff In A Dotworkz Housing If You Could Stuff Stuff In A Dotworkz Housing?

Dotworkz is a housing manufacturer with some very unique products. Their domes come in two sizes, the D2 and the D3. Today, I’m going to talk a little about D2.

There are several factors that make the D2 unique. It is not shaped like the typical “tear drop” shaped dome housing. It comes with many power input/output options, and it has four environmental options to work in any environment. It has a standard Heater/Blower, the Tornado (for humid/costal areas), the Ring of Fire (for extreme cold), and the Cool Dome (for extreme heat/arid/desert areas). Having all these options makes for a much smarter installation and better protects the camera based on the environment…which is why the housing is there in the 1st place, right?

But there is another factor that makes this housing unique…the huge amount of space in the top section of the housing. When you look at a D2, you’ll notice it has a hinge around the middle of the housing. Above that hinge is basically empty and you can use that space to fill it with other components you may need in your installation.

The D2 has roughly 452 cubic inches in this top section. Here are some examples of what you can fit in that space:

· Almost 2 gallons of milk
· 15 and ½ pints of beer, or nearly 21 cans of beer (that’s almost a whole suitcase!), or a little over 4 pitchers of beer (whatever your choice of measurement is)
· 39 tennis balls
· 96 golf balls
· 1,738 iPod Shuffles
· 16,372 M&M’s

All joking aside, that’s a lot of room! So what’s practical about this? A lot! You could put a small network switch inside. Video Encoders to connect to existing analog cameras would fit very easily. Imagine a wireless solution where you can save money by using indoor versions of mesh radios or other wireless devices because you no longer need an outdoor rated device. In some cases, that could be $1,000.00 of savings! And, it looks better because you no longer need multiple devices on a pole/wall. You can have everything tucked away inside a nice, aesthetically-pleasing, IP66 rated, vandal-resistant *, geographically-based-weather protected housing.

Most any dome-style camera (fixed or PTZ) will fit in the D2, and depending on the size (and a little ingenuity), some box-style cameras. If you start to think outside the box (or housing in this case); you’ll be able to come up with all kinds of applications for this very unique product.

For anyone curious, the D3 is just like the D2, but taller with more room.

So…

· Over 4 gallons of milk
· 32 pints of beer, or nearly 43 cans of beer (that’s almost 2 suitcases!), or a little over 8.5 pitchers of beer (whatever your choice of measurement is)
· 82 tennis balls
· 198 golf balls
· 3,584 iPod Shuffles
· 33,760 M&M’s



*The housing itself is vandal-resistant, but the bubble is not. You can purchase a vandal-resistant bubble if needed.

Nick Miller
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