The basics of camera systems
Here is a list of some features and factors to consider when deciding on your camera system.
What will you use it for? Insurance purposes, liability protection, accident evidence, police evidence, training purposes? Often when you use your camera system in multiple ways it becomes more useful. Example: You call Kyle in your office to thank him for cleaning the area up. Let him know you appreciate it and tell him you were reviewing the cameras and saw him go the extra mile. Kyle will talk about this and tell his co-workers that management really does view the cameras and now your camera system will become more effective.
How high do you want to mount your cameras? What type of cameras do you want and need? How long do you need to store the video? Know that a 4K camera takes up more storage than a 2MP camera. The old 500TVL cameras were half a million lines and a 2MP is 2 Million which is 4 times the resolution.
I like to have cameras look at other cameras with cross views when possible so if someone tampers with one camera you will see what happens. Camera are a big deterrent although they do not stop crime but you would be surprised the things that people do even though we have cameras installed. I have 3 different cameras on my driveway with one camera looking at the other two and two looking at the other one.
We installed cameras into a daycare and the next month the daycare fired 2 people for hitting the kids.
We installed cameras into an assisted living center and what do you know? The losses on food stopped. Shrimp, milk and eggs were going missing and after we installed the cameras that stopped.
Often theft is internal and as much as an owner would like to trust family, much of the time it is family members that steal.
Often people will want to set the cameras up to send video or alert them when there is motion. If these are outside cameras you may ask for this at first and you may want to change it later. Our recommendation is to have a separate email address for just the cameras so you do not mix all those emails with your persona or business email. If you are having notifications sent on indoor cameras during night hours it works well.
We have onsite storage and icloud storage that you can pay for depending on your needs. We have hardwired (preferred) and WIFI cameras and you should get 2.5mbps upload speed on your internet per stream. WIFI cameras need to be powered at the camera location whereas POE cameras do not and they can run on just a CAT cable.
Price may be a factor so let your alarm dealer know what you want so he or she has an idea of whether you want an entry level system, midrange or a high end system. I have been called in on projects where the project manager had done the research on high end AXIS camera system and wanted specific cameras only to find out that they did not have that type of budget to install a more expensive system.
When a person tries to fake an accident or actually has an accident having it on the recorder to review the incident is vital. This will help in training, accident prevention and much more.
What do you need to see? General views, faces, plate numbers etc..
There are apps that can be loaded on specific cameras to count people in and out of a building, notify you when a car goes down a oneway street, when people take too many items off the shelf or if a specific object is moved that has been marked.
Many companies use thermal cameras in conjunction with normal cameras or PTZ cameras so when the thermal camera detects something the other camera can zoom in and follow it. When a person presents their badge a PTZ camera can zoom in on the person and you can see if it is the same person as the person in the badge picture.
If you need to read a license plate we have specific cameras just for that and we need to do the measurements of how far away the cars will be and we need to have a specific amount of pixels in order to get a good view of a plate number and understand if you just install a 4K camera it won’t mean you can always view plate numbers since lighting, weather, if the car is coming or going and their headlights and if there is mud on the plate will all be factors. When you buy a specific camera made for license plate recognition you can also have that camera tied to a data base and load plate numbers into the data base and it is searchable. You can purchase different lists such as lists of cars that are stolen or cars that need to be repoed.