Sen dec2014

December 2014 Issue 361

2014 State of the Market

l Installing DSC IMPASSA l Darkfighter turns around l Axis releases recorders l Hills VDS1 cloud l The Interview: Ray Mauritsson, Axis l EDS14: Synology’s mini marvel l Could cellular bandwidth double? l Latest CCTV technologies

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editorial s ec u ri ty e l e ct ro n i c s & netwo r ks d e c e mb e r 201 4 issue 361

Security electronics as a trade

A

FTER speaking with integrators a couple of months ago, as well as chatting with trainers at SIG, it’s been hard not to notice certain product trends in the industry.

Alarm panels that self-install, surveillance systems that find themselves over networks. I made the point in last month’s editorial that pressure on price was going to see less capable solutions installed by unqualified installers but during the month I got to thinking the issue was more profound than that.

Perhaps the catalyst for my thoughts was Naren Gursahaney of ADT who said his company “recognizes the incredible opportunity developing” in the unmonitored, do-it-yourself (DIY) product segment that he rightly points out is largely unpenetrated by traditional security solutions.

And thinking about this it seems there’s a confluence of forces coming that the industry in this country may have significant cause to regret.

Fundamentally, what we have in Australia is an electronic security industry with no formal electronic security certification in place and seemingly, no intention of ever having any, being spoon-fed plugand-play products a layman could install.

It doesn’t take a lot of thought to see where this is going to go. Solutions like Nest and Dropcam are attractive to end users because their functionality is so easy to access.

But it’s hard to quantify these solutions

By John Adams

Logically, the best way for the industry to compete with DIY alarm and surveillance solutions is with better technology. But it’s hard to offer better technology when your technicians don’t know how to install it. as aberrant when you have the likes of Google and Apple making moves to play in the field and even less so when industry leaders like Gursahaney start talking about the incredible opportunities of DIY. This plug-and-play simplicity is not limited to alarm systems. You only have to look at the success of companies like Australian CCTV distributor Swan, which is reputed to enjoy annual sales of around $A25 million and is rapidly developing a global presence. For a company that started out as a bit of a joke, Swan is now a huge competitor in domestic and small commercial applications and deserves applause for its vision.

And there’s no point grumping about such developments.

You can’t corral technology for yourself. And simple solutions benefit installers, too. They allow them to step up from alarms to automation then to access control, or from simple CCTV systems to major installs. After all, while plug-and-play works in some applications, in more serious installations it simply can’t cut the mustard.

Logically, the best way for the industry to compete with DIY alarm and surveillance solutions is with better technology. But it’s hard to offer better technology when your technicians don’t know how to install it. And that’s where that lack of training, which has been a rich vein of moans since I

started writing about the industry back in 1991, comes to the fore.

Along with arguments about global warming and the perils of a literal interpretation of monotheistic religious doctrines, training is one of those topics that’s almost as frustrating to me as the law of non contradiction.

The complexities of Australia’s disparate, state-based educational systems and the brick wall faced when trying to shape a training package are too awful to consider.

Professional education in this country is utterly enmeshed in bureaucracy and fenced in by special interest groups. Bringing an electronic security course at Certificate 3 Level from dream to reality at a national level is probably impossible. Integrators in NSW say the best option for their technicians is to go through a standard electrical trades apprenticeship and then expand their knowledge with courses run by manufacturers. Maybe they are right – perhaps we should leave it at that.

I started thinking about this because there’s a $A476 million Industry Skills Fund being opened on January 1, 2015, a fund the electronic security industry is not only entitled to apply for but desperately needs for the sake of its own future. Could this Industry Skills Fund be the catalyst for our more educated future? If history points to the future, I think not. zzz se&n 03

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An invitation to join the AssociAtion

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NUMBER OF ALARMS TOdAy

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SCSI / OpTUS SECURECALL pORTAL The SCSI SecureCall Portal is an extremely powerful tool used to monitor, report & search on every detail of your alarm traffic including showing the CLI for restricted numbers.

Working very closely with Optus, the SCSI SecureCall Portal obtains feeds direct from the network switches to provide complete accuracy & transparency.

The data is updated every 5 minutes providing a near real time experience with detailed reports stored for 12 months and 7 years of monthly history. www.securecall.com.au

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Brisbane Monday 4th May 2015 Sydney Wednesday 6th May 2015 Melbourne Monday 11th May 2015 Adelaide Wednesday 13th May 2015 Perth Monday 18th May 2015 Enquiries please contact Monique Keatinge +612 9280 4425

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40: The Interview: Ray Mauritsson, Axis

20: Installing DSC IMPASSA

dec 14

DSC IMPASSA, distributed locally by Q Security Systems, is an all-wireless security solution that leverages DSC’s monster range of devices to offer great flexibility in the real world. But simplicity of installation is IMPASSA’s greatest strength.

50: Video Surveillance Technologies - strengths and weaknesses

30: Darkfighter turns around Hikvision DS-2DF8223I-A(AEL) is the world’s first 1080P Full HD ultra low illumination network PTZ that delivers full colour images in conditions the company says would defeat conventional monochrome IP cameras and competing low-light cameras.

32: Axis releases recorders Axis Communications has released its new Axis Camera Station S10 Recorder Series, which comprises 3 out-of-the-box-ready desktop and rack-server models.

34: Hills VDS1 cloud Hills VSD1 is a cloud-based video surveillance solution designed to simplify management of video surveillance for domestic and small commercial applications.

This month John Adams speaks with Axis Communications CEO Ray Mauritsson about business trends, new developments in technology and the challenges and opportunities of the future.

30

Our world faces greater security threats than ever before and governments and commercial organisations are investing heavily in the security and safety of assets and personnel.

60: Synology’s mini marvel Synology’s teeny EDS14 resembles a NAS mated with a USB hub. It’s designed as a mobile server supporting up to 5 IP cameras.

There’s a USB 2.0 port supporting remote access by dongle, while a USB 3.0 and an SDXC UHS-I slot handle storage.

64: Master class CMI has integrated a decentralised, costefficient Mobotix IP video surveillance solution comprising 1200 cameras for Lexington One School District. The system is designed for fast response and investigation, and incorporates 12-48TB of in-camera or NAS storage per school.

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regulars

68: Radio star Researchers have achieved a milestone in modern wireless and cellular telecommunications, creating a radically smaller, more efficient radio wave circulator for wireless devices.

10: news Latest business, product and technical news from Australia and around the world.

46: monitoring

70: 2014: State of the market Year’s end is always an opportune moment to take a look at the state of the market, considering its current drivers, shifts in technology and consider the shape of the coming year.

There are some risks to take into account whenever you send alarm signals across networks, including reliability of service and signal security.

76: QSS and SCSI alliance

What’s new from our manufacturers.

78: editor’s choice

In a new alliance, SCSI says Q Security Systems will be distributing its alarm monitoring solutions, while QSS will make parts of its product range available to SCSI.

Publisher Bridge Publishing Aust. Pty Ltd ABN 11 083 704 858 PO Box 237 Darlinghurst NSW 1300 tel 61 2 9280 4425 fax 61 2 9280 4428 email info@bridge publishing.com.au

December 2014 Issue 361

2014 STATE OF THE MARKET

PP 100001158

SEM1214_1cover.indd 1

l Installing DSC IMPASSA l Darkfighter turns around l Axis releases recorders l Hills VDS1 cloud l The Interview: Ray Mauritsson, Axis l EDS14: Synology’s mini marvel l Could cellular bandwidth double? l Latest CCTV technologies

27/11/14 8:22 PM

80: helpdesk Our team of electronic security experts answers your tough technical questions.

Editor John Adams Advertising Manager Monique Keatinge Customer Service Annette Mathews tel 61 2 9280 4425 annette@bridge publishing.com.au Design Tania Simanowsky e: taniasdesign@ optusnet.com.au

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ADT Grows Automation, Talks DIY p.12 Avigilon Q3 Revenue Jumps 39 Per Cent p.14 Hills Christmas Draw: Win a Harley p.16 QSS double-digit DSC growth p.18

news in brief december 2014

Ownership changes at Inner Range/CSD

c o m pi l e d b y j o h n ada m s

Vin Lopes

Honeywell a Top 100 Global Innovator for 2014

■

HONEYWELL has been named a Thomson Reuters 2014 Top 100 Global Innovator for the 4th year running, recognizing its achievements as one of the world’s most innovative companies. The program, an initiative of the IP & Science business of Thomson Reuters, honours the 100 corporations and institutions around the world that are at the heart of innovation, as measured empirically by a series of proprietary patent-related metrics. This means the Top 100 ranking is based purely on demonstrated research and development.

Honeywell currently has more than 32,000 patents

or patent-pending applications worldwide, which help the company innovate technologies to address tough challenges linked to global macro trends such as safety and security, energy efficiency, clean energy generation, and globalization.

“The Thomson Reuters Top 100 Global Innovators prove that they are the companies driving economic growth, creating jobs, and pioneering new products and services,” said Basil Moftah, president, Thomson Reuters IP & Science. “We congratulate this year’s companies and are honoured to recognize their outstanding accomplishment.”

SCSI implements first bold CMS n SCSI is in the process of implementing its first installation of Bold Manitou.

According to the company’s MD, Dale Acott, the implementation stage has nearly come to an end.

“Once implementation is complete we will move to the point of running the system in conjunction with the currently-installed monitoring package,” Acott says. “When the customer is satisfied the system meets their expectations, the current monitoring system

10 se&n

will be decommissioned. I expect this to be January 2015.”

According to Acott, there are around a dozen prominent central monitoring stations around Australia that are committed to upgrading their current monitoring packages to Bold’s Manitou system.

“I have been really impressed and also surprised regarding the central monitoring stations we have had requesting system quotes and demonstrations,” Acott says.

“The response has been fantastic and we haven’t even begun our campaign to make the Australian security industry aware

of what represents a new world of security monitoring capabilities, along with the extra revenue streams that are now available.”

THE Inner Range/CSD Group has announced that a 50 per cent shareholding of the business has been acquired by a coalition of 3 senior management staff and New Zealand company, Atlas Gentech.

Atlas Gentech is a New Zealand-based security distributor that has a virtually identical product portfolio to that of CSD in Australia.

Industry stalwart and Inner Range MD, Vin Lopes, says he has been looking to cement plans for the future of both businesses after the recent retirement of his partner and co-founder Doug Frazer.

“I’m looking forward to working with the exciting new blend of business experience and hightech youthful energy that is now around the board room table,” said Lopes.

“With this new adrenalin burst, all companies in the Group are well placed to continue the stellar growth they’ve enjoyed in recent years. We are confident we will be a driving force within the security industry for some time to come.”

The re-structured Trans-Tasman Group already operates with almost zero debt and has significant cash reserves, with more than 200 employees and combined revenues exceeding $A100 million.

Inner Range has a substantial technology development facility in Melbourne and a European sales office in the UK supporting its new Integriti product suite in countries all around the world.

A spokesperson for the group says that a CSD branch will commence operation in the ACT early next year and reports the company is looking for acquisitions to expand the Group’s activities in its core areas of technology development and distribution.

news

Gavin Graetz joins QSS

december 2014

ADT Grows Automation, Talks DIY

n ADT sales increased in the fourth quarter as the company’s Pulse product suite marked its millionth customer, according to earnings released late last month. More than 70 per cent of new customers are choosing the Pulse security and home automation offering,

according to ADT. The company added 280,000 new customers over Q4 and while its primary focus continues to be on the integrated monitored security arena, ADT CEO Naren Gursahaney said ADT recognizes “the incredible opportunity developing”

in the unmonitored, do-it-yourself (DIY) product segment he says is largely unpenetrated by traditional security solutions.

“We’re looking at that DIY market and seeing if there is an opportunity.

I think we’re excited by what we do see,” said

Gursahaney. “We’ve still got some more work to do to understand the value of a professionally monitored solution in there to make a smart home truly a smart and safe home and that’s the opportunity we see and we will be talking more about that as we move forward.”

For fiscal 2014, revenue was $US3.4 billion, an increase of 3 per cent over 2013, the company said. Much of that was recurring revenue from ongoing sales of its security services, up 3.7 per cent compared to last year. For the fourth quarter, ADT reported revenue of $883 million, an increase of 4.4 per cent over a year ago. Profits fell to $82 million from $96 million for the same quarter in 2013.concurrent video streams.

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1. Make a purchase over $50 2. Go to hills.com.au/win and enter 3. Go into the draw to win a HiLux, Commodore SS or Harley-Davidson®

Gavin Graetz

Q SECURITY Systems has announced that Gavin Graetz has joined the QSS Adelaide office to help grow the SA business. As sales manager, Graetz brings with him extensive industry experience, knowledge and skills.

He comes to QSS after 19 years at Pacific Communications, latterly the SA branch manager.

“I am very excited about joining the SA team and really look forward to the challenge of driving growth with our industry leading brands,” said Graetz. “Building on the existing customer relationships, service and support will also be a priority for me.”

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Promotion commences 7:30AM 14 November 2014 and finishes at 11:59pm AEST on 28 February 2015. † This promotion is open to individuals who have a receipt for a purchase valued at $50 or more (ex. GST)* Hills businesses include: Hills Electronic Security, Pacom, DAS, Lan1, Intek, OPS, Hills SVL, Hills A&TV and APG. Full terms and conditions available at: hills.com.au/terms. Authorised under permit numbers: NSW: LTPS/14/08519, SA: T14/2012, VIC:14/5596, ACT: TP14/03787

12 TE0105_185x125_BuildingTech_Comp_SEN_Mag.indd se&n

1

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The definition of Clarity Honeywell Security’s latest 2100X Series cameras are designed for revealing every single detail in the scene.

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60fps video capture on 1080p resolution P-Iris lens and Auto Back Focus function Remote Motorized Focus and Zoom (MFZ) Video Analytics Onboard Front light compensation for license plate capture Ultra Wide Dynamic Range 120dB

Honeywell 60fps IP cameras set a new horizon for surveillance – so you won’t miss a thing.

For more information call 1300 234 234, email honeywellsecurity.as@honeywell.com or visit www.honeywellsecurity.com.au © 2014 Honeywell International Inc. All rights reserved.

news december 2014

CSD Announces New National Sales Support Team n CSD has announced another expansion with the appointment of the first team member, Michael Dowling, to its new National Sales Support (NSS) team.

“This is a significant strategy designed to support our business development team, enabling them to focus on face-to-face visits with our valued clients” said Peter Grimshaw, national sales manager at CSD. “Michael, with his 20 years of security experience is an excellent first NSS recruitment with further appointments to follow”.

According to Grimshaw, the NSS’s main role at CSD is to “assist with the preparation of quotations, tender applications and technical support material which our clients need to win major projects.

“With our wide range of products we are winning more and more major projects and this new team will be able to focus on the necessary support our BDMs and more importantly our customer’s need.”

Peter Grimshaw

14 se&n

Ted Pretty Tavcom eyes $A476 million skills fund

Avigilon Q3 Revenue Jumps 39 Per Cent David Cote

Lee Evans

Alexander Fernandes

n AVIGILON has reported record Q3 2014 revenues of $CAD71.0 million, an increase of 39 per cent, or $19.8 million, compared to revenue of $51.2 million in Q3 2013.

According to the company, revenue growth continues to reflect increased product sales worldwide, driven by greater customer adoption in existing markets, further penetration of new target regions and sales of new products. Revenue for Q3 2014 also benefited from foreign exchange gains.

