Monitoring Station

Can any one recomend any products for setting up a large monitoring station in the UK?

Or any companies that supply equipment of this standard.

thanks

Geovision %$^&* sorry.. I have to curse when ever I say their name now.. hs a control room softwrae that allows you to have video sent on motion or alarm to the control room, it has a despacth server as well that can send it to many control rooms if one is down and has all the usual contreol room features like, customer details etc, it also allows voice and camera control etc

I have looked at some of their products online.

I was worried that they may be the best of the budget market.

Are they considered professional??

thanks

problem with any DVR is the price on the client side, depends on the market you are going to be targeting. You may also want to look at IP cameras, non expensive ones, where you can just plug in 1 or 2 at the location, and remotely monitor them all, but the software normally isnt cheap. Also, you would need to look at the laws also as remember the internet doesnt always work, and if something happens and you are down or the clients internet is down for some reason. In other words the internet is not yet 100% fool proof.

Have you seen the systems of Dallmeier.

I thought they were represented in UK.

yep, also baxall, & DM, but DM's remote software doesnt do mulit-site as far as i know.

I think NICE is in the UK area?http://www.nice.com/about/nice_Main_offices.php

Im using GE Kalatel myself for a gated community, mulisite software, using a bunch of 4 channel StoreSafes, with a long range wireless network, so they are recording on site. It lets you view 64 cameras in one single multi view, this is sweet on a 30" LCD.

The Geo control room is used world wide and is very good, I would not say it was a cheap option, it has a load of features like, remote latch, programable keypad support, Ity even checks the upstatus of the system by sneding a heartbeat.

This is a real time situation that is excellent with the control room.

Imagine this.... you just bought a ferrari but your painting your gartage so you had to park it on the street, you simply use the object index missing item section to paint over your car, then as soon as it is no longer in the picture it sends an alarm notifictaion to the control room which autmatically sends you an SMS, the video is stored at the control room and the operator belows out to yo through your DVR speakers that you car has just been stolen. The same principles work for safes etc even survieelance to see when people leave buildings etc.

As far as internet stability Rory is right about that, but there is a despatch server that can send it to any other control room online and then buffer it back to yours when it is online... Control rooms for video are an excellent idea, the reason is that even if the perpitrator takes your DVR, you still have footage of them at the control room and the small AVI file plus the attachment can be sent to the police... another good example is vandalism, imagine someone throws a rock at a camera and smacshes it, the dvr will record that happening but nop one will know till the next day, you can have the control room notified if cameras drop out, or if large POS sales are done, or objects are left behind like bombs or if a sensor has gone off.

I think the control room is one of the best I have seen around

reason I have been hessitant about this, using any DVR including a standalone as they are all the same in that respect, is most of the alarm clients you will find, at least here in the bahamas, dont want an extra PC in their home, or more importantly, wont pay for it. The Kind of PCs they still have down here in many households, most wont be able to run it as a DVR, you know, 300mhz, etc, win 98.

Basically from an extensive 6 year alarm history of sales, service and installs, in anything from ghetto homes and retail to multi billion dollar homes, to casinos, jewlellery stores, etc etc, and set up of alarm central stations here in the Bahamas. What I would see that would be good, is some sought of server IP recording system, with raid, etc, rack mount and preferably not PC on the receiver side basically a receiver like the Alarm Receiver boards, which then talks to the PC, this means when the PC crashes, or more likley the actual software which they do even in the alarm monitoring on winXP pro, or if it for some reason needs to be rebooted, signals still come through, and are temporarily stored until the PC connection is re established to the PC software.

Then at each location you have a choice of a server box, 1, 4, 9 or 16 channel, 16 channel. That way any cheap or any CCTV cameras existing or new can be used.

As far as the server boxes looks like Axis can cover that, and I think they are pretty cheap? Havent looked lately. But then its the other side, the central station hardware, and software. I have seen something that came close to this from someones link on this forum, cant find it right now though, but it is IP based and can use any network servers like axis.

So if someone can come out with that, Im sold and can sell it to our monitoring stations here in a flash!

Maybe I missunderstood, but cant you just use a looping webserver to accomplish this and the remote suites already allow for streaming recordings off site into file structures that can be managed?

the alarm monitoring software only accepts certain IP cameras.

What we need is something that is totally seperate from the alarm monitoring, preferably receivers with HDDs that are machine type that then talk to seperate PCs which have the video monitoring software. The receivers do all the central station recording, seperate of the monitoring.

I guess it would be IP receivers with some sought of embedded software that manages the incoming video streams and records it to the HDDs. HDDs can be added and replaced at any time, hot swap. Or maybe the recievers would be seperate of the HDD systems. The receivers would have a small LCD on each one which would give basic info like IP config, speed, etc. Seperate PCs running Windows would give GUI of all info from the reciever and incoming video streams, multiple PCs can be used.

Basically we need a ready built and tested system, these guys are hard to sell to. Like I said the idea of keeping the receivers seperate of the GUI PC software, is that it acts as a second back up, incase the PC software crashes. Actually I have witnessed the Alarm Receivers crash once or twice also, but its rare. They are basically just boards with embedded RTOS and power curcuits, so nothing is 100%, but in the security industry with insurance prices and legal fees in monitoring companies, it needs to be the best it can be. They cant tell the casino it never crashes, this was a rare time! But then it does happen ... Ofcourse in the case of some businesses such as the casino they dial to multiple receivers in case one does not work or those number lines are down on the monitoring side, thats using telco lines though. We have also set up other monitoring locations at security guard stations, so it dials to them and the monitoring station, and in one case, the police central station (911) via pager.

Down here for example, Alarm Monitoring staff would not be adequate to do video monitoring (only a couple of them I have met/trained would be able to do this), salaries are low and they are really not that literate and normally under educated. They are barely adequate for the alarm monitoring, and that is the same with most companies down here! Salaries are very low, so they get what they pay for. Thats whay we would have to keep it totally seperate, different staff and different machines, different rooms also.

Does the GEO central station only work with GEO DVRs, or can it work with other web servers? kalatel is out of the question for an app like what Im talking about, too pricey.

Rory

Actually this one looks good, depending on the price of the transmitters, this could be what I am looking for.

www.indigovision.com

brisbane is in the house!

Hey my parents had tp run clear from a bottle and rock fight on a main hotel strip here today when they were out walking, even the police were ganged and beaten, and it was right next to the police station in that area! Government here just got a donation from the chinese for $30 million to build a sports stadium, while people go starving, and crime increases, gangs on the rise, along with many other 3rd world issues, and $200 million in hurricane damages from the last 2 hurricanes!

What are my thoughts, they need to spend more on video surveillance, but properly, and get the right equipment, and dont take payoffs. I know a local alarm company here that paid off a gov worker to get a $100,000 job, he installed 10 merric lim PTZ cameras and a uknown PC DVR with Cat 5, there was some construction work involved but still $800 per PTZ and maybe $1000 for the DVR, the rest was gravy .. or was it, we all paid for it through taxes. They dont have a clue how to run a country over here!

Well they may think they do since they are driving a lexus, BMW or Mercedez from corruption and payoffs, but since there are hundreds of kids still out getting drinking water for their family with buckets, from community pumps which are full of rust and desease ...let alone them having to beg on the streets for their drug addicted or lazy parents ..

thanks

rory