Pacific Fire & Security Blog

Unfortunately, it happens to everyone at some point in time: Critical video evidence isn’t as sharp as you need it to be! Either the lighting was poor at that particular point in time, the camera was shaking due to wind, or excessive audio interference made a clip unusable.

In these instances, you might want to consider having an outside service spruce up your recording. One such vendor, Forensic Protection of Los Angeles, has an excellent reputation for video enhancement. Some interesting demonstration Before and After clips can be found at http://www.forensicprotection.com/services.html

And the price is quite reasonable: $100 will correct a single image (check out the license plate at http://www.forensicprotection.com/deblur.html), and $395 will correct a video clip of up to 20 minutes long.

There is even a service for authenticating audio or video evidence, in case your recordings ever have to stand up in court!

For more information, contact Forensic Protection at (818) 375-1700 or via their web site.

Many industries are forced to store their video data for a long time (most notably, Law Enforcement). And to make matters WORSE, some are also forced to record constantly! Even just a few cameras recording 24 hours a day for 60 days can easily eat up dozens of Terabytes of disk storage.

Here is a product I just learned about that can minimize the expense of power-hungry disk drives. It is a compatible adjunct to Milestone’s Video Management software and is tailored to run automatically (better than a typical data backup application).

The product is from Rimage Corporation — more info is available at http://www.rimage.com/products.html

Disk storage costs continue to drop, but the choice of video surveillance frames per second is still an important consideration when designing a cost-effective solution (especially for hish-megapixel cameras).

This is a great website for quickly showing customers the difference between 7.5 and 30fps:

http://www.worldeyecam.com/store/fps-frames-per-second-comparison.html

Lately I have been working with a city jail to overhaul their internal video surveillance security system. They introduced me to a correctional institution website that has a particularly helpful set of accessories: Mirrors!

And here is the hilarious part: The website that sells this stuff is called www.bobbarker.com! Really! They carry everything a jail might ever need, from bedding to handcuffs.

The sergeant in charge of developing the final solution has a special need for seeing around corners — something you and I might never think of, but it makes perfect sense. In a jail, you always have to be aware of what might be coming around any corner! PTZ cameras often have mirrored domes, but in a jail, we are using fixed cameras only.

Here are Bob Barker’s 1/4, 1/2, and full domes that satisfy the criteria — hope it helps you out someday:

https://www.bobbarker.com/web/category.asp?AppriseWebKey=033700828.02402759&AppriseCustCode=WEBGUEST&category=00002333

The firefighter was getting nervous.  He was on the 8^th floor of a high rise in Seattle and smoke was everywhere.  He had somehow lost contact with his team leader!  He repeatedly clicked on his wireless radio trying to pick up important commands from his captain.  Only static broke through and growing more desperate, he broke down one of the office doors.

He moved quickly through the empty suite, now filling will smoke, over to the exterior of the building.  Only up against the exterior window would his wireless radio finally pick up a signal from his commander!  Now he could at least hear his leader calling him to move to another part of the building.  The message was still hard to understand.  Yelling into his radio he told his team leader that he was going to call him from his personal cell phone.  Finally, using his own cell phone the firefighter could hear instructions to move to the east of the building where his team was desperately trying to locate him.

This little story is based on comments I’ve heard from the people I’ve talked with over the years as a fire alarm salesperson.   But this situation actually faces many of our brave men and women who serve in our fire departments!  When fighting fires it is important to communicate with the team to hear instructions and to be aware of the overall development of an emergency.

The good news is that just this year Seattle has adopted the “Emergency Responder Wireless Radio” code.  This requires that every new building in the greater Seattle area must be fitted with a new wireless radio system.  This will enable the firefighters to be able to use their wireless radios anywhere in the building, thereby enabling them to properly communicate with their team leader.  This system is basically a large antenna that runs through the core of the building.   Fitted with amplifiers, power supplies, coax, and fiber, this system must be properly calibrated with sensitive equipment so that it can reach all portions of the building.   Each year it must be re-tested to make sure proper coverage is maintained.

Unfortunately, the cost of this system is not cheap.  It can easily cost as much as the fire alarm system.   In the near future, Pacific Fire & Security, Inc. is bringing in a major manufacturer of these systems to explain the hows and whys of this new code requirement.  Stay tuned … we will be sending out invitations for how you can learn more about this important development!

Q: What is the difference between a Fire Alarm System that has been Listed vs. Certificated by Underwriters Laboratories (UL)?

A: All Fire Alarm System components in Washington State must be UL Listed, but less than 10% of the systems installed are UL Certificated!

A properly designed and installed Fire Alarm System is one of your best allies in providing an early warning life safety service for your building’s occupants, but how do you know if the system will work when it is needed? Does your system increase or decrease your exposure to liability?

UL Listed Fire Alarm Systems have gone through extensive testing at Underwriters Laboratories to be electrically safe, function as they are designed, and operable with other devices listed for that system.

UL Certificated Fire Alarm Systems are not only use UL Listed components, but have been independently verified by a third party (UL) to be designed, installed, maintained, and documented to NFPA-72 Standards.

A UL Certificated System must be maintained, inspected, and documented by a “Prime Contract” meaning one individual company is responsible for all aspects of the system’s performance, maintenance, and monitoring, and must undergo periodic site inspections by UL to verify compliance by the building owner and the company issuing the certificate.