Gross margin percentage was 57 per cent, up from 53 per cent a year earlier, adjusted EBITDA was $15.7 million, a 27 per cent increase over Q3 2013 Adjusted EBITDA of $12.4 million, net income was $11.6 million, a 35 per cent increase over Q3 2013 net income of $8.6 million.

“Avigilon delivered another record sales quarter in Q3, underpinned by particularly strong growth in the U.S. and EMEA, as well as robust sales of new products,” said Alexander Fernandes,

founder, president, CEO and chairman of the board of Avigilon.

Avigilon delivered another record sales quarter in Q3, underpinned by particularly strong growth in the U.S. and EMEA, as well as robust sales of new products

TAVCOM Training Australia believes the electronic security industry is firmly in line for support from the a $A476 Million Industry Skills Fund which will be opened on January 1, 2015.

While the fund has not been made available, indications are that approximately 1000 electronic security technicians require up-skilling.

“This fund will assist Australian industry, irrespective of size, to access training services to up-skill their employees/ contractors,” explains Tavcom’s Lee Evans.

“Having already spoken with many companies, Tavcom has identified a demand not only for better qualified security technicians but for current personnel to be up-skilled in intruder alarms, access control, CCTV and CCTV over IP.” According to Lee, Tavcom is currently identifying how many personnel these security companies need to have up-skilled with Federal Funding, and what skills are required. Tavcom Training Australia is an international training organisation specialising in technical security. Tavcom has an MOU with Milcom Communications to deliver Certificate 3 in Technical Security CPP30507.

Security.

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From video surveillance and license plate recognition to access control and intrusion detection, Security Center unifies the security systems that are critical to your operations, so you can see the big picture and make better security decisions – both today, and tomorrow.

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Š 2014 Genetec. All rights reserved. Genetec, and the Genetec logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Genetec.

All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

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Innovative Solutions

news

Tyco buys into Android Automation Maker, Qolsys

december 2014

Claus Rønning, Milestone (l) with Klaus Donath, Ingram Micro

Milestone Announces IT Distributor Partnership with Ingram Micro n INGRAM Micro will be distributing Milestone IP video products in Austria, Germany and Switzerland for security and IT integrators to deliver solutions based on open platform technology.

Ingram Micro is the world’s largest wholesale technology distributor and global leader in IT supply chain and mobile device lifecycle services. The new distribution agreement enables Milestone Systems to reach an extensive network of IT and security system integrators through Ingram

Micro’s extensive distribution network in the region.

“We are certain that our partnership with Ingram Micro will deliver strong opportunities for their customers in terms of solution power and new business. At the same time it will offer an efficient purchasing conduit for our ever-growing partner ecosystem,” said Claus Rønning, director Southern Europe & DACH, Milestone Systems.

“The security market

Hills Christmas Draw: Win Hilux, Commodore or Harley n HILLS is getting into the festive spirit early, offering Australian and New Zealand customers the chance to win their choice of a brand new Toyota HiLux WorkMate 4x2 Double-Cab Pick-up, Holden Commodore SS or Harley Davidson.

Customers only need to spend $50 or more at

16 se&n

Hills to go into the draw to win. Participating Hills businesses include Hills Electronic Security, Pacific Communications, Crestron, DAS, Lan1, Intek, OPS, Hills SVL, Hills A&TV and APG. The Promotion starts 14 November 2014 and ends 28 February 2015. Visit www. hills.com.au/win to find out more..

in the region is quickly growing, and video enabling business processes is a natural broadening in scope for IT professionals. Our partnership with Ingram Micro is an important factor in helping IT professionals, IT and security integrators to deliver solutions based on Milestone’s market-leading open platform technology.”

According to Klaus Donath, senior director value business DACH, Ingram Micro, Milestone is the global industry leader

in video management software and therefore the ideal business partner for its physical security unit.

“In the US, the partnership of Ingram Micro and Milestone already shows great success, and we are pleased to also provide Milestone broad access to the German market,” said Donath. “At the same time, we are happy to complete our portfolio of offerings with such top quality products with high compatibility.”

TYCO says it has advanced its Internet of Things strategy with a strategic investment in Qolsys. The San Jose, California company which has an Android-based IQ panel with a 7-inch touchscreen with 6 wireless radios, including CDMA cellular, WiFi, security sensor RF, Z-Wave, Bluetooth and a radio to communicate with Alarm.com’s Image Sensor motion and image capture device.

The panel leverages interactive services powered by Alarm.com.

A camera is built into the touchscreen so the panel can take a picture of anyone who enters a PIN into the system.

“The partnership with Qolsys is exciting news for Tyco and further demonstrates our commitment to enabling new intelligent services via the Internet of Things,” Mike Ryan, president, Tyco Security Products, said in a press release. “This investment deepens our intrusion security portfolio offering so that we can continue to deliver the most innovative and intuitive solutions to our customers in the residential, commercial and service provider segments.”

Conventional IR Camera Hikvision DarkFighter Camera

DS-2CD6026FHWD Hikvision DarkFighter Camera

Don’t be left in the dark!

Hikvision’s new DarkFighter low light IP camera delivers outstanding colour images in extremely

At the heart of the DarkFighter is a state of the art, highly sensitive 1/2” CMOS imager, which

With Full HD 1080P video at up to 60fps, 120dB wide dynamic range and host of intelligent features, the DarkFighter is a natural choice for any situation where colour images in low light

Unit 14a, 2 Eden Park Dr, Macquarie Park NSW 2113 Tel: +61 2 8599 4233 Toll Free: 1300 557 450 (Australia only) Email: salesau@hikvision.com

◆ 120dB WDR ◆ ROI codec

provides far greater sensitivity in low light conditions.

Hikvision Australia Pty Ltd

◆ Full HD 1080P video, up-to 60fps ◆ Ultra Low-light

low light and high contrast lighting conditions.

areas are a must.

◆ 1/2” Progressive scan CMOS

◆ ABF (Auto Back Focus) ◆ Electronic Image Stabilization ◆ Smart features

To find out why the world is turning to Hikvision for their CCTV needs, contact Central Security Distribution (CSD).

1300 319 499 www. centralsd.com.au

news december 2014

Hills moves Innovation Centres and Operations to Tonsley n HILLS will relocate its South Australian Innovation Centres, product teams and shared support service functions from Port Road in Hindmarsh to the new Tonsley Park precinct

by the end of the year.

Hills will occupy part of the new 6-storey, 18,000 square metre Flinders University building at Tonsley, due to officially open in January 2015.

Ted Pretty (l)

videosecurityproducts.com.au

A Universe of Solutions

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Hills group managing director and CEO Ted Pretty said he is excited about the opportunities the move will bring to the company and its employees.

“The move to Tonsley has been under consideration for some time and reflects our need for more collaborative space to support new product development, create new jobs and drive new revenue streams,” he said.

“This move is in the best interests of the business both strategically and financially.”

Professor Michael Barber, Vice-Chancellor said “Flinders at Tonsley will be a place where our students interact with business and where business interacts with our researchers in areas such as engineering, medical devices and nanoscale technologies, to make the new products and process of the 21st century.

“The co-location of Hills at our Tonsley site will accelerate the opportunities

for collaboration under our proposed Tonsley Technology Alliance, not only with Flinders but also other institutions.”

Hills will also seek assistance through the Federal Government’s Next Generation Manufacturing Investment Programme to move additional medical technology development activities into SA and Tonsley. If successful, this could see Hills develop and manufacture new medical devices in South Australia.

The move to Tonsley has been under consideration for some time and reflects our need for more collaborative space to support new product development, create new jobs and drive new revenue streams

Ted Pretty QSS double-digit DSC growth

ACCORDING to QSS MD, Rob Rosa, the company is achieving double digit growth with DSC panels, including NEO and IMPASSA. “We have had some considerable growth in these lines,” Rosa says. “Our panel sales have grown at double digits over the past 12 months and we believe we will see this continuing, given market trends in intrusion alarms.”

According to Rosa, while home automation is a new area for QSS, the company’s alignment with Sfere Group, which is the exclusive BPT and CAME agents, empowers its automation solutions.”

Security control at your fingertips Solution 2000 & 3000

Built around the concepts of lifestyle, connectivity and expandability, Bosch introduce the Solution 2000 & 3000 alarm panels. Offering 4+4 and 8+8 zones respectively, Solution 2000 & 3000 give you everything you love about the Solution Ultima with the added bonus of IP & GPRS communication options and 4 on-board outputs, with an optional output expander to add 8 more relays. With LCD Icon, Alphanumeric LCD keypads and a range of touchscreen options, controlling your security system has never been simpler, especially with the Bosch smartphone app available for IOS & AndroidOS. These panels are even NBN ready with integrated CSV-IP communications*. Add remote programming via USB/PSTN/IP using A-Link Plus software and the option of wireless expansion using Radion (for Solution 3000 only), and you have an extremely agile security system that can cater for residential and small to medium commercial applications. All at an extremely competitive price!

With future expansion options in coming months incorporating video integration and home automation, Bosch is excited to present the Solution 2000 & 3000.

For more details visit: www.boschsecurity.com.au or contact your nearest Bosch Security Systems distributor. * some functions mentioned require additional modules.

Bosch National Order Desk: 1300 1 BOSCH (26724) Security Master License No: 409 400 739 Email: stsales@au.bosch.com

Smartphone app for IOS & AndroidOS

available now

s p e ci al re p o rt

Dsc impassa

Installing DSC IMPASSA

DSC IMPASSA, distributed locally by Q Security Systems is an all-wireless security solution that leverages DSC’s monster range of devices to offer great flexibility in the real world. But simplicity of installation is IMPASSA’s greatest strength.

20 se&n

W

HEN I got an opportunity to install a DSC IMPASSA alarm panel recently I was both eager and apprehensive at once. DSC has been one of my favourite alarm manufacturers since the 1990s, when it released solutions offering cool stuff like remote intercom via telephone and onboard relays for control of remote devices.

IMPASSA reflects the lateral thinking of DSC’s engineering but while the system is deep in some ways, in other ways it’s actually quite traditional.

That’s no bad thing. For many installers and many home owners, a security solution is a security solution and what they requires is more security capability, not a bunch of automation options that are unlikely to be used.

by john adams

Wireless keypad

Glass break

Controller, PIR and key fobs

When IMPASSA arrives and I’m unboxing, the things that strike me include the fundamental simplicity of the system’s architecture and the enormity of the sensor and user interface options. The heart of IMPASSA is the SCW9055 wireless controller. It’s a user interface and control panel in a single housing. Dimensions are 227 x 140 x 42mm and it’s nice to look at, large enough for easy use and organic enough not to draw the eye unnecessarily. Current draw is 425-750mA, which is very little for a device of this type. The onboard battery will support the system for around 24 hours.

Key to understanding the system is the nature of its comms and power supply. On the detection side, IMPASSA supports up to 64 of DSC’s 433Mhz

wireless devices, as well as 16 wireless keys (without use of a zone slot) and 17 user access codes. When it comes to reporting, there’s a single 3G SIM bay in the TL2553 controller (mine came installed), and there’s support for PSTN if you need it.

Something that’s neat is that IMPASSA displays the communicator’s cellular signal strength to help determine the optimal mounting position within the home. And the real time clock updates the time and date via the cellular communicator, too. Another display on the keypad is external temperature, which I assume comes to the controller from the external siren.

When it comes to power, there’s a plug in transformer and cable with positive and negative terminations and you slide these into the AC termination block (there’s no polarity to worry about) and that’s your power done.

Backup power is a 1500Ma Ni-Mh pack that can be upgraded to 3600Ma if you are supporting another communicator.

Something quite neat about IMPASSA is that it offers 2-way audio alarm communication with central monitoring stations during alarm events. This is facilitated via a built-in VOX only or VOX and push-to-talk function. The ability to talk to CMS operators remotely is bread and butter in the medi-alarm market and it’s nice to see the same capability available here. And on the topic of alarm events, 500 events are stored in the event buffer.

That’s pretty much the whole of the controller.

From here we start talking about IMPASSA’s device catalogue. It’s comprehensive. Options include the WT5500 (P) 2-way wireless keypad,

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the WT4901 2-way wireless indoor siren, the WT4911 2-way wireless outdoor siren, or a combination of both. Then there are WT4989 2-way wireless keys for remote control, and there’s the WS4920 1-way wireless repeater if you need longer ranges.

Along with this hardware, installers can select from all DSC 433 MHz wireless devices and there’s plenty to choose from. There are 2 door contact options, 1 volumetric motion sensors, a smoke sensor, a carbon monoxide sensor, a flood detector, a glass break detector, a shock detector, 2 models of wireless key, 2 models of panic pendant, a holdup switch and a 2-way wireless integration model.

In this installation of IMPASSA I’m going to be using a good cross-section of the user interface and sensor range. To that end, I’m putting in the WT5500-433 keypad, 3 door contacts, a motion sensor, a smoke sensor, a flood sensor, a glass break sensor, a shock sensor, an internal siren and an external siren. As well as a prox pendant I can use on key rings to operate the system with one touch, I also have a couple of remotes.

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Aside from the process of hanging the gear onto the wall, the key thing with any wireless alarm panel is enrolling the devices and registering them into the controller. Adding wireless devices involves hopping through a process of registering the Electronic Serial Numbers of compatible wireless devices and assigning or confirming zone numbers and zone types.

In a larger facility it would be best to cart the devices to their proposed locations and enrol them there. This is because the enrolment process involves a location check which is undertaken with the wireless signal turned way

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down. If the sensors work under those conditions, you know you’re going to be pretty right.

Part of this process is undertaken before the physical installation with some instruction from Ben Johnson from QSS, some of it I do later at home.

The first thing I need to enrol is the wireless keypad which I’ll be putting at the main entry point. This keypad comes with a proximity tag, which you assign to a user when programming user codes. When you first power up the keypad you hit *1, call it Keypad 1 and then push * and it’s enrolled. What’s neat here is that once this keypad is enrolled you have full control of the system, including programming with this keypad as well.

This enrolment part involves fun things like installer codes and zone definitions and there are 89 of these so you do need the manual in your lap.

But it’s a fundamentally simple process involving no more than a couple of keystrokes to enrol each device. To enrol wireless devices you hit *8 to get into the installer menu, enter your installer code, then 898 to get into wireless enrolment mode, then the controller waits to get a tamper from a device (or a signal on power up) and displays a device’s electronic serial number, which you check by sight to ensure it’s correct, then you hit * to confirm.

You then select a zone type for the device. The zone types have different properties – if it’s a reed on the front door you select zone type 01, which assigns a delay. But as this is a PIR in the house, I assign it 04 for interior. This means there’s no delay assigned to the zone, though delays can be manually configured. The next step is to activate the device using the tamper, and the controller then tells you in plain English if the location is good or bad.

The next thing that gets enrolled is an indoor siren. The controller picks up the device as soon as the batteries are installed. Is the ESN correct? Yep, so select Siren 1, then hit * to confirm and you’re done with that device. If you’re wondering, yes, this process is very easy and systematic. If you’ve done it once, you can do it for all the devices. It’s just a matter of going through the process step by step.

Next up is the external siren. The siren’s battery passivation process needs to be undertaken first and that takes a couple of minutes after the battery has been installed. Once it’s complete, you hit the device tamper and it’s ready to be enrolled. I check the device number and it’s designated as Siren 2.

