Monitored CCTV

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What is monitored CCTV.

Monitored CCTV first started to come into its own in the late 90’s .This coincided with the advent of the ISDN telephone network that BT developed in order to transfer large amounts of data mainly for large corporate customers. The first ISDN lines were made up of two legs of 64k each giving a total of 128k. This was sufficient to allow CCTV images of reasonable quality to be compressed and transmitted using an ISDN modem.

CCTV monitoring station.

The early monitoring stations tended to use two formats for monitoring these pictures. As a rule they used either the Adpro or the DVST transceivers. It was a bit like the VHS/Beta Max battle when the VCR was first developed and the market for monitoring at that time was only ever going to be able to support one monitoring platform in the early days and as a consequence  the DVST solution lost and died a slow and expensive death.

What did the operator see?

It was quite simplistic really. The Adpro was able to transmit three separate snap shots each taken approximately one second apart. This was presented to the operator in the form of a quad image, the three snap shots and in the bottom right hand corner was the live streamed image. It had to be remembered that this was early days and the images were of questionable quality . Great skill was required on behalf of the operator to distinguish whether there was actually a break in occurring . Of course when the central station only had a few connections this was not a problem the operator had plenty of time to spend on each alarm ,but, this was soon to change.

The boom years.

The popularity of monitored systems took off as we entered the 21st century. Connections increased massively and central stations were only too keen to take these on. It did however mean that as these connections increased, the service to the end user started to decline ….dramatically.

False alarms.

False alarms were a considerable drawback to the industry, in the absence of regulation any CCTV installer could make a connection. Design of the systems seemed to take second place to the number of connections that could be made and as a result break ins were missed and litigation followed.

Re-think.

This made the central stations re-think their position and actually forced them to decline applications from installers who had a poor record of false alarms. Some sites were disconnected in an attempt to get false alarms and response times under control. It took a long time but with some heavy handed tactics from the central stations,  including isolating cameras that caused more than just a few activations in a 24hour period. Everyone started to appreciate the need to reduce dramatically the number of false alarms being signalled through.

IP solutions.

Of course as technology improved, Adpro was being challenged by some new players in the market place. Slowly but surely with the advent of IP monitoring it started to lose its grip as the main player. Broadband means better pictures and faster connections and also the ability for central stations to view pre- alarm events giving them far more information. There is still a school of thought however that IP monitoring is not always as secure as we would like to think. We have down time  at ISPs and certainly there is a percentage of information that is lost in the Internet cloud.

So where does CCTV monitoring go from here?

We need think hard about this one. IP camera systems mean that monitoring needs are changing and fast. Large organisations are beginning to realise that monitoring there own sites is a possibility and and that cost savings are possible. Hybrid CCTV systems will become the norm and it will only be a matter of time before ISDN is phased out completely so all the old legacy transmitting equipment will have to be upgraded. A great opportunity for installers and manufacturers alike. As for the monitoring stations they need to keep a very close eye on the market place .They must implement front end software that can integrate to as many legacy and new transmission products  as possible into its central station. Ineveitably they will have to reduce the cost of monitoring solutions in order to both maintain existing customers and generate new business


BT 21CN network changes.

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Will my intruder alarm work?

For those who do not know the BT 21 century network is basically a massive upgrade being undertaken by BT to upgrade its old copper network to a faster more reliable fibre solution.

Cardiff.

Cardiff was the starting point back in 2008 and has been a test bed for the new technology while BT continue planning the upgrade of exchanges in other areas. The main role out of the programme will commence in April 2010 and will take several years to complete Nationwide.

Digicoms.

The main concern is that some older CPE (customers premises equipment) may fail .This includes the digicom which is still widely used across the UK. A digicom is a digital communicator that alarm panels use to transmit their signals back to the central station It is old technology and relies on a”handshake” from the central station to tell it that a signal has been received and not to attempt to re-dial. Due to latency in the new BT system where analogue products such as digicoms will have their data changed from analogue to IP and then back again the “handshake will possibly be missed causing the digicom to dial many calls to the central station resulting in overload.

40% failure rate.

It is estimated that as many as 40% of systems will suffer failure after the change over leaving many premises vulnerable to Criminal attack. So concerned are insurance companies their risk managers are sending briefings to their brokers and customers to let them know about the potential issues.

Immune.

There are newer products out there that claim to be immune from any issues relating to the 21CN changeover. These include Redcare classic, Redcare GSM, CSL Dualcom’s there are also some pure IP communicators such as Webway and Emizon that will suffer no issues as they have been designed in advance to cope with the change over.

Conclusion.

It will undoubtedly be to everyone’s advantage to upgrade their signalling from a digicom. After all the digicom is old technology and the least secure of all the signalling devices mentioned in this article It could be argued that this is a window of opportunity for installers for some extra work but it will also be their responsibility to ensure their customers are informed and properly advised as to how they should signal their alarms to the monitoring station.


Cisco wireless-g PTZ internet video camera

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Remote connection from anywhere in the world.

The Cisco WVC210 PTZ camera is capable of  being connected to from anywhere through an Internet browser. It is a Wireless Internet Video  IP Camera and has 2-way Audio. Through the Internet browser you are able to control the pan ,tilt and zoom functions.

Codecs.

The camera has two codecs (MPEG-4 and MJPEG) that it can support, they are able to be used at the same time. MPEG-4 would generally be used when viewing live video it has a good compression rate and is ideal where bandwidth may be an issue. MJPEG however gives better video quality so is the better option when storage of the video data is required.