This extra step of “Certification” is sometimes driven by your local jurisdiction’s Fire Code, your Insurance Company, or your own Corporate Requirements.

The benefits are:

• Lower Insurance Costs (discounts)
• Decreased exposure to liability
• A feeling of safety for your building’s occupants (employees, guests, etc.)
• Lower operating costs  (scheduled testing and maintenance by a service provider)

Pacific Fire and Security has proudly been offering UL Certificated Systems since 2004; we offer turnkey solutions for new and existing systems.

For more information:

http://www.ul.com/global/eng/pages/offerings/industries/lifesafetyandsecurity/alarmsystems/cert/

For the majority of access control systems out there, owners of these systems tend to utilize just a small portion of what the system can actually do.  These features include adding/deleting users, managing user groups for different level of access, and maintaining schedules on door entries and exits.

However, access control systems these days can do so much more, and many times there is little to no additional investment.  We’re talking about perimeter door monitoring.  This is where your access control doors can be monitored to let you know if a door has been ‘forced open’ or if a door has been ‘left ajar’.

These functions allow you to electronically monitor the perimeter of your building, eliminating the need for a building manager or guard service to walk around and manually check each door.  This saves both time and money by not having to deploy valuable resources and personnel.

Within the last several years, video surveillance has been directly integrated with access control systems for one point of management and operation.  For example, when a door is open or card is read, the access control system will automatically log a video clip from a camera pointing at the door (or a PTZ directed to spin around and zoomin on the door).

In addition, if you’re interested in cameras but don’t want to invest in an onsite PC-recording solution, you can have cameras installed that will record to the ‘cloud’ over the Internet! Events you wish to record at your access controlled doors will be saved for easy retrieval from any smart device ( iPads, iPhones, Blackberrys, etc).

Please contact Pacific Fire and Security, the leading commercial security provider in Puget Sound,  for more information on this topic and additional ways to mitigate risk to your people, property, and profits.

We are seeing a proliferation of remote viewing of IP cameras. There are many ways to accomplish this, both free and not free!

The free solutions are limited in functionality, but helpful. The not free solution we find to be the BEST, although limited to Milestone solutions, is the C3 from Lextech Labs. Why? Here is what sets it apart from ANY other remote viewing solution:

1) It supports up to 20 cameras in a 5×4 layout, with the ability to intuitively double-click on any camera view for enlargement

2) You can have a 2×1 configuration with live viewing on one side, and playback on the other

3) The iPad support is VERY strong, but your single license is flexible for use on an iPod Touch, iPhone, Blackberry, or of course, via a browser

4) PTZ controls work great, the link is secure, and multiple camera views can be time sync’ed

For more info with a longer list of benefits, check out: http://www.lextechlabs.com/products/pick-your-platform/

For a demo, go to: http://www.lextechlabs.com/products/ira-c3/

In the world of IPVS, there are basically three ways to establish connectivity from IP or digitally-encoded cameras to the recording server(s):

1. Ethernet 10/100/1000, using Cat-5e / Cat-6 cabling (most standard and inexpensive for short distances)
2. Fiber (for longer distances, great to use if established, otherwise can get expensive)
3. Wireless (from DSL speeds to 100mbps speeds)
4. Microwave (rarely employed, but sometimes needed — very expensive)

We like to joke that Wireless is the “Path of Most Resistance”. This is because even though you can construct a perfectly fine and operational wireless system, circumstances beyond your control can render that communication worthless withing six months. Typical bugaboos include:

• Foliage
• Weather
• Vandalism
• Increased demand (turning up the frame rate, for example)

But even getting started with Enterprise-grade wireless security systems typically requires thousands of dollars of training!

So what’s new and why this blog post? Because Fluidmesh (a longtime provider of wireless and wireless mesh systems suitable for IPVS), has introduced a new line of radios that even a caveman can install. Online training is made available at a modest price ($99 after rebate for your first system), with optional onsite training if you are eager to upgrade your partnership status by getting involved with larger and more complex systems.

And now the best part! Pricing for these radios starts at only $560 (list price) for your FIRST megabit/second of bandwidth. That’s enough for a D1-quality camera. Then you can upgrade the bandwidth at any time, to 5, 10, 30, 60, and unlimited bandwidth (about 100mbps/sec).

OK, that’s long enough — for more info, I urge you to go to http://www.fluidmesh.com/en/solutions/video-surveillance.html

Well, the time has arrived! 2011 will be the year that Saas for IPVS was made practically available for a reasonable number of cameras (up to 8 with reasonable quality and low framerates).

Axis communications has made it easy and inexpensive to attach and record their camera images (or analog cameras connected to Axis video encoders) via any fast Internet connection. You can also optionally record better resolution/fps to a local VMS or NAS box.

Retrieving the images can be done from either source, using any PC browser or non-Windows mobile device (think iPad, iPhone, Blackberry). Storage is provided by one of many Axis Hosting Providers (we like Brivo, since they are already in the business of providing SaaS-based security solutions).

We will be supplying this solution as a service to companies who want cameras but do not want an in-house server. Also, to those companies who might want an alternative recording solution for failsafe IPVS recording!

For more info: http://www.securityinfowatch.com/ISC+West+2010/axis-partners-see-increased-demand-video-hosting-systems-using-avhs