There are programming options for sirens. You can disable door chimes, bell squawks, trouble beeps and the like.

A wireless key fob with a wee LCD screen is next for enrolment. The clever fob can communicate system status to the resident. The panel displays the device number, it’s checked, Key 1 is selected, * is pressed and it’s done. Then comes another key fob, this one has no screen but still handles the fundamentals of arm, disarm, stay and away

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modes and there’s panic.

Next comes a glass break sensor - power up, check the device number, select Zone 4, press * and that one is done. Then it’s the flood sensor (you have to wire this up to a reed switch to enrol it), then comes a shock sensor that beeps every time it’s accelerometer detects movement during installation.

While enrolling this, I scratch my head thinking about where to put this device. It goes into the panel as Zone 2, zone type instant. Very neatly, the shock sensor also has a reed switch and this reed is assigned zone 3. The idea is that the shock sensor detects an attack on a door and will squawk to warn off an intruder, as well as generating an alarm, while the reed confirms breach of the entry.

Next comes a reed switch. I enter *8, the installer code, key 898 to get into wireless enrolment mode, pull the tag to activate the battery, the keypad screen displays the number, I check it, and call that reed Zone 5, designating it as Type 01 – delay – and Programming screens are easy to follow

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Dsc impassa

slate it for installation on the main entry.

Given the location of my main controller, I’m pretty happy to have this interface where all the work is taking place. It’s a nice unit that displays the same information as the main controller. The outside temp, the time and the signal strength of the 3G communications channel.

The first thing to think about is where to locate the controller. Because this unit has a 3G SIM inside it, the best place is going to be a higher and in a location where there is a good signal.

Installing IMPASSA With the system enrolled, the most time consuming part comes – the physical installation.

The first thing to think about is where to locate the controller. Because this unit has a 3G SIM inside it, the best place to install it is going to be a higher and in a location where there is a good signal.

Once you install a SIM, the 3G signal is displayed in the window of the controller, so you can walk around and check to make sure the unit is located in the best spot for cellular coverage.

Going through the process of unpacking, I notice DSC ships heavier components including the main controller, the remote keypad, the internal siren, the external siren and the smoke sensor with more robust fastening and plugs. Given much of this gear is going onto plasterboard, I’ve decided to use plugs with almost all my fastenings.

First, I choose a location that’s elevated, remote from entry points and with existing power. It’s not a location I spend a lot of time so this means I’m hiding one of my keypads but that’s the nature of the system. Matters are simple enough. You use the mounting bracket as a template, mark the fixing points, and break out the drill. The wall is plasterboard so I’m slightly over drilling and tapping in plugs before half screwing in the mounting plate.

Before I tighten the screws I attach power, running the cable from the transformer through the cable opening on the rear of the mounting plate and slipping the power cable ends into the termination block. Then it’s just a matter of attaching the front part of the controller and

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PIR

Wireless outdoor siren

Installing the controller

turning power on at the wall. Because I’ve got all my sensors but the smokie and a vanishing reed programmed already, my work here is done. A quick tidy up and it’s back downstairs.

The primary entry points and key vulnerabilities of this property are all located towards the rear of the building. It’s an add-on to the original structure and happily for me, it’s lined with plasterboard, not the 1890s plaster and lathing that lines the older section of the house.

Having had picture hooks turn into sink holes in the original building, I’m pleased about this.

Something that makes life easier is that the WT5500-433 remote keypad allows full control of the system, so I can muck about enrolling the smoke sensor from the ground floor. I kick off down stairs by installing the remote wireless keypad. Again, it’s an easy business. I mark the wall, install the mounting plate and snap the keypad into place. Apart from some plaster dust on the floor, that’s done.

Next, I put in the internal siren, drilling, tapping in my plugs, screwing in the mounting plate and clipping in the siren body. It’s always a curious experience drilling into apparently homogenous surfaces. One hole is plaster the full length of the relatively long screw shaft, in the other holes I’m through into a void at about 1cm.

The random drilling experience repeats when installing the external siren in a rendered external wall. The first hole drills out like sand, the second third, fourth and fifth feel and look like besser block, the fifth and final hole on the bottom left hand corner of the install drills out as 19th century oxide-red brick dust. Not for the first time I have a pang of regret over a building inspection not undertaken.

I put the external siren in a location above a rear window that lies between the back door and main entrance. At my place these are only a couple of metres apart separated by a wall. The spot is under a roofline but in view of anyone thinking of breaching either entry point. From outside the front gate, the distinctive siren cover is in view above the dividing wall.

Heading back inside, I install the PIR on a timber window frame where its detection field covers

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both the stairs and the main body of the house, including the rarely used front door. Again it’s a matter of marking up with the mounting plate, drilling, tapping in the plugs and winding in the fasteners. Once the mounting plate is on the wall – I choose a height of about 2 metres – I click in the sensor and do a bit of a walk test. The sensor is not located at right angles to the approaches, which is not ideal but my walk test shows the sensor is up to the task of detecting movement towards and away in this space.

The next sensor goes on the main side entry – a reed switch. And on the back door into the courtyard I use that vibration detector incorporating the integrated reed switch. Both these are easy to install.

You just mark up using the mounting plate, drill for fixings and then screw in the fastenings before clicking the sensor bodies into place. I use plugs for the vibration detector but with the reed switch and the magnets for the reed and the vibration sensor subsidiary zone, I dispense with plugs and use a drill bit slightly smaller than the screw shafts. Later I have a bit of trouble with the main entry reed and have to reposition the magnet to get a seal.

The smokie goes in next and I remove the ancient unit currently at the foot of the stairs between kitchen and living areas and use its screws and plug holes, as well as a couple of the screws and washers supplied with the new unit to fix it into place. It’s a nice looking unit, this DSC smoke sensor.

Finally, I come to the flood sensor. The most accessible place I might have a water problem is the laundry, which is tiled but has no waste drain in the floor. This means either drilling into tiles, which is a horribly uncertain business, or opting for double-sided tape. I decide to go with tape but I’m a bit disappointed I don’t have a more serious application for this sensor. An internal hot water tank, a water tank in the ceiling, a large fish tank with a mini reef filtration system – all these would be ideal applications for the flood sensor.

You need to build this sensor. The main sensor body is shaped so the unit can be fixed at floor level into floor and wall, the sensor contacts resting on the floor. There’s a flying lead out the back of the sensor and you terminate the ends of these leads into contacts in a reed switch body installed high up on the wall out of harm’s way. It’s a nice combination of technologies from DSC. The defining characteristic of this process of installation was its simplicity. When you’re unfamiliar with programming a control panel there’s obviously a feeling of apprehension during the job. I was a bit worried about the fact most the devices where enrolled on the couch and I intended to install the controller as far away from them as possible. But in the event, this was a non-issue.

Programming via the keypad is the same as it always is. Keypad programming is not like a piece of software (yes, you can DLS program IMPASSA using

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PC Link), with all the options laid on a single screen, the checked boxes, the devices numbers, zone types and descriptions all accessible at a glance.

Keypad programming is procedural. You need to jot things down on a piece of paper so you know where you are at.

Nor do things happen instantly with a wireless panel. You hit *8 and then wait for the system to prompt you to key in your installer code. If you leave it too long, then the controller goes back to sleep and you have to start the process again. That’s just the nature of the thing.

If there was a single standout challenge of this installation it was reading the small print of the installation sheets that came boxed with each device. I ended up calling these up on my laptop so I could make the English version page-sized. The actual A4 IMPASSA installation manual is great. It covers everything you can think of and supports keypad programming with comprehensive programming worksheets. If you fill these out as you go, it’s impossible to go wrong with this alarm system.

The only trouble I have with the physical installation is getting one of the reeds to seal on an outward opening door with a big gap between door and frame. While I’m working out this problem (I end up using doubled sided tape to install the magnet on its edge), I have the panel in walk test mode. In walk test, each time I break the seal I get a brief siren from the controller keypad, the internal keypad and the internal siren, one after another.

In the back of my head I hear a louder siren approaching but don’t think anything of it until a burly man in a bullet-proof vest jumps over the front wall and peers through my window. When I open the side entry, reed magnet in my mouth and screwdriver in my hand, I find another officer standing at the gate.

“Do you live here, sir?” she asks me. “We have reports of an attempted break-in”.

“I do live here,” I reply, unable to contain an enormous grin. “This is an attempted alarm installation.” zzz

Features of IMPASSA include: l Supports 64 wireless zones and 16 wireless keys (without using a zone slot) l Integrated HSPA (3G) cellular communicator l Cellular signal strength read-out to optimize placement l 2-way wireless support for 4 keypads, 4 sirens, 16 wireless keys l Real time clock update using cellular module

lR emote firmware upgrade via cellular lE asy wireless device enrolment process l Template programming lF ull 32-character programmable labels l5 programmable function keys l I ndividual FAP keys l 1 7 user access codes l5 00 event buffer lE nlarged keypad buttons lO utdoor temperature display.

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hikvision

Darkfighter turns around Hikvision DS-2DF8223I-A(AEL) is the world’s first 1080P Full HD ultra low illumination network PTZ that delivers full colour images in conditions the company says would defeat conventional monochrome IP cameras and competing low-light cameras.

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IKVISION’S DS-2DF8223I-A(AEL) Darkfighter PTZ is employs the company’s ultra-lowlight MP lens and is designed specifically to capture sharp color and monochrome images in extreme, low-light conditions. The result is claimed to be colour images down to 0.0005Lux and the delivery of full colour images in conditions that would defeat conventional monochrome IP cameras and competing low-light cameras.

The DarkFighter camera features a massive 2MP, 1.9-inch high definition progressive scan CMOS image sensor. Together with a 120 dB WDR (Wide Dynamic Range) and Hikvision’s 3D DNR (Digital Noise Reduction) technology, the camera is capable of streaming video in full 1080p HD, with 23X optical zoom.

Darkfighter PTZ features a wide range of smart detection features, including Face Detection, Intrusion Detection, Line Crossing Detection and Audio Exception. These features, combined with an IR distance of up to 200 metres, defog ability; Smart Tracking and Electronic Image Stabilisation place the DarkFighter head and shoulders above other PTZ and IP cameras.

MPEG4, MJPEG and H.264 video compression

Hikvision’s DarkFighter is also protected by an IP66 rating against rain and dust, making it the perfect candidate for deployment in challenging outdoor environments both day and night.

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formats are supported and the camera features multiple H.264 compression profiles, allowing users to optimize bandwidth and storage without compromising image quality. With support for ONVIF, PSIA, and CGI standards, the new camera also offers quick and easy integration with other video surveillance equipment and systems.

Hikvision’s DarkFighter is also protected by an IP66 rating against rain and dust, making it ideal for deployment in challenging outdoor environments both day and night.

While SEN has not seen the new Darkfighter PTZ in operation, the word from the Tony Lagan at Hikvision Australia is that performance is awesome and he says the new camera has blown away audiences at recent demonstrations. Importantly, SEN has just reviewed the Darkfighter fixed camera and we found it to be a strong performer, not just in low light but in ridiculous levels of backlight. Down to 6 lux we found Darkfighter certainly needed no additional illumination and gave face recognition at closer ranges and excellent situation awareness for street surveillance. If the PTZ version mirrors these capabilities, it will be a strong contender.

The camera has also just been nominated as a finalist in the category of CCTV Camera of the Year at IFSEC in London.

“We are very pleased to see the DarkFighter camera’s ultra-low light sensitivity and Hikvision’s Smart detection technologies rewarded with this nomination,” says Keen Yao, international marketing director at Hikvision.

“Competition for these industry-leading awards was very fierce this year with a record number of entries received and our being shortlisted as a finalist is a testament both to the outstanding qualities of the DarkFighter camera and to the innovative approach Hikvision takes to the global CCTV surveillance market.”zzz

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axis

Axis releases recorders Axis Communications has released its new Axis Camera Station S10 Recorder Series, which comprises 3 out-of-the-box-ready desktop and rack-server models.

A

XIS S10 recorder series is a front-foot play from Axis Communications, which has long focused on cameras and modest video management solutions. This new release suggests a number of things. For a start, buyers will be able to purchase end-to-end Axis solutions that will be easier to install – you won’t need to be an integrator to handle them.

The new series offers recording solutions that simplifies installation and setup for mid-sized installations such as schools, industries and larger retail stores that require a feature-rich system for highdefinition surveillance. Axis Camera Station software is preloaded onto high-quality servers and configured to perfectly match Axis’ range of network cameras,

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providing both ease of installation and reliability.

Axis Camera Station S10 Recorder Series consists of the Axis S1016, workstation model for use in office environments for installations up to 16 video channels. Meanwhile, Axis S1032 is a rack server model for installations of up to 32 video channels and Axis S1048 is a rack server model for installations of up to 48 video channels.

Axis Camera Station video management software is pre-installed on all solutions in the S10 Series.

The software offers an intuitive user interface with features to meet the demand for effective and active surveillance such as a flexible live view layout, site maps, powerful event configuration, efficient alarm management and responsive PTZ control. System settings such as camera and storage are configured to further simplify system setup and maximize performance.

Hardware components such as hard-discs, graphic card and CPUs, as well as storage capacity are optimized to meet the demands for reliable high-definition surveillance. To further safeguard system uptime, the package includes hardware and software support for three years. Further features of Axis Camera Station S10 Recorder Series include pre-installed system software such as Windows 7, easy scalability with additional Axis Camera Station licenses and support for multiple screens. An Axis Camera Station S9001 Desktop Terminal available as an option. zzz

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vds1 cloud

Hills VDS1 cloud Hills VSD1 is a cloud-based video surveillance solution designed to simplify management of video surveillance for domestic and small commercial applications.

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H

ILLS released its VSD1 cloud solution at Security 2014 and the company has been honing the offering over the past couple of months so as to best meet the needs of installers and end users. Functionally and simplicity are the keys to VSD1. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just so basic to put together. Portforwarding? Forget about it. Stuff happens in the background and a browser appears. Register as a user and off you go.

Operationally, the key is a stable end-to-end broadband network and you need to get that part right with any cloud-based solution. As a cloud solution, VSD1 is designed to allow users to view live camera feeds on internet-connected smartphones, tablets or workstations.

Supporting this installation simplicity and

By John Ada m s

With a short focal length lens like this one, a large aperture makes for bright images with good contrast and strong colour rendition smack in the sweet spot.

good contrast and strong colour rendition smack in the sweet spot. Fundamentally, what you lose in the background, you gain in the foreground and for a camera that works 24-hours a day, that’s how it should be.

This VSD1 camera has a built-in motion detection function that can be activated by the user and when it’s activated and there’s movement, users are alerted via email. You get live view included with purchase of the camera and subscription plans are available for cloud services such as recording and playback of motion detection events. VSD1 cloud is based in an Australian data centre for security and to ensure the fastest connections with local businesses.

I took a look at VSD1 with Fei Lee and Virginia Kim at Hills’ city office and they neatly highlighted the key aspects of the camera. Installation is simple. Linking to the camera is simple. Quality network comms are important and if you use an iPhone, you need to know your Apple password.

remote accessibility is the VSD1 camera – it’s the jewel in this solution’s crown. We’ll get into the specifics later on but in short the camera is PoE, weatherproof and vandal-resistant. There’s also IR, which expands functionality into hours of darkness. The unit is 720p, which gives installers plenty of headroom to improve image quality in line with network quality.

At full resolution, images are particularly strong.

The 73-degree field of view is about standard for most applications and the camera’s large F2.0 aperture trades maximum depth of field for better performance in low light. The trade-off in favour of low light performance is worthwhile, in my opinion. With a short focal length lens like this one, a large aperture makes for bright images with

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vds1 cloud

You can certainly see the quality of the images – I saw VSD1 at Security 2014 running on a LAN and the camera work was excellent – fit for the professional installer market.

The unit comes in a nice box with everything you need. There’s the camera, a power cable, a network cable, a mounting plate and fixings.

From the point of view of installers in the field, you get the camera, mount it using the template and supplied screws and use the supplied 2m cable, or make-up a longer cable, as a drop cable to the nearest router. It’s very easy. The PoE power supply is especially neat, with one line going to the camera and the other going to the router.

As soon as you plug in the camera the Hills Login page comes up and this allows you to register and access the camera over the internet. You can set the system to live view or to record motion with events being logged for later review. The system informs the user each time a motion detection event takes place via email. Once the installer puts in the camera, the end user then registers the camera.

“Let’s take a look at the web site and go through the process to give an idea of how easy it is,” Lee says. “As you can see it’s just a matter of scanning the camera, putting in the user name and password and then you have access to the browser-based user interface.

“Anyone who buys the camera can look at live view straight away,” Lee explains. “Video is only stored if you set up motion detection, which is a simple process.”

It is simple. You just click a button to action motion detection and in the first instance, the browser instructs you that you need to set up an account to do so but once this is done and you select that various storage options, the work is done. The interface with VSD1 is very straightforward – so straightforward it’s really impossible to go wrong with it.

“This camera is based on the cloud so there’s no need to muck around with a server, DVR or

36 se&n

NVR – that makes it much easier to setup, yet the camera is actually a professional quality camera,” Lee says.

You can certainly see the quality of the images – I saw VSD1 at Security 2014 running on a LAN and the camera work was excellent – for the professional installer market. This does not sound like a big deal but if you look at the images knocked out by consumer devices like Dropcam, most have issues with depth of field, lens distortion and most of all, WDR. Comparatively, VSD1 is all over that stuff. It’s a professional security camera.

According to Lee, motion detection events are up to 30 seconds long and you can record almost 3000 clips on the entry level storage plan – that’s plenty enough monitoring secure location applications indoors. But the quality of the camera practically begs you to install it outside, in my opinion. In that case, you need to be aware of traffic levels in the field of view or you could blow up your cloud storage allocation in the first hour.

The solution is simple though: install the camera in areas you expect to see occasional motion such as front and rear doors, side entryways and driveways.

We go ahead and register me as a user just to get a feel for the process. The longest part of all this trying to get my mobile link going, as I’ve forgotten my Apple password. This nuisance is instructive because it highlights the entirely different ecosystem cloud surveillance solutions inhabit.

Later on when I have a play with VSD1 back at the SEN office, it’s a similar experience. With IP video, there’s the physical installation but it’s separate and positively cathartic compared to the tweaking of network elements – PoE, router, directory trees – and the behind the scenes business of getting a tidy wide area network happening.

Something I noticed at the Hills office and at the SEN office later on is that you do need a decent internet connection to manage VSD1 fluidly. The link doesn’t have to make the jump to hyperspace but you don’t want the sort of pokey connections you invariably get with a comms infrastructure that was first laid down in the year 2000. A modern ADSL connection is the perfect conduit for VSD1.

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p ro d u ct rev i ew

vds1 cloud

This said, having tried to commission 3 different cameras in one day (Yes, I had IP address issues), I can say that VSD1 was the only camera I got working and it was the easiest. This solution really is plug and play. I kept waiting for something to go wrong, for the operating system to ask for a security password or for some other random broomstick to go through the spokes, but everything worked just as it should have done.

From a user perspective, functionality is limited.

This solution isn’t meant to be a CMS. The notion of VSD1 is that you can look at the quality live view and you can record and view motion activated events. If you have more cameras – up to 4 – then you can switch between these camera views, but once set up, functionality is generally static.

VSD1 camera The VSD1 camera has great hand feel. The manufacturer (Hills OEMs this unit) makes quality gear and this VSD1 feels quality. In terms of features, the camera has a 1/3-inch progressive scan CMOS chip giving 1.3MP, 720p performance, and thanks to its 10m IR range it can operate in complete darkness. Shutter speed is 1/25s to 1/100,000s, there’s a manual iris and the lens is 4mm @F2.0 giving a 73.1-degree viewing angle.

You can adjust the angle with up to 30 degrees in either direction from centre of pan movement, up to 75 degrees of tilt and 360 degrees of rotation.

This makes the camera very flexible for changing applications. Maximum image resolution for recorded clips is 720p (1280 x 720 pixels), motion sensitivity can be set to high, normal and low and the image rotated between normal/flip, mirror/flip and mirror.

When it comes to video streams there are 2. You get an H.264 main stream and an H.264 sub stream.

Selectable bit rate for the 720p main stream is 32kbps-16Mbps at 10fps maximum, while the sub stream runs at 10fps in CIF resolution.

The frame rate is pretty right for this application – it’s not meant to run in real time – you don’t need that from this camera. I rarely see 25ips in real world applications, and never over a WAN. For a cloud solution, 10ips is realistic. It’s more important to have dependable network performance than to have 60 ips when you’re trucking over a WAN.

The frame rate is pretty right for this application – it’s not meant to run in real time – you don’t need that from this camera.

38 se&n

Given the solution is running in a WAN environment, security includes passwords and watermarking of files, and there’s compatibility with ONVIF, PSIA and CGI. Power supply is 12VDC or PoE (802.3af) and power consumption is 5W, Operating temperatures range from 30-60C and size is 100 x 97.5 x 56.5mm with a weight of 350g.

Field applications Townsville-based Corie Ross, who has more than 20 years experience installing domestic and commercial security, automation and AV systems first installed the Hills VSD1 camera in July 2014 using Hills cloud hosting service and says he’s impressed with the new camera.

“There are always new products that claim to be easy to install and operate. This is the first time it’s really been easy,” Ross says. “Never before have I connected a security device to my router for remote access without having to modify something on my network.

“My attitude was best described as flabbergasted,” he explains. “I screwed the camera to my wall and was viewing my completed installation in a few minutes. Plug and play is how I describe it. There’s a push-in connection, no network programming, no camera programming and a simple free App to download - it doesn’t get any simpler than that.”

According to Ross, there’s the added security of never worrying about a recorder failure or worse – having a recorder stolen. Video footage is secure on Hills’ cloud server.

“As an unexpected bonus, the picture quality was surprisingly crisp and dynamic, not only live but also streaming a recorded file, as well as viewing the camera from anywhere my smart phone has internet access.” zzz

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Visit www.axis.com or send an email to contact-sap@axis.com for more information.

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t h e i n t e rv i ew

J o h n A dams w i th Ray Mauritsson

Ray Mauritsson, Axis This month John Adams speaks with Axis Communications CEO Ray Mauritsson about business trends, new developments in technology and the challenges and opportunities of the future.

Q: How is the Axis business going right now?

A: I think over the last 2 years we’ve seen a little bit of a slowdown in our growth rate. There are 2 components to this – one is that the market is more mature – more companies have already made the transition from analogue to digital – the other reason on a global basis is that we have seen on a geographical level a couple of areas that have slowed down.

There are variations in performance between countries and regions.

Important to bear our growth rate has gone from a 25 per cent level to a 15 per cent level, still strong. In general we have started to see a bit of a shift in the rankings of some of the players in the market – you see new Chinese players growing up based on their huge home markets, while some of the existing players are not gaining ground for a number of reasons. Some of the big names are not really performing and I think this is because some of the newcomers are challenging them.

Q: What are the strongest geographical regions in terms of new business at the moment?

A: The U.S. is definitely the biggest and most robust market for us right now. China is strong too, but it’s a more challenging market being more protected. Those 2 represent the biggest markets for us. And the U.K. which had been lagging behind a bit on technology is beginning to come on more strongly now.

Q: What about the weakest region, or the most uncertain region from your point of view?

A: The biggest challenge at the

40 se&n

moment in Europe is the uncertainty surrounding Russia and Eastern Europe. This uncertainty means people are holding back from investing. When it comes to Russia, it’s gone from being one of the BRIC countries with high growth potential like Brazil and China, to having a negative impact on all of Eastern Europe from a business perspective.

Q: Given these factors and current technological trends towards networking and more proactive camera technologies, how do you see the future playing out?

A: It’s such a fragmented market that in some ways the future is a big question mark. It has been fragmented historically but will we have the same fragmented market after the market shifts completely to IP? That’s a big question. It doesn’t really make sense to have so many network camera manufacturers out there – I think it needs to narrow down.

As the market becomes more mature you start to look at what opportunities are left. We certainly see opportunities in the low cameracount market. The requirements are slightly different in that segment. It’s a market addressed by smaller system integrators with a lower knowledge level than larger integrators that employ network engineers.

These smaller integrators are looking for complete end-to-end solutions, so we are looking at that segment from an internal perspective.

We think there are 3 different target markets – the low camera-count, the medium and the enterprise markets.

Q: Most IP video manufacturers are reaching out to the IT integration market. Do you see that as being a separate market from security integration?

A: No, I don’t see it as separate. We see it as a potential opportunity to expand the market. I think at the enterprise

As the market becomes more mature you start to look at what opportunities are left. We certainly see opportunities in the low cameracount market. The requirements are slightly different in that segment. It’s a market addressed by smaller system integrators with a lower knowledge level than larger integrators that employ network engineers. level this is already decided – you can’t do a big IP video solution without involving the IT manager – it has to be a joint effort.

With smaller installations, you may not have a security manager or an IT manager. That’s why it often comes back to the IT integrator channel as a fishing ground for smaller IP video solutions, as well as coming back to us as a manufacturer to package our solutions in that direction.

Q: We certainly see many larger systems and there’s always IT involvement, which may be as shallow as providing rack space and supporting a subnet, or as deep as providing ports in existing network room switches or creating virtual servers in a shared environment.

A: Yes, and this is quite natural because so many of the complexities of IP video are in the knowledge area of IT

managers and their IT engineering teams.

Q: What are the key areas of technological development that Axis is looking at right now?

A: One area is solution orientation of smaller systems. That means we are looking at doing more on the software side. We started with the Axis Camera Companion with the mission to include all the functionality of a DVR in a piece of software. You will see use taking further steps in that direction.

You’ll also see us put more effort into our own VMS. We are strong in the enterprise market and we see a need to further target the low camera-count market but there is also the mid-sized market to consider. Some of these midsized solutions have requirements similar to the small camera-count market but some are more enterpriselike. So you will also see us selling and promoting more of our own software towards the mid-sized market.

We have also launched in some geographical markets a complete solution with a server, software and cameras. We see some competitors really breaking into that market and finding a sweet spot there, so we will be targeting that area of the market, too.

The market is telling us that there are some mid-sized customers who prefer to buy their entire system from the same vendor.

It’s a mixed message, when you consider our open platform enterprise message but the market has different layers and I think it’s up to us to adopt solutions that meet the needs of each of these layers. Some integrators are so skilled on the network side that they want to select each different component, while other integrators want something that they know will work with the minimum of fuss.

Q: And some installers and end users have brand loyalty, they prefer to buy a complete solution from one

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t h e i n t e rv i ew

J o h n A dams w i th Ray Mauritsson

the labs and see what’s being planned for release in a couple of years’ time… I think that’s a promising thing. We talk about the maturity of the market but there is still a lot of innovation to be done. The market shift from analogue to network video has happened but that’s a beginning, not an ending.

manufacturer, just as consumers often prefer to do?

A: Yes, there’s that, too. I think this is a natural step, for us. As a market matures you see more pre-packaged solutions and that’s what you will see more of from us.

Q: Tell us about access control. It’s only early on in that process but how is the access control side of the business coming along?

A: We have just released access control through all our dealers in Europe and we have 12 months experience in the U.S. market. Access control is another fragmented market but also a locked market. End users and integrators are locked into end-to-end solutions manufactured by a small number of vendors.

Axis Communications’ access control offering has been very well received – people feel it’s time for a change towards more open systems.

And there are the obvious benefits of a tighter integration with video.

Customers who have both types of systems want them to interact in a better way.

When it came to access control, we launched a product that’s open platform so while it can be used for larger installations it’s also an integrated solution for smaller installations where it’s supported by management software similar in simplicity to our Axis Camera Companion.

So, overall I think there is absolutely an opportunity for us in access control. It’s going to be a slow moving thing. We’ve seen general interest – integrators and end users feel locked in and they want to get to this flexibility. But given the nature of the access control market, it can be hard for customers to move from their providers so we are focusing on open minded customers and Greenfield sites.

Q: Axis has always had a strong commitment to R&D. One of the

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Axis Communications’ access control offering has been very well received – people feel it’s time for a change towards more open systems.

And there are the obvious benefits of a tighter integration with video – people want that - customers who have both types of systems want them to interact in a better way. things I’ve always liked about the company is that at trade shows there are always many powerful new releases.

A: We will keep that up. We have around 1900 employees – 900 are in sales and 800 are in R&D and there are also contractors supporting product development. Given this, the development team is roughly the same size as the sales organisation. Our R&D team is divided into groups looking at product for the next 12 months and others looking at the longer term.

It’s always exciting to take a tour of

Q: Looking at the overall product range – there are always more people buying affordable solutions – but is there strong interest in the high end products right now? Are installers and end users still sometimes motivated by outright performance, by image quality?

A: Yes, there definitely are customers with higher security requirements who use the best solutions that they can find, particularly at the enterprise and government level.

Q: What sorts of new things do you think will be coming from Axis in the medium term?

A: As an industry there are areas with potential. We can certainly improve on video compression and we can improve image quality - or what Axis calls image useability. And if you want to automate, if you want your systems to be more proactive using algorithms to detect what’s happening, then you have to think about improving the image for the algorithm. That may mean cameras that make images that are less attractive to the human eye but incorporate more information useful for an algorithm. We are taking steps in this direction, including the development of new generations of our ASIC platform.

When you are talking about development, a key thing to consider is ensuring consistency with APIs. We’ve seen competitors coming onto the market leveraging the latest platforms and some building blocks but they tend to forget backwards compatibility and the consistency of APIs and this makes their solutions a challenge for system integrators and vendors. It’s important to carry a back-catalogue of interfaces.

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t h e i n t e rv i ew

J o h n A dams w i th Ray Mauritsson

light sensitivity and wide dynamic range. I’m expecting the megapixel race to slow down and for most users to stick with 1080p and focus on low light performance, WDR and the useability of the images. Compression is another issue for integrators and end users.

There’s a need to keep storage costs down.

Customers don’t want to change things if they don’t have to.

Q: Do you have anything shiny and new that’s just about to come out we can mention?

A: There are new things that I can’t mention. But if we look at the market here in Australia there are a couple of initiatives that will show up here – access control is one. And there are some solution-based initiatives you will see here, too.

We’ve started to see a move to video verification and hosted solutions and we think cloud will play an important role – we think it will be a natural part of any networked solution. Whether the storage is on the edge, or in the cloud, it’s a matter of cost and security level.

It’s efficient for the low camera count market and it does demand end users have good bandwidth connections to meet this and other needs. It’s an interesting opportunity.

It does depend on infrastructure though. Some countries broadband is high quality and low cost. In places performance is poor and services are expensive, you see less take up of cloud-based solutions.

Q: So, you are seeing a trend towards video verification of alarm events in your business?

A: Yes, we are seeing moves in that direction. As an example, Securitas, a Sweden-based guarding company operating in many countries, has a strong ambition to use video verification to improve its alarm response efficiency. This may impact on how the low camera count market buys in the future. Maybe they will buy more services and less hardware, systems that are remotely monitored and serviced by large providers.

Q: Are there any challenges to widespread video verification?

A: Certainly – many of the operators we talk to are hesitant to push video verification to domestic customers because they don’t want to have the

44 se&n

I think lens choice is the key thing and it’s certainly an issue we face in the market – getting everyone to understand that lens choice has such a big impact on image quality.

Many integrators and end users don’t understand that a significant percentage of the cost of a camera is the lens – it might be 50 per cent of the cost. Given this, the way to make a competitively priced product is to cut corners on the lens. signal integrity discussion. In that area we are focusing on SMB clients but there are developments in the domestic market with Dropcam and others. Will it be a Google and Apple choice in the future? It will be interesting to see.

Q: What are the camera qualities that most integrators want globally?

A: What integrators want most is low

Q: When it comes to HVEC/H.265, where are we at with that? Is this something we’re going to see in the near term?

A: Everybody is expecting H.265 to be the next big thing in compression.

Unfortunately there are still a lot of things slowing that down. From a development point of view, it’s not that promising in terms of savings – about 35 per cent – which is significant but not revolutionary. H.265 is a little way out, maybe 2-3 years. We’ll have to see how much of an improvement it will be.

Q: Finally, when it comes to system integrators, what is something you think integrators should pay more attention to in order to get the best out of their IP cameras?

A: I think lens choice is the key thing and it’s certainly an issue we face in the market – getting everyone to understand that lens choice has such a big impact on image quality.

Many integrators and end users don’t understand that a significant percentage of the cost of a camera is the lens – it might be 50 per cent. Given this, the way to make a competitively priced product is to cut corners on the lens.

That’s something that’s really hard to get across and it’s not something you can include in a specification sheet. We look hard at lenses but what we do is not an established empirical measurement used by every manufacturer. Sometimes people will do a shootout with one lens and deliver the camera with another and this makes a big difference. Getting lenses right is the key and Axis sells its cameras with a quality lens attached for very good reasons. zzz

alarm m oni tori ng / segm ent

1

Proudly brought to you by

Your Monitoring Specialists

1300 130 515

www.bensecurity.com.au

IP alarm monitoring There are some risks to take into account whenever you send alarm signals across networks, including reliability of service and signal security.

I

NTERNET-based alarm communications can be extremely fast and are generally very reliable but there are issues installers and monitoring stations must take into account. Most issues can be resolved with 3DES encryption of alarm signals and implementation of a wireless backup.

But when youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re introducing network components into the alarm system itself, installation companies and monitoring stations need to make it clear in their contracts who carries responsibility for

46 se&n

customersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; connections to the Internet.

In most cases, that task lies with the customer, and installers need to remind customers the monitoring service being provided to them will use the Internet as the means of communication of alarm signals from their premises to the central station. It is advisable to identify this fact in writing to your customer right up front. It will reduce your liability exposure should something go wrong and signals are not received.

Additionally, the delivery of public

Should the Internet connection be required to be logged on, the customer is responsible for this function.

BY JOHN ADAM S

which the installer will plug the IST. The key point made here is that the customer has the responsibility to provide the network connection for the IST.

What about network UPS?

Internet service to a customer’s premises is the responsibility of their Internet provider. Users should be encouraged to select an Internet service provider that provides adequate standby power and 24-hour support service. Where Internet service provider requires that a customer’s connection be verified, authenticated or logged on, it will be their responsibility to provide the necessary software and/or equipment to accomplish this requirement.

This clause will clearly identify that

the oversight of the Internet service is not the alarm dealer’s responsibility. Should the Internet connection be required to be logged on, the customer is responsible for this function.

While the installation company will supply and install an Internet signal transmitter (IST) connected to your security alarm system control unit, it will be the customer’s responsibility to provide, within 1.5m of their security alarm control unit, a suitable RJ-45 Ethernet connection into

The alarm system provides its own power during power outs but it will be the end users’ responsibility to provide standby electrical power to their ADSL, cable modem and any other devices such as routers, hubs or switches that may affect the Internet communications with a recommended standby duration of 24 hours, but in all cases not less than 15 minutes. Your customer’s attention needs to be drawn to the fact that alarm communications will fail if the power for your modem, routers, hubs, switches, etc. is interrupted.

Providing standby power for Internet alarm communications is going to be a real problem for most installers. If you consider that all network devices — including modems, routers and switches between the signal transmitter and the Internet — are usually powered by 120V AC, you can understand the problems that will arise when you try to provide 8, 12 or 24 hours of standby power.

Standby power must be the customer’s responsibility.

Customers must be advised that a failure in the communication facilities may occur for any number of reasons including, but not limited, to: A) Intentional cutting or severing of communication cables entering your premises; B) Loss of commercial electrical power and a subsequent failure or depletion of standby power; C) A failure of your modem, hub, router, switch or other equipment in the Internet path within your premises; D) A failure of the IST; E) A failure or malfunction of an Internet service provider or its facilities; F) Any other failure beyond the control of the monitoring station or installer.

The perils of network failure You also need a clause to inform the customer that when your central station is alerted of a failure in the

se&n 47

alarm m oni tori ng / segm ent

1

Proudly brought to you by

Your Monitoring Specialists

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communication facilities, the event will be assigned a low-ish priority and you or your designate will be notified as soon as is reasonably possible.

Certainly there may be some objection to the intent of this clause. Before you decide to throw it out, consider what will happen in your central station when there is a major failure of the Internet for 10 minutes or more and 10,000 Internet monitoring accounts all report a loss of communications. Many monitoring automation systems could not handle this many signals within a very short time.

You also need to ensure the customer is aware that upon receiving notification of a failure in the communication facilities, it will be their responsibility to verify

48 se&n

Consider what will happen in your central station when there is a major failure of the Internet for 10 minutes or more and 10,000 Internet monitoring accounts all report a loss of communications.

that the public Internet service to their premises is functioning correctly. Once they have determined that their public Internet connection is working properly, it will be their responsibility to telephone the central station and determine if alarm communications have been restored.

When the Internet does fail, the installer/monitoring provider will likely be powerless when it comes to getting it restored. The alarm dealer and/or the central station probably doesn’t know who is the customer’s ISP. Even if they did, the ISP will most likely not work with anyone other than their customer of record, no more than a central station would reveal its client’s security codes to the ISP without the customer’s permission. zzz

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s p e ci al re p o rt

Video Surveillance Technologies

Video Surveillance Technologies -

strengths and weaknesses

Our world faces greater security threats than ever before and governments and commercial organisations are investing heavily in the security and safety of assets and personnel using CCTV.

O

FFERING a range of practical safety solutions that have proved indispensable to first responders and investigators, the video surveillance industry is in the midst of a period of enormous expansion. New products and new surveillance solutions with improved performances and reliabilities are continuously appearing on the market. But having so many options leads installers and integrators to another problem.

Because of rapid and ongoing technological development, there is a great deal of uncertainty among security engineers over which technology

50 se&n

or product is best in the long term. Ultimately, the final selection should be based on the fact that the chosen security solution is supposed to offer the best performance and value for money to our customers.

The aim of this article is to describe and compare all available video surveillance technologies on the market, focusing on their weaknesses and strengths.

Additionally, it gives my personal suggestions of what I consider to be the preferred choice of surveillance technology in various security scenarios and circumstances.

To begin with, there are 7 video surveillance

Georg i R i stov*

technologies on the market: Analogue CCTV, Advanced Analogue CCTV, IP (Network), HD-SDI (High Definition Serial Digital Interface), AHD (Analogue High Definition), HD-CVI (High Definition Composite Video Interface) and HD-TVI (High Definition Transport Video Interface).

Analogue CCTV Technology Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s start with analogue CCTV technology, considering its strengths and weaknesses. l Strengths 1. Analogue CCTV is a stable and well-established robust technology which is supported by all major CCTV manufacturers 2. Simple and easy to install, setup, operate and maintain 3. No compatibility issues among the cameras and DVRs 4. Video signal is transmitted directly from the camera to the DVR with no delay 5. There is 100 per cent guarantee of no loss of frames or any video recordings in general 6. Operators can observe live view of all connected cameras with no delay 7. Full frame rate of 25 frames per second recording with a full video resolution is easily achievable 8. Analogue CCD cameras demonstrate better performance in low light conditions, than megapixel CMOS cameras 9. Video transmission for up to 300m distance can be achieved with standard RG59 coax and no additional signal boosters 10. The total cost to build, setup and maintain an analogue CCTV system, is very affordable â&#x20AC;&#x201C; this is the most economical of CCTV technologies 11. There are plenty of free software applications on the market such as Central Monitoring Systems, Remote Monitoring Control, Remote Management, etc.

Because of rapid and ongoing technological development, there is a great deal of uncertainty among security engineers over which technology or product is best in the long term. conditions especially during night time 2. Good for small scale CCTV installations with up to 16 cameras and 1 DVR 3. Good for domestic and small to medium commercial and industrial buildings where HD detailed video coverage is not a necessity 4. The best choice when a repair, modification or addition of new cameras to the existing analogue CCTV system is to be done 5. The most cost-effective choice when the new CCTV installation utilises the existing infrastructure of coax/fig-8 cables, inherited from the previous CCTV installation, providing the old cables are in good condition 6. Preferred option for a low budget and low maintenance CCTV installations.

Advanced Analogue CCTV Technology This new technology is a sub-class of analogue CCTV. It has similar strengths and weaknesses as analogue CCTV with slight improvements in certain fields. In

l Weaknesses 1. Limited image resolution. Maximum recording resolution is D1 which is (704 pixels x 576 pixels, or about 0.4 MPix) 2. For licence plate recognition 1 camera can cover only 1 traffic lane (about 4m wide scene) 3. There are not many sophisticated video applications and video integrations like video analytics on the market because of the limited picture resolution 4. The quality, reliability and security of its wireless transmission is inferior and less secure than other IP technologies 5. The upgrades of camera firmware and other settings are much harder to implement. l Best applications for analogue CCTV solutions 1. Good for sites with limited or very poor light se&n 51

s p e ci al re p o rt

Video Surveillance Technologies

HD SDI board

my opinion, it may only be an interim alternative to new and superior HD analogue CCTV technology.

Once HD CCTV gets the attention and the much needed support from the major developers and manufacturers in the world, it will eventually sort out its early teething problems and become a preferred choice for all low to medium sized CCTV installations.

The new advanced CCTV trend became a reality when in the year 2014 a few major CCTV manufacturers launched a new series of improved video resolution CCTV products. Among them was Bosch Security with its 960H line of CCTV products as well as Samsung Techwin with its Beyond series of 1000 TVL (1280H) products.

Samsung’s Beyond series is new line-up of analogue products that provides the best possible analogue CCTV resolution, improved backlight compensation and user-friendly functions. The biggest achievement, however, is the improvement to the weakest characteristic of analogue CCTV, which is the low resolution of the video image.

Compared to the old maximum analogue CCTV resolution of 600 TVL or even 700TVL, the new Beyond series cameras are capable of achieving a maximum horizontal resolution of 1305 pixels and a vertical resolution of 1049 pixels. Beyond series DVRs can record with maximum resolution of 1280 x 576 pixels (0.7 MPix) @ 25 frames per second, per channel.

IP (Network) Technology Now let’s take a look at IP video technology, which covers cameras, storage solutions and software solutions supporting them. l Strengths 1. This technology can achieve megapixel resolution of images which results in excellent clarity and crystal clear picture.

Zooming in x2 or even x16 of a playback or live image will still provide useful and clear images 2. Wireless transmission of the IP camera signal is much more robust, resistant to interference and very secure 52 se&n

3. It is easy to remove, replace or add new cameras into the system 4. It is also easy to move or replace the NVR and the data storage devices 5. IP Technology allows a variety of data storage options including redundant storage, remote storage, etc.

6. Easy to maintain and upgrade the firmware and software of the IP cameras and other network devices 7. The same CAT5/6 network cable is shared for the video transmission, control data and power supply to the cameras. No other cables are required for the installation 8. A large range of video analytics and many other video applications and integrations are readily available on the market. These include licence plate recognition apps, traffic counter apps, face recognition apps, as well as integration with many compatible access control systems 9. Many network recording software apps are powered with intelligent search based on operator’s requirements as well as digital zoom with good quality 10. Some IP CCTV manufacturers offer their own SDK (software development kits) so the third party manufacturers and developers can design new video security applications with their products. l Weaknesses 1. IP camera performance under low light conditions is significantly inferior to its analogue counterparts 2. IP CCTV systems are more fragile than analogue because they rely heavily on network infrastructure.

If the network goes down there will be no live video monitoring nor recording by the NVRs 3. Because of the packetised nature of the IP network data transmission there will be always a delay in the video signal. This delay can be in magnitudes of 10 or 20 seconds and is

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especially noticeable while viewing all cameras simultaneously in real time at higher resolutions 4. Installation of a large IP CCTV system requires lots of initial planning and extensive knowledge of networking as well as IP video. If not designed and specified properly, the system will suffer from latency, delays and missing frames. If that is the case, even simple operations like a simultaneous play back of 2 or more cameras will be very slow and frustrating for the security operator. Bear in mind missing frames from a stream mean missing frames from streams recorded on the NVR, so there is a probability that some important events may not be recorded at all. Our experience is that Murphyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Law often proves applicable in cases like this because when the network was configured at the right level, we had quite a few instances of missed recordings from important events.

5. There are a few compatibility limitations among the cameras, NVRs and CMS software that have to be sorted out when planning and deciding what IP CCTV equipment to use 6. There is a limitation of max 100m cable run between the network nodes 7. Larger systems require fast and robust network infrastructure which usually has to be built from scratch 8. Megapixel IP cameras require much more storage space than analogue CCTV cameras 9. Every IP camera has its own allocated data storage which is a different recording approach than the shared storage used by analogue systems. In order to optimise an IP CCTV systemâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s storage capacity it will require every individual IP camera to be monitored for its activities over certain time 10. Cost to build and setup the IP system is at least double than any other CCTV system and cost to maintain is triple or more 11. Many central management software - CMS vendors, on top of charging for their application software, ask for an additional licence fee for every IP camera used in the system. l IP video solutions are suitable for following types of installations: 1. IP surveillance should be considered for large sites comprising more than 16 cameras 2. IP CCTV systems will be the preferred option if the site already has an existing high bandwidth network installed, especially if the cameras are going to be spread out over a wide area, or if wireless cameras are going to be used 3. CCTV installations with the emphasis of high definition HD footage with lots of details. Some examples may include big sporting venues, train stations, town squares, shopping centres, etc. In such cases one megapixel camera can replace many analogue cameras and that is a very cost effective solution.

4. Sites where the number one priority of the video

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Video Surveillance Technologies

surveillance system is the quality and clarity of the recorded image, and the cost of installation and the maintenance are secondary.

HD-SDI (High Definition - Serial Digital Interface) Technology Now we come to high definition serial digital interface technology, or HD-SDI, which is digital solution that uses the same cabling as analogue solutions, making it ideal for retrofits. l Strengths 1. High definition video that can go up to 2MP of resolution (1920 x 1080) pixels 2. Relatively easy to install, setup, operate and maintain. Similar to the analogue CCTV 3. HD-SDI is already accepted standard among the big CCTV manufacturers 4. No compatibility issues among the various SDI cameras and SDI DVRs 5. Video signal is transmitted directly from the camera to the DVR with no latency 6. There is 100 per cent guarantee of no loss of frames or any video recordings in general 7. Operators can observe live view of all connected cameras with no latency 8. Full frame rate of 25 frames per second recording with a full video resolution is easily achievable

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Video Surveillance Technologies

9. SDI technology should use the same kind of cables as the analogue CCTV system but the catch is that they have to be in a good condition. l Weaknesses 1. Despite being a cheaper alternative to the IP CCTV systems, SDI equipment cost is still too high 2. Limitation of max 100m cable runs between the camera and the DVR 3. Video signal transmission is susceptible to electrical noise and electromagnetic Interference 4. Requires much more storage capacity than analogue CCTV 5. There’s not as much in the way of tools, applications and support available on the market as there is for IP or analogue CCTV systems l Suitable for following types of installations 1. Personally my suggestion is that if there is not a specific need or urge for installing HD-SDI CCTV system, than don’t install it at all. The reason is because there are much more sophisticated and cheaper HD Analogue CCTV alternatives that are rapidly coming on the market such as AHD, HD-CVI and HD-TVI video surveillance technologies.

compatibility among the devices from different manufacturers with the same technology 8. Low ownership and maintenance cost. Almost the same cost as for the good old-fashioned.

Standard Definition Analogue CCTV. Let’s take a look as a comparison between AHD, TVI and CVI technologies.

technology

ahd

tvi

cvi

NTSC/PAL Support

Yes

No

Yes

D1-960H Compatibility

Yes

No

Yes

Video & Data Combined

Yes

No

Yes

Transmission (75 Ohm coax @720p)

500m

500m

500m

Audio Support

Yes

Yes

Yes

Analogue Matrix Support

Yes

No

No

Video Distributor Support

Yes

No

No

Open Platform Design

Yes

Yes

No

DVRs support 720P and 1080P

Yes

Yes

No

* AHD, TVI and CVI HD all offer resolutions of 720P @ 25/30 FPS, 720P @ 50/60 FPS and 1080P @ 25/30 FPS.

HD Analogue CCTV Technologies (AHD, HD-CVI and HD-TVI) All 3 HD Analogue technologies, which include Analogue High Definition (AHD), High Definition Composite Video Interface (HD-CVI) and High Definition Transport Video Interface (HD-TVI), have similar characteristics. l Strengths 1. The technology is very similar to analogue CCTV. All cameras are directly connected to the associated DVR 2. It utilises the same 75 Ohm coaxial cable the analogue CCTV technology is using, but instead of transmitting only video it transmits simultaneously 3 signals together - video, audio and serial data 3. Transmitted signals are immune to external electromagnetic interferences 4. Maximum distance between camera and DVR is 500m 5. It achieves instant signal transmission with no compression, no latency and no delay 6. Delivers HD quality video image. Supports 720p (1280 x 720 pixels) and 1080p (1920 x 1080) pixels – that’s full HD 7. Complies with open standard which guarantees

Despite being a cheaper alternative to the IP CCTV systems, SDI equipment cost is still too high.

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l Weaknesses 1. Relatively new technology and still not widely accepted by the major CCTV manufacturers 2. The technology is not supported by as many software applications as analogue CCTV and IP technologies are 3. Integration with complex integrated access control/intrusion systems is very limited because of the lack of support from the major developers and manufacturers 4. Maximum video resolution can only go to Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) 5. The video image under low light conditions is still not as good as conventional analogue CCD cameras because the image sensor technology is CMOS rather than CCD. l Suitable for following types of installations 1. In general all new small to medium scale CCTV installations in a future, should be done with the best one of the 3 HD analogue solutions which is the AHD technology 2. Good for small scale CCTV installations with up to 16 x cameras and 1 DVR 3. Good for domestic and also for small to medium commercial and industrial buildings 4. The most economical choice in cases where the new installation is going to utilise the existing network of coax/fig 8 cables, inherited from the previous CCTV installation 5. Preferred option for a low budget and low maintenance CCTV installations. zzz

Avigilon spotted a 2014-Apr-14 05:42:18.654 PM

attempting to 2014-Apr-14 05:42:18.654 PM

on the south-bound 2014-Apr-14 05:42:18.654 PM

while analogue spotted CAM1 2014-Apr-14 5:42:18 PM

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Tullamarine – VIC (03) 9001 1900

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Northmead – NSW

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2600 (02) 8014 2600 (03) 9946 1300 3193200 499 (02)•8014www.centralsd.com.au

National 1300 319 499 Tullamarine,Enquiries: Victoria Mulgrave, Victoria 20 Mallet Road TULLAMARINE 3043 vic@centralsd.com.au

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Avigilon_Train_CSD_210X297.indd 1

Marleston – SA Balcatta - WA Loganholme – QLD (08) 8468 8400 (08) 6465 1500 South Australia 0800 www.centralsd.com.au Alexandria, NSW Queensland Western Australia

Northmead,(07) NSW3333 Unit 6, 185 Briens Road NORTHMEAD 2152 nsw@centralsd.com.au

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cas e st u dy

dahua

Dahua hits the road

A Dahua surveillance solution has been installed to handle traffic monitoring in Tricity in Poland. The system undertakes ANPR, red light traffic enforcement and speed monitoring.

T

RICITY in Polish Trójmiasto, is an urban area consisting of 3 major northern Polish cities — Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot, situated adjacent to one other on the coast of Gdansk Bay on the Baltic Sea. These 3 cities cover an area of 414.81 square kilometres, are variously known as a busy port, a modern metropolis, and a resort centre.

While the cities keep expanding, the rising population leads to traffic concern and congestion.

The urban inner highway is the transport backbone, accommodating nearly 1 million commuters every day and citizens are spending more and more time commuting.

In order to better manage city traffic needs and to resolve congestion, the local authority decided to use an intelligent traffic system (ITS). Dahua’s customization satisfied the end-user. It’s solution was ideal for this application thanks to its performance, easy installation and good price. The adopted ITS systems integrate Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPRs), red light enforcement, speed systems and green waves in a single solution in order to regulate driving behaviors and fight against traffic jams.

For ANPR, Dahua 1.4-megapixel and 11-megapixel HD traffic cameras were adopted at intersections on main roads, taking care of the snapshot of front and back side of the vehicle respectively. Moreover,

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both loops and video detection are used to improve accuracy. For speeding violations, speed camera systems are used to identify speeding vehicles, and as evidence for traffic fines so as to control driving speed and improve road safety.

Additionally, to further improve traffic efficiency, green waves are adopted on intersections, allowing continuous traffic flow smoothly over several intersections in one direction, which not only reduces the length and frequency of congestion, but also cuts co2 emissions and improves fuel efficiency of the vehicles while buying more time for pedestrians at crossings.

“We have already encouraged different customers in Poland and in neighbouring countries to consider ITS projects based on Dahua cameras and detectors,” said Piotr Wisniewski from Radar System, Dahua’s local distributor in Poland.

“It’s great that a European city uses Chinese ITS deployment and we appreciate our partner’s trust and the effort they have made,” said Bill Zhou, Senior ITS Engineer at Dahua Technology.

“Traffic problems are a common issue for many expanding cities, and our ITS is helping make Tricity a better, smarter and more efficient city.”zzz

Features of Dahua’s 1.4MP camera: l 1/3-inch 1.4MP CMOS l 25/30/50/60fps@720P l High speed, long distance real-time transmission l HD and standard definition switchable l OSD Menu, control over coaxial cable l Day/Night(ICR), AWB, AGC, BLC, 3D-DNR l 2.7~12mm vari-focal lens l Max. IR LEDs length 30m, Smart IR l IP66, DC12V.

Every Hallway, Corner, and Angle Covered.

Hallway Intersection

270° Outdoor Corner (Four 90° Lenses)

(Two Telephoto Lenses, Two Wide Angle Lenses)

2

2

4 1

1

3

3

4

SurroundVideo Omni ®

Built to Handle the Most Difficult Surveillance Coverage Situations.

SurroundVideo® Omni multi-sensor, multi-megapixel cameras deliver revolutionary flexibility and provide superior resolution to zoom-in for details in live and recorded video. With multiple imagers, each with a choice of an IR corrected lens at 2.8, 4, 6, 8, 12, or 16mm, one SurroundVideo® Omni can replace four standard cameras, requiring just a single installation with only one IP cable. Our unique track design allows the four individual

sensor gimbals to be placed in many configurations inside its IP66 rated and IK-10 impact-resistant dome housing. This makes the SurroundVideo® Omni perfect for covering the intersection of hallways or the corner of a building delivering a 270° field of view. SurroundVideo® Omni cameras are available in total resolutions of 12 megapixels (MP) with Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) at up to 100dB at full resolution or 20MP.

270°

OMNI

Omni-Directional Track with 4 Customizable Sensors

270° FOV Capable

Wide Dynamic Range on 12MP Models

+86 1800 179 1799 | acao@arecontvision.com +86 1590 068 7890 | mliu@arecontvision.com Made in the USA www.arecontvision.com | +1.818.937.0700

True Day/Night with IR Cut Filter

Ultra Low Profile Design

Impact / Weather Resistant IK-10 and IP66 Rated

p ro d u ct rev i ew

eds1 4

Synology’s mini marvel Synology’s teeny EDS14 resembles a NAS mated with a USB hub. It’s designed as a mobile server supporting up to 5 IP cameras. There’s a USB 2.0 port supporting remote access by dongle, while a USB 3.0 and an SDXC UHS-I slot handle storage.

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W

HAT strikes me out of the box is the size of Synology EDS14. It’s so small. There’s nothing to go wrong on the outside and the heavily ribbed poly housing and port-based design tells you there’s not much to go wrong on the inside, either. There are no buttons to break and it’s fan-less so this unit will shrug off dust.

There’s no RAID storage but that’s not the point. The EDS14 is designed for use in mobile applications, or in topical applications, or in small domestic and commercial systems. In these applications, what matters most is grown-up function of the cameras. Synology’s very capable Disk Station Manager software, supported by free Surveillance Station 6 software, makes EDS14 a very neat, compact and low cost full surveillance solution.

We’ll get further into management of the unit

By John Ada m s

The EDS14 is designed for use in mobile applications, or in topical applications, or in small domestic and commercial systems.

later on but it’s worth pointing out up-front that the area Synology succeeds most here is with DSM 4.3 embedded management system (the latest Version 5 is now available) and with its free Surveillance Station 6 management system.

SS6 offers great function and it networks with the best of them. SS6 not the end of the available applications, either. You can option your EDS14 to handle a whole range of specialised network tasks from streaming to management of multimedia.

Setup is very easy – you power up, install an SD card, connect Cat5 from your router to the EDS14 and find the DataStation EDS14 in your network directory. You double click on it and a browser-based management system opens up that allows access to programming and storage functionality. Management is icon-based – there’s a control panel for handling the NAS, as well as a

system dashboard on the right. I double click on the Package Centre icon on the left hand side of the screen and download Surveillance Station 6.

Once you’ve downloaded Surveillance Station and it’s installed on the NAS, you click on the function drop-down far left in the top bar and select Surveillance Station each time you want to view your cameras. Easy enough. Each instance of SS6 comes with a license for one camera which I am going to use to drive a fixed network camera.

You can grow the system to 5 cameras - a 4-pack of camera licenses costs $A232, while one additional license costs $68 (prices from MWave.com.au).

The process of loading a camera is very easy but I manage to complicate it by trying to port the camera directly to the EDS14. This idea was not a success and once I’d moved the camera cable over to a port on the system router and reconfigured the IP address, EDS14 found the camera all by itself and Live View came up with no further effort from me.

The actual enrolling process is just filling gaps in the Wizard. You choose a camera number, add the IP address which is generally the same address for all the cameras of a particular brand, and the port is designated as 80 by default. Next you slot in the camera brand or select it from the integrated dropdown, the video format is pre-configured and you click finish. Doing it is much quicker than typing it.

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Surveillance Station 6 Once a camera is installed you can start playing around with Surveillance Station 6 and there’s no doubt that the further you go into this VMS the better it gets. Installed stand alone, this is not a system comparable to vast integrated VMS solutions but it brings much of their capability down to a very affordable level.

You drive SS6 through 3 buttons on the top command line – Live View, Timeline and Management. You click into each window and all the relevant functionality is in front of you. It’s a pleasure to steer it. There’s camera optimisation settings based on time of day, mirror and flip, time stamp, and useful analytics, including motion detection missing object, foreign object, focus lost, camera occlusion and no idle zone.

You can select object size, set a workstation alert when motion is detected and you can receive scheduled email or SMS alerts. This is not just an on/off toggle. It’s a deeper functionality. You can be alerted to a device added, a device deleted, a connection lost, a connection resumed, recording failure, archive limit reached, motion detected and/ or alarm detected.

There’s emaps, too, and you can set up the EDS14 as a CMS server with time syncing, with a video relay enabled via the internet, or it can be set as a host or a recording server. There’s also an integrated log, allowing you to check out motion and network events. None of this stuff should surprise, really.

Synology is a networking company and it has built the EDS14 in its own image.

Investigations are managed using the Timeline screen and there’s really not much searching you can’t do with SS6. There’s a calendar to select day and 4 timelines on the right hand side of the screen allowing you to pick your times. The playback control console has zoom and audio control, export is through a single button, and in Timeline as well as in live view, you can take a snap shot through control buttons on the bottom left of the viewing window.

eds1 4

In the Timeline window there’s also Download and Seek (this takes you to a wee recording time window), and a Smart Search function, where in Live you can select Pause or Manual Record.

Physical specifications

Driving the show is a Marvell Armada 370 single core 1.2GHz processor with 512MB DDR3 RAM. Synology says this offers read speeds of more than 110MBps for USB 3.0 and 77MBps for SDXC. These numbers look high to me. I think 50Mbps is more realistic for reading and writing a USB 3.0 with an Armada 370. But performance is plenty for a compact unit of this type. I certainly did not feel held back by performance during this test run. EDS14 is not fullyloaded server – some people are selling the unit locally for $250 – and for that price it’s wonderful little thing. Rugged and flexible and hustling the excellent SS6 VMS. In dimensions, the unit is 125 x 125 x 31mm and it weighs only 295g making EDS14 easily portable.

Supporting this portability, the unit can work off an input voltage of 7-24V so you can power it using a car cigarette lighter or the same sort of 12V DC power supply you are using to power IP cameras. This and the ability to connect to the EDS14 over the cloud via 3G/4G and drive the system using a smart app on a mobile device, makes EDS14 a strong offering. The EDS14 is pretty much as flexible as you want it to be.

And though it’s not weatherproof, it’ll handle -20 to 50C, making it capable of transport applications.

The case of the unit is tough black poly and the upper surface is deeply ribbed to act as a heat exchanger. There’s a decent amount of heat to be felt on this surface but I can put my cheek to it without discomfort so it’s probably not much more than 40C. Something else that’s interesting is a power relay tucked away in the left hand back corner of the unit that you can program to drive locks and gates, or operators can use to manually turn devices on and off on the basis of live video footage. There are dual RJ-45 plus on the rear and 4 LEDs on the front A good clean live stream

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EDS14 is a compromise between mobility and flexibility on one side and and outright horsepower on the other, and in this application, power comes second. showing power, network 1, network 2and storage.

Storage is that SDXC U1 slot on the front of the unit and either one or both of the USB ports, depending on your setup. I’m porting to the the unit from a Netgear router using Cat-5 so I option my unit with a 64GB SanDisk in the USB 3.0 and a 32GB Sony SD card in the SDXC slot, leaving the USB2.0 free for comms or storage. In my network directory, these storage bins come up as individual drives. Happily you can hot-swap them while the system has power, which is a bonus.

This setup gives me around 100GB using storage I found laying around on my desk, which is plenty for motion detection of domestic, small commercial and quirky remote or mobile applications. You could easily double storage buying bigger flash devices and using all the available ports. SDXC UHS-I is the latest and fastest card format and that means my 40Mbps 32Gb Sony card is not going to challenge this unit.

EDS14 is a compromise between mobility and flexibility on one side and and outright horsepower

on the other, and in this application, power comes second. Sitting here driving the system, this does not bother me in the least. I’m not streaming tons of media in real time – I’m viewing a single stream and I’ve got motion detection activated for event recording. From the point of view of a video surveillance application, it’s the compact size, the flexibility of comms, the compatibility with 2100 different IP cameras, the strong, free VMS and the ease of setup that sell the system.

Live performance with a single camera is solid.

I’m using a full HD camera at the sharp end and it’s doing well through the browser-based management system. I like Synology’s EDS14. It’s not a proper NAS, it’s not a proper storage solution, and with no Wi-Fi it’s not really a proper hub, either. But for those CCTV applications needing something compact and tough – especially single camera applications not requiring the extra spend on licenses - it’s hard to go past this little gem. What’s the highlight? Thanks to Surveillance Station 6, it doesn’t feel like driving a compact machine. zzz

Features of Synology EDS14 include: l Compact, fanless and silent l Industrial-level thermal endurance l Flexible DC power options for mobile use l Dual Gigabit ports, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 l Support for high-speed SDXC UHS-I SD cards l Excellent Synology Surveillance Station is free l Works with 2100 different IP cameras l Power out socket.

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cas e st u dy

mobotix

master class CMI has integrated a decentralised, cost-efficient Mobotix IP video solution comprising 1200 cameras for Lexington One School District.

The system is designed for fast response and investigation, and incorporates 12-48TB of in-camera or NAS storage per school.

L

EXINGTON School District One serves more than 24,000 students from pre-kindergarten to grade 12. With more than 3550 employees, the district occupies 48 per cent of Lexington County’s 750 square miles and is one of the county’s major employers. It’s also one of the fastest growing in South Carolina. Over the past 10 years, Lexington One has grown by an average of 513 new students per year. To keep up with growth, Lexington One has

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built 10 new schools since 2003.

Lexington One prides itself on the innovative use of technology and has built a substantial network back-end support infrastructure for student use.

The school district has nearly 16,000 iPads and which provide access to the Internet and to the district’s Learning Management System 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. And the focus of leading edge technology doesn’t end with learning.

By John Ada m s

“Our district benefits from a visionary superintendent who sees technology as key to student learning,” says Allen Ray, network services co-ordinator at Lexington One. “And that vision goes far beyond learning and into the very core of our IT department and our security program.”

Lexington One, working with long-time systems integrator partner, CMI Networks, needed to upgrade to higher resolution video surveillance cameras and move away from legacy equipment reaching the end of its working life. Given the school’s preference for the latest technology, security and IT personnel sought an innovative platform to enhance the protection of its district.

Being used as an investigative tool, the new video surveillance system was expected to gather more details relating to incidents. More importantly, Lexington One sought an IP camera system that served as an active deterrent and enabled a fast investigation and quick response in the event of an incident, while avoiding the look of a heavily secured campus. Though looking for the latest technology, Lexington One had to assess the cost of installation and the total cost of ownership.

“We sought a surveillance solution that could take advantage of our current infrastructure while increasing camera coverage by 40 to 50 per cent,” says Ray. After closely evaluating the district’s requirements and infrastructure, CMI Networks recommended a Mobotix IP video surveillance system to serve as an active deterrent, using crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) principles built into the system for the growing school district. The Mobotix solution could deliver high resolution live and recorded video with audio capabilities, event logic and IP notification.

“Integration with audio was essential. We found surveillance to be a significant deterrent when combined with audio recording and 2-way communication,” explains Ray. “With the Mobotix solution, we are able to gather details relating to incidents with high-resolution video and crisp audio, and determine the outcome quickly.”

Following the successful evaluation of the solutions, Lexington One deployed a total of 1200 cameras including Q25, D15, D25 and M25 models.

CMI Networks leveraged cameras from Mobotix with built-in hemispheric and dual-lens technology to drastically reduce the required number of cameras.

The 5MP IP camera models deliver high-contrast images without motion blur by leveraging superior image sensors and pioneered MxLEO (Light Enhancement Optimization) software, which is processed within the camera, even in poorly illuminated environments. The cameras are more light-sensitive and capture twice as many pixels as full HD’s 1920 x 1080p.

The D25 is a compact dome camera designed for

We sought a surveillance solution that could take advantage of our current infrastructure while increasing camera coverage by 40 to 50 per cent. indoor and outdoor use that can also be equipped with vandalism protection. The M25 is a compact, cost-efficient all-around camera with multiple lens options. Meanwhile, the D15 is a weatherproof, robust dual camera with interchangeable sensor module, and the hemispheric Q25 delivers 180-degree panoramic images, using a single camera to secure an entire room with no blind spots for a better overview than several individual cameras. It also offers a digital continuous pan, tilt, zoom functionality.

Unlike conventional PTZ cameras, the robust Q25 has no moving parts and is maintenance-free.

All cameras installed at Lexington School District One are based on the decentralized concept, with data processing taking place inside the camera and recording taking place internally on an SD card, externally on a USB stick, or via the District One IP network on NAS hard drives. Pioneered by Mobotix, the decentralized system approach reduces traffic across a network significantly, taking away the burden of a conventional video surveillance system that forces expensive upgrades to IT infrastructure.

The MxControlCenter software serves as the district-wide video management system, while QNAP NAS servers provide 12-48 terabytes

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The process of securing a campus environment is challenging, but schools can benefit greatly from the efficiencies provided by IPbased surveillance. of storage per school. Administrators, local police and school resource officers are trained to use the surveillance system and to export video evidence if needed.

“With Mobotix, configuration is everything, and the vendor support from CMI has been critical to the success of the installation,” Ray says.

The installation The solution, which was deployed in a 4-phase project plan, is completely scalable and can grow as a school expands. For example, a new school was opened in August 2014 and will be equipped with the same Mobotix technologies as other locations in District One. “The process of securing a campus environment is challenging, but schools can benefit greatly from the efficiencies provided by IP-based surveillance,” says Jason Walker, business development manager, Communication Management Inc. “The solution delivered to Lexington is a perfect example of how innovative use of high-resolution, networked surveillance can provide higher video quality, lower up-front costs and operating expenses, faster investigations and, most importantly, a safe environment parents can be happy to send their children to.

“Lexington One School District Administrators realized significant security benefits and cost savings by choosing the Mobotix solution,” Walker says.

“This solution has delivered by reducing the camera count by 40-50 per cent and has extremely low

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power consumption compared to other solutions, as well as reduced bandwidth requirements.

“This decentralized system, with data processing and recording taking place within the camera, makes it possible to use up to 10 times more cameras per server, compared to central VMS-based recording typical of competitors. These benefits will continue to be realized as Lexington One expands the system,” Walker says.

Users at Lexington One School District say the system is reliable, effective in investigations and efficient when accessing video data. Most importantly, the system provides superior protection of the school district’s property, assets and resources, and ensures the safety of its most significant assets, its students and staff members.

“We are very happy with our decision to implement Mobotix with the help of CMI,” Ray says.

“The cameras serve as a deterrent to reduce the likelihood of any problems, and they better provide evidence of what’s happening, especially with the audio capability.

“If there is an incident, we can easily pull the video files and quickly make a determination on what our response should be. In today’s education environment, the ability to quickly determine what is happening at any given moment is invaluable.” zzz

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t e ch n o lo gy telecommunications

Radio star Researchers have achieved a milestone in modern wireless and cellular telecommunications, creating a radically smaller, more efficient radio wave circulator for wireless devices.

A

TEAM from the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin has developed a new wireless circulator with the potential to double useful bandwidth in wireless communications and transform the telecommunications industry, making communications faster and less expensive in a wide array of products. It’s a development that could have ramifications for mobile viewing of video, as well as transmission of alarm events over cellular networks.

The new circulator enables full-duplex functionality, meaning devices can transmit and receive signals on the same frequency band at the same time. The key innovation is the creation of a magnetic-free radio wave circulator. Since the advent of wireless technology 60 years ago, magnetic-based circulators have been in principle able to provide 2-way communications on the same frequency channel, but they are not widely adopted because of the large size, weight and cost associated with using magnets and magnetic materials.

Freed from a reliance on magnetic effects, the new circulator has a much smaller footprint while

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also using less expensive and more common materials. These cost and size efficiencies could lead to the integration of circulators within cell phones and other microelectronic systems, resulting in substantially faster downloads, fewer dropped calls and significantly clearer communications.

The team of researchers, led by Associate Professor Andrea Alu, has developed a prototype circulator that is 2cm in size - more than 75 times smaller than the wavelength of operation. The circulator may be further scaled down to as small as a few microns, according to the researchers.

The design is based on materials widely used in integrated circuits such as gold, copper and silicon, making it easier to integrate in the circuit boards of modern communication devices.

“We are changing the paradigm with which isolation and 2-way transmission on the same frequency channel can be achieved. We have built a circulator that does not need magnets or magnetic materials,” Alu said.

The researchers’ device works by mimicking the way magnetic materials break the symmetry in wave transmission between 2 points in space, a critical function that allows magnetic circulators to selectively route radio waves. With the new circulator, the researchers accomplish the same effect, but they replaced the magnetic bias with a traveling wave spinning around the device. Another unique feature is that the new circulator can be tuned in real time over a broad range of frequencies, a major advantage over conventional circulators.

“With this technology, we can incorporate tunable non-reciprocal components in mobile platforms,” said Nicholas Estep, lead researcher and a doctoral student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “In doing so, we may pave the way to simultaneous 2-way communication in the same frequency band, which can free up chunks of bandwidth for more effective use.”

Because the design of the circulator is scalable and capable of circuit integration, it can potentially be placed inside wireless devices.

“We envision micron-sized circulators embedded in cell phone technology. When you consider cell phone traffic during high demand periods there are enormous implications opened by our technology, including fewer lost connections and clearer communications,” Estep said. zzz

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s p e ci al f eat u r e

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2014: State of the market Yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s end is always an opportune moment to take a look at the state of the market, considering its current drivers, shifts in technology and the shape of the coming year.

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by john adam s

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Experience suggests high risk locations are areas the public gathers – shopping centres and retail precincts, tourist attractions, sporting venues, public transport hubs and airports.

T the long end of 2014, installers, integrators and end users continue to be overwhelmed with quality choices across most electronic security product segments. Given the maturity of the electronic security market it’s unlikely things are going to change. We’re going to see better performance, easier installation and improved user interfaces.

We’re also going to continue to see prices drifting downwards, while high end feature sets push their way up product lines.

In terms of the global financial situation, while there’s less talk about issues of sovereign debt, none of these issues has gone away.

Government debt and the inevitable austerity and delay in capital expenditure that goes with it will continue to drag on the Australian economy.

Here in Australia, while government debt remains extremely low compared with global averages (30 per cent of GDP compared with 100 per cent for the U.S. and 200 per cent of GDP for Japan), there’s still pressure on spending.

There are question marks over the Chinese economy too, and fears for the economies of Eastern Europe for geopolitical reasons surrounding Ukraine and the Baltic states.

Elsewhere, the Indian economy continues to strengthen and the U.S. economy is activating.

The U.S. is still the world’s largest consumer of electronic security technology, notwithstanding the fact some simply enormous CCTV solutions of 100,000 cameras or more have been installed in China.

Counteracting these negative pressures on electronic security’s primary driver of construction are world events, the singular most important of 2014 being the emergence of Islamic State as a global force seemingly at war with everything not itself. IS has called for random low-tech attacks in a number of countries, including Australia, and at least one attack on police in Victoria could be argued to have been in direct response to this call.

Simply put, IS and its supporters in Australia (hundreds have left Australia during the year to join the Caliphate in Iraq and Syria), represent a material threat that our government and commercial organisations ignore at their peril. While electronic security solutions can’t deconstruct religious doctrines propped up by fallacious appeal to force, they do allow control of access to key sites, real time surveillance and response, and much faster investigations.

Experience suggests high risk locations are areas the public gathers – shopping centres and retail precincts, tourist attractions, sporting venues, public transport hubs and airports.

Target hardening of such locations is likely to

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drive upgrades of cameras, storage systems and management solutions over the next year.

Another area of opportunity is big universities which actively promote their safety and security solutions to prospective students. Given the ubiquity of powerful networks in tertiary centres of learning, universities are technology leaders when it comes to digital security. This offers integrators and manufacturers opportunities but they’re likely to share them with the IT integration industry.

trends in technology In the domestic market, digital continues to be a slowly unfolding revolution. I think this is in considerable part due to the fact key components of electronic security technology are now in lockstep with consumer electronics and networking technologies. The cloud is a case in point. Affordable bandwidth is the

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greatest stumbling block for the industry and the strongest lever for telecommunications providers capable of bundling security services with Internet, comms and TV. Home automation was big in 2013 and it was strong again in 2014. I don’t have a sense of how big automation is locally when compared to straight alarm panels but it’s instructive to consider that 70 per cent of ADT’s sales this year went on the company’s Pulse security and automation panel.

AT&T spent 2014 continuing it’s roll-out of Digital Life, a security and automation solution, and most other companies continued strengthening their automation lineups.

Back home, Telstra bought SNP’s electronic security and alarm monitoring business and there’s been plenty of rumour surrounding what the new business TelstraSNP is going to be bringing to market. From the point of view of installers and monitoring stations, TelstraSNP is going to be a powerful competitor. Informed industry sources suggest the company will be doing CCTV and that it may manufacture its own alarm panels. Time will tell, but it’s likely the gravity of the TelstraSNP business will tug on the orbits of many players in the industry.

Video surveillance trends I think 2014 showed us some underlying fundamentals in the video surveillance business.

Things like 4K are very nice and there may be some sales in that direction but what installers and users want most of all is more capability from existing and more traditional technologies.

Installers reflect end user desires when they say they want surveillance cameras that are good in low light, good in strong backlight and that don’t cost too much.

This core fundamental is altering the CCTV industry with recent arrivals like Hikvision hoovering up market share. In the case of Hikvision, which is distributed locally by CSD, the company’s products – including standouts like Darkfighter, it’s 2000-dollar 1080p PTZ with 100m IR, and the SmartIP 4-Line range – balance

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strong features with competitive prices. Hikvision has made clear it aims to dominate the market on the basis of superior technology, not low quality.