Two way audio.

The Cisco WVC210’s has an integrated microphone for two way audio functionality so you can communicate to any location using this feature. The camera supports real time streaming of video and this means it is ideal for connection from mobile devices such as PDAs and mobile phones. It can also be viewed by up to 10 people at any one time so an ideal management tool.

Software

The Cisco internet video camera includes on board software to allow viewing of recordings from remote locations and has advanced search facilities for ease of use by the operator. The camera is also capable of generating an e-mail to up to 3 different users informing them of an event linked to a video motion action and attach an streamed video of the alarm so enabling a remote response should a security violation occur.

Flexibility

The camera is extremely flexible and offers numerous benefits and features that will be of great interest when an integrated CCTV solution is required.

Biometrics, things are not as bad as they seem!

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Are biometric readers the future?

This is a question that has recently been raised in the security community. After all biometrics have been around for a long time now and their impact in the market has been very limited indeed in integrated systems.

To many things to too many people.

For those who have looked closely at the subject the reason for this lack of  market penetration is simple, manufacturers are trying to do too much with the biometric reader. By trying to appeal to everyone and install too much functionality into each device the units have become cumbersome , over engineered and very expensive, literally pricing themselves out of the market.

Why has this happened with biometric readers?

The main reason is speed. To open the door quickly most readers incorporate a card reader or a key- code that must be entered first before the finger is presented, this is so that when the database makes a search for the fingerprint, it already knows where it is looking because the card or code will point the database to where it has to match the fingerprint. Fingerprints are complicated, if you had no card or key-code, a search of the whole database to match the exact print would leave someone standing outside the door for several seconds, hardly ideal.

Ergonomics

So we have slow expensive readers that quite frankly are unreliable and require two elements for them to work, its no wonder that something that has such promise has fallen so far into obscurity. Add to that the fact that many readers just don’t look the part and you even have the architects refusing to specify them in new build situations.

Externally quite frankly they have failed to perform in hostile conditions such as rain or snow and are badly effected by dust and grime.

So where do we go from here to sell the biometric reader?

The answer as far as we see it is integrated access control. The biometric reader needs to provide a more secure solution than the humble fob or card. It will need to look  good, be small and easy to fit to doors in place of existing card readers, be 100% read reliable and most importantly integrate directly into an existing access control system.

Does such a product exist?

We are sure it does but have yet to track it down. The ability for 100% read reliability is pretty much there and by decoding finger prints from an image into simple 1’s and o’s means that this information can be integrated into existing access control systems in the same way that a card or fob is read.  Get the cost to around £800-£950 installed and you have an extremely competitive product with all the benefits that Biometrics have always promised.

Summary

Partnership’s between some of the big suppliers of integrated security in the form of access control and the manufacturers who produce the biometric readers are inevitable. If a producer of the biometric reader can  overcome all of the problems we have highlighted above, incorporate a sleek and ip65 rated design and secure a partnership deal with an access control manufacturer, then the future of the biometric reader is very promising indeed.


Will IP solutions mean security equipment distributors have to move online?

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Moving to on-line sales.

The introduction of IP equipment into the Integrated CCTV and access control arena is being hailed as the next step forward in the security industry. This does however pose some serious questions about how this new equipment is brought to the market. So far there is a set pattern. A manufacturer approaches a distributor and gives him the exclusive right to sell his product. The distributor in turn will fix a price and only allow this product to be sold to security installers. The public have no access via the distributor. If they wish to have the product installed they must go to an installing company. So far quite simple.

Who are the main players?

The main players in the distribution market (UK) are Norbain , ADI and  Gardners Security however there are probably over 100 in the UK and they control who they will deal with, what price the equipment will be sold at and so on. Over the last 20 years or so all these companies have expanded enormously and each year gather at IFSEC to demonstrate what is new on the market.

So what will change?

The main thing that the big distributors need to consider is ,who will actually be installing the new products?  As we have said, up to now it has been installing companies. Most of the big installers are giants who will struggle to adapt to the new market place quickly. So if they are not installing large volumes of IP security products who will?

IP integrators.

Well the school of thought says that at the moment the balance could tip towards IP integrators. Most companies of any reasonable size have their own IT department or outsource to a local IT company. These people in reality will be very well placed to start installing IP security solutions for their employers and very much cheaper than a security installer.

So where does the smart manufacturer sell his products?

Well it does not take much to imagine where an IT integrator is going to look for his security solution. On line of course and at the moment he can buy some fairly good stuff that will satisfy a need. But that is about it! some of the products have questionable quality and origins. IT integrators will however demand quality and back up . So could it happen that the smart manufacturer actually begins to bypass the big CCTV distribution companies and sell through an on line company?

Cut out the middle man?

Not inconceivable when you think about it. By putting a search on google for “IP cameras”  Norbain is nowhere to be seen nor are any of the big distributors or manufacturers. They should all be worried about this

The future.

So how will this be addressed?  Well they are going to have to think who will be doing the installation of the security systems, be it CCTV or even access control. There are still things that need to be fixed to walls and doors but the technical aspect of the way it is going may mean that your friendly CCTV installation engineer is going to struggle with the technology . If this proves to be true and installers fail to move fast enough with training and recruitment, the security industry could be a very different place in just a few short years.