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asharon

General advice regarding surveillance needed

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Hello everyone,

 

I have a need to monitor a number of employees in a warehouse using video surveillance cameras that will be located in a warehouse within the UK, but the monitoring will be done remotely from a different country by the parent company. The whole setup needs to be done by myself personally as we had a situation wherein a security contractor actually caused more harm on purpose (bribed by ex-employee who was fired for stealing).

 

I'm an IT support guy by trade and generally have a decent understanding of networking and hardware however I've never dealt with situations like these and my knowledge of the video surveillance game is non-existent. I'm hoping that one of you guys or girls can help me by pointing me in the right direction, my requirements from the system are as follows:

 

- Several cameras positioned around the perimeter, they don't need to be concealed or hidden.

- Ability to record footage and store it for at least 7 days (this may change to 31 days).

- Ability to access live-feed of each camera remotely from a different country.

- Decent-ish resolution, say something along the lines of 720p, black & white is fine.

- Ability to move cameras remotely would be great, but not essential at all.

 

I suppose that these cameras would be somehow connected to a NAS and store the footage there, I also assume that they would come with software that would make the remote viewing easier. But I just don't know which cameras to go for, where to buy them, pricing etc. Any sort of advice would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks in advance!

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Hi. Doing the install yourself also gives you the knowledge to service and keep your system going.

 

Being in the uk you do need at least 21 to 31 days storage so I would also start from there.

 

The other benifit of installing yourself in the uk is you don't need to have a budget so you can go for better than 720p look at a mix of 3 - and 4mp

 

 

How big is your warehouse and how many cameras are you looking at installing.

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Hi. Doing the install yourself also gives you the knowledge to service and keep your system going.

 

Being in the uk you do need at least 21 to 31 days storage so I would also start from there.

 

The other benifit of installing yourself in the uk is you don't need to have a budget so you can go for better than 720p look at a mix of 3 - and 4mp

 

 

How big is your warehouse and how many cameras are you looking at installing.

 

Hello Tom, thank you for the quick reply.

This thing with 21 or 31 days, is this a best-practice type of thing or is it a legal requirement? Personally I prefer the 31 days idea, it makes more sense as a potential incident may not be reported for a while and given the kind of issues we had in the past, it is extremely likely that other people within the organization would try to somehow cover up and incident or make it seems as if nothing happened, hence the needs for monitoring.

 

There is technically no budget as of yet, but any kind of saving would be great so I think 720p or so should be fine - the main focus, from my point of view, is providing a tamper-proof way to monitor the locations with minimal risks of interference from employees whilst also ensuring that a person can be identified sufficiently based of pre-recorded footage. My impressions in terms of resolution is that a 720p camera would be ok for this purpose but please do correct me if I am wrong.

 

The warehouse is about 8,000 square feet in size and has quite a few corridors, I'd be looking at having at least 3 cameras overall, located in the most incident-prone areas, but with potential to upscale to about 10 cameras should 3 not be good enough. The main focus is to catch or catch people when they do something illegal, there is no doubt in my mind that people will try to steal things - so the focus is not to prevent people from stealing by pointing out that there's CCTV, its is to catch them in the act.

 

I hope this makes sense. Many thanks for your input!

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Hi. For a commercial system with staff then yes it's best with 21 to 30 days

 

catch people when they do something illegal, there is no doubt in my mind that people will try to steal things - so the focus is not to prevent people from stealing by pointing out that there's CCTV, its is to catch them in the act.

 

With this being a workplace system you can not use covert cameras. In the uk you would need a licence for covert and can only be used for a short time period.

You need to take into account it's a workplace system and needs to be covered by DPA rules.

 

As you are installing yourself the rules are simple you just need to know them .... It's not like installing in your own private home.

 

10 cameras...... I would look at the new Quattro system it does all camera formats so gives you a flexible budget. Tvi AHD 960h and IP.

 

You will not find a price differance with either 720 or 3mp.

And for a warehouse install hikvision now do a 2mp PTZ for under 150

 

But if you are a registered uk company you get most of your equipment costs back so you don't have a budget problem

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I agree in upgrading the cameras. There is no reason anyone should be installing 720P cameras on a new install.

 

Most of the cost is in the labor, puling wire, penetrating the building, waterproofing, conduit if needed, etc. The cameras will be a small portion of the overall expense.

 

At least run Cat5 instead of coax so you can upgrade later.

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