The impact this combination of quality, performance and sharp pricing is having on competitors comes in multiple directions.

Some have dropped prices, some have standardised internal components as is increasingly common in the consumer DSLR market.

Other manufacturers who were dominant 5 years ago have gone a little quiet.

My reading of this part of the market is that competition between the market leaders has only just begun. There are some high quality manufacturers out there, including Panasonic, Axis, Sony, Avigilon, Samsung, Vivotek, Hikvision and others. Bosch has delivered the goods in 2014, too. Then there are some new players to consider – Dahua and optical legend, Canon. There’s definitely fun times ahead in CCTV camera technology.

Management software is another area where plenty happens in video surveillance. Most VMS products are now thoroughly mature and incorporate mapping with live views, capable analytics and remote access, adequate WAN connections permitting. Bandwidth for enterprise applications continues to be a challenge for end users and integrators and I can’t imagine any remedy in the short term.

Analytics is probably the key step forward of 2014. Sony, Geutebruck GTect, Mobotix MxActivity Sensor, Avigilon, Bosch, Axxon Next, Samsung, DVTel, Hikvision, Briefcam Syndex and plenty more. Capable IVA is now available inside simple solutions, while systems like Mobotix MxAnalytics offer users real capability that does records only what’s needed, saving bandwidth and storage space.

And that saving on storage space is a big deal.

Storage costs chew up a chunk of overall solution budget with IP video and it’s hard to see this changing in the foreseeable future. There’s HEVC H.265 in the works but it’s hard to know how far away it is and the savings aren’t anything to write home about. Mind you, H.265 is certainly worth pursuing. It will allow bandwidth and storage savings of about 35 per cent over H.264. This might translate into a lower bit rate, or it might allow a 35 per cent higher quality image stream. I think the latter would probably be the better outcome for many applications.

In 2014, there’s no sign of the death of DVRs

and NVRs. Having played with more than a few networked solutions during the year I can understand why this is so. For all their clarity of architecture, many networked solutions suffer from compromises and complexities. Moving image streams through a browser inevitably creates latency, while a direct connection from monitor to DVR/NVR is about as good as you can get from IP video. That same old latency is still there, even in the best solutions.

DVRs and NVRs appeal because they combine inputs, storage, power supply, a network switch and software in a single box that sits at the heart of its own dedicated subnet acting as gatekeeper for an authorised workstation/s. There’s something very clean about such applications and they are not only very affordable and easy to install but they are supported by software of growing excellence.

Something else we’re going to see more of is Synology’s NAS solutions, which are compatible with the company’s Surveillance Station Software

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out of the box. There’s no doubt that for many modest applications, the latest Surveillance Station 6 is ideal. There’s a licensing fee to pay (about $225 for 4 camera licences) to expand a NAS from the single license it comes with, but if you use Synology already it’s a very good deal.

Access control trends In access control there were a number of things that caught my attention during the year. The first was Axis Communications release of its 1001 access control solution. This is a move by the company to bring the IP video digital revolution to access control. The second was Inner Range’s cloud-based Webtegriti, which will offer simplicity of installation to access control technicians. Other things I liked this year included CEM Systems emerald IP-based reader/controller.

I think the swing from RS-485 LANs to network cable has really only just got underway. The access control industry is a long way behind CCTV when it comes to the digital transition. I’ve spent a bit of time wondering about why this might be. I think the inertia in access control centres around the fact existing solutions are extremely robust.

Because they last so long they wind up evolving in mysterious ways. They’re also expensive to replace and utterly integral to site operations.

Lack of budget and a fear of disaster have caused a measure of stagnation in access control. Access control is also a bit of a different animal.

It’s integral to people moving around sites and linked to fire alarms. You can’t switch off the access control system and continue to run your business. As an end user, if you take shortcuts on access control, you get bit.

Intrusion alarm trends Alarm systems have had a giddy year. The primary drivers here are towards local wireless communications, 3G and internet monitoring, automation and remote management of security and domestic sub systems via apps on smart devices. I’m still torn between wireless and hardwired alarm panels. Hardwire means no batteries and no interference with unsecure 433MHz sensorto-panel comms. Wireless means no chasing of cabling behind walls, between different levels of buildings and far simpler control panel installation. If sensor comms were highly secure and had sufficient bandwidth to shift a handful of images for verification, and battery life was 5 years or more on all devices, wireless would win the day, though there are 74 se&n

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My favourite alarm panel of the year is Honeywell’s Vista. I didn’t get to do a full review of DSC’s NEO but I liked the looks of that, too, as well as Bosch’s 2000 and 3000 Series panels.

always sites that defy the passage of RF signals.

My favourite alarm panel of the year is Honeywell’s Vista. I didn’t get to do a full review of DSC’s NEO but I liked the looks of that, too, as well as Bosch’s 2000 and 3000 Series panels. Of these DSC NEO is wireless, while Vista uses Honeywell’s proprietary V-Plex bus with an optional wireless transceiver. My tendency is towards hardwired on bigger and more complex commercial and industrial sites but if wireless works in these applications it’s so much easier to do a greenfield install. You can forget about the horrors of glass doors and windows, and burrowing through internal and external walls.

There was much more talk about video verification this year but for all the talk I’ve still not seen an alarm sensor/camera I truly believe in. By that I mean an affordable device that offers not only quality detection but quality images of intrusion events, with the whole thing bound up as a serious monitoring package. There’s potential from various quarters but nothing real yet. There are a couple of providers who use serious surveillance cameras to support video verification at monitoring centres but there’s no industry standard solution.

There’s greater complexity here than meets the eye, obviously. Alarm panels are not DVRs so they can’t store real time 720p image streams, 2 minutes prior and 2 minutes after an alarm event. The systems available are very simple and take a small number of snaphots, or they are real CCTV, making them complicated and expensive, given the more important aspect of an alarm panel is that it should cost no more than dinner for 2, with a bottle of less than average wine.

The technology to get this right does exist but someone needs to bring it all together from sensor-camera to monitoring station in one single solution. The manufacturer getting closest to this grail is Risco. It’s VuPoint management solution is a very strong offering for 2014 and you get all the

Generally, I think the current crop of wireless alarm systems is sufficiently complicated in terms of keypad programming codes and whatnot to keep all but the geekiest of do-it-yourselfers at bay. Wi-Fi-based alarm systems are going to be a completely different story. I think we’ll see some releases in this area in 2015. There are security risks with an alarm panel as a hub but there are risks with 433Mhz sensor jammers, too. In this area I’d like to see Wi-Fi everything but that means remote power, which is not necessary. Zigbee for most devices and Wi-Fi for the hub/controller and surveillance cameras sounds right to me.

Distribution and installation

remote management functionality you could ask for. VUpoint allows users to remotely view their premises through live video clips up to 30 seconds long via the iRISCO smart phone app.

Video clips can be viewed using VUpoint in response to a wide range of triggers and there’s detector alarm event, panic, system disarm and by code. Risco VUpoint leads the game with video verification and remote control for domestic applications.

In SEN’s monitoring feature last month we talked about a study on the U.S. that highlighted the fact residents saw security as the core of a smart home yet desired self-monitoring and a high level of control over their own systems.

They were also resistant to ongoing payments.

This reflects the intense connectedness of the customer base. Most people are locked to their mobile devices and want their systems to communicate with them directly.

It’s something alarm manufacturers and monitoring stations will have to deal with in the future. Someone is going to give the public a quality alarm and automation solution that can be monitored by the resident and/or a third party monitoring station. Who that someone is going to be remains undecided.

DIY – some people say the industry should worry about DIY and others say it should not.

On the distribution side the year saw plenty. Hills made a number of key changes but there’s a sense the company is about to start making yards up the middle. CSD is the little engine that could – the company goes from strength to strength thanks to canny distribution arrangements, including Hikvision and Avigilon, and its core Inner Range product line.

QSS also went through changes during the year, with a swag of new product taken on. Bosch is probably the most talked about of these. The German manufacturer broadened its route to market with some of its CCTV and alarm gear now being distributed by QSS nationally. Elsewhere Video Security Products reputation grows, while Seadan Security is on a trajectory of serious expansion. We also saw Canon buy Milestone and Inner Range undertook a redistribution of shares late November.

For installers, training is one of the biggest issue in 2014 and other concerns include falling margins on hardware thanks to competition based on price rather than quality of solutions.

This latter thing is a feedback loop that is probably the greatest challenge the industry faces moving forward. End users want to pay less so installers use cheaper product to survive in an ecosystem with less margin. In response, manufacturers find ways to cut corners by taking manufacturing offshore, standardising internal components and cutting corners.

Video surveillance manufacturers might compromise on optical and sensor quality, with software tidying up shortcomings in a sort of real-time post processing. When it comes to alarm systems, I think most new sensors are ubiquitously low end. Single or dual pyro at most, often without creep zones. Panels are still shipped with LCD keypads despite the fact touch screens are much more intuitive for end users and installers. There is a point where low quality and worthwhile functionality intersect. I think it’s safe to say we will discover exactly where that point lies. zzz

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qss / scsi

QSS and SCSI alliance In a new alliance, SCSI says Q Security Systems will be distributing its alarm monitoring solutions, while QSS will make parts of its product range available to SCSI.

T

HIS is an interesting alliance that seeks to leverage the strengths of SCSI and QSS, allowing each to grow sales without directly competing. This alliance suggests something else, too. That integration of alarm and video surveillance solutions is going to come true and that SCSI plans to be at the forefront of the revolution.

According to SCSI’s Dale Acott, the arrangement between SCSI and Q is quite simple and flexible.

“QSS will stock SCSI’s range of alarm communicators along with providing access to certain telecommunication services,” Acott explains.

“SCSI will also have access to QSS’s impressive range

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of products to develop new and innovative LTEenabled IP video solutions.

“The aim is to set up QSS’s distribution centres with the facilities to supply and enable SIM cards along with other security-oriented telco services. There is not a revenue-share agreement but rather a range of services that compliment QSS’s hardware supply that can be delivered direct to trade customers.”

It’s a nicely balanced relationship, given each of the company’s has a fundamentally different target market. And Acott has a clear idea in his mind about what constitutes a best-case for SCSI in terms of the alliance.

“For SCSI this is about increased convenience for our existing customer base, along with attracting new customers through QSS’s national footprint to take advantage of SCSI’s industry leading alarm transmission systems and telco services,” he says.

“The partnership with Q is another piece of the puzzle which allows the continuation of SCSI’s strong growth. It also compliments our recent partnership with Bold Technologies in the USA. SCSI now has access to a massive range of quality IP video equipment to report to the most advanced alarm and video monitoring software available in the world – Bold’s powerful Manitou.”

It’s a relationship that begs the question whether QSS might promote any integrator-specific Bold modules or capabilities – such as video verification

By John Ada m s

or automation – to installers of its alarm and home automation hardware in partnership with SCSI and its monitoring station customers.

“The Bold Alarm & Video Monitoring, PSIM and Integration software is not part of the initial agreement between QSS and SCSI, but it is an ideal fit as we both know,” Acott says. “There is plenty of room for growth of the distribution agreement and there could possibly be a number of additional services being offered through QSS in 2015.”

This is a departure and an expansion of the SCSI business, I point out. You’ve always been a manufacturer as well as a service provider but now you are plugged into a national distribution network – that’s a big deal, isn’t it?

“It is a big deal,” Acott says. “SCSI has predominately sold to monitoring stations and while we have trade customers who buy direct, we have never really targeted that side of the market. SCSI products being stocked at every QSS store makes them very accessible to trade customers and integrators. And with QSS being a major player in the IP video market, the new partnership also compliments SCSI’s plans to become a leading video service supplier to the security industry.

Is the way now open for another alarm/alarm monitoring solution that SCSI manufactures to come to market via QSS? “SCSI is at the beginning of diversifying its service

With QSS being a major player in the IP Video market, the new partnership also compliments SCSI’s plans to become a leading video service supplier to the security industry. offerings and there will definitely be new alarm and monitoring solutions that will come to market through QSS in addition to our regular channels to market,” says Acott. “Though there are not any plans for an exclusive solution that only QSS provides.

There are a couple of very exciting developments that I can update SEN readers on early next year.”

Meanwhile, QSS CEO Rob Rosa says he’s pleased with the new business relationship and is looking forward to seeing the results.

“From our perspective, this relationship allows QSS to distribute the Direct Wireless range of products to integrators/installers,” Rosa explains. “It’s a hardware distribution agreement and for convenience you can also pick up your SIM packs at any QSS sales branch in Australia, which allows installers and integrators to buy their entire solution from us.”

How long has this deal been in the works? Who approached who?

“The deal was in the background for a while and the fact that the owners of SCSI and the management of QSS have known each other for many years was the foundation of our discussions,” says Rosa. “We met numerous times to see if there was a fit and if this arrangement could compliment each other’s business. The continual answer was ‘yes’ and that it would allow SCSI a true national footprint to distribute their product while giving QSS a great product to bolt on to many of its existing lines.

“In reality, all this does is make QSS stronger in its total product offering that actually adds value to clients,” he says. “We are very mindful of having products that enhance each other, rather than conflict. From a QSS perspective this is about ensuring we continue to focus on good customer service and convenience for our clients which are predominantly integrators and installers while SCSI predominantly deals with control room and monitoring companies.

We like the fit and thought this was a great way to expand the reach of both companies.”

Will QSS be supporting the gear technically as well as distributing it?

“QSS already offers phone or RTB support and this is no different,” Rosa says. “Our technicians will be able to support this product given they already have experience in this technology so there is no real learning curve from that perspective. Our techs are pretty switched on people and we have one in each state, plus the Laverton techs to assist as well.” zzz

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new pr o d u ct s h owcase / new p roduct showcase / new p roduct showcase /

editor’s choice

What’s new in the industry

Avigilon Bullets and Domes with Adaptive IVA l AVIGILON’S new HD Dome and HD Bullet cameras bring the benefits of Avigilon’s

adaptive video analytics directly to the device. Powered by Avigilon’s pattern-based, selflearning video analytics technology, these intelligent cameras automatically adjust and continue to adapt to changing scene conditions.

The HD Dome and Bullet cameras also support Avigilon’s breakthrough Teach-ByExample technology - analytics that learn by watching the scene as well as from operators actively using the system. These new cameras work seamlessly with the new HD Appliances – a complete network switch, workstation, server and storage all-in-one solution.

Distributor: Avigilon - Central Security Distribution Contact: 1300 319 499

MxDisplay - The Smartphone on the Wall

Honeywell goes outside l ALTHOUGH you rely on your security system to protect your property and the possessions inside your home or business, you may be overlooking a critical part of the solution…the outside. Honeywell’s Wireless Outdoor Contact (5816OD) keeps you aware of what’s going on around the exterior of your home or business while creating a safer environment.

The company’s Wireless Outdoor Motion Sensor (5800PIR-OD) can alert you when movement is detected around locations like driveways, patios and pool areas.

Meanwhile, Honeywell Photoelectric Beams (IB Series) are designed for longer range outdoor protection with point to point dual beam sensors.

Contact: Honeywell Security Group Call: 1300 234 234

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l The Mobotix MxDisplay is a fixed remote station for the IP video door station intercom. This easy-to-use piece of technology, allows the user to call up camera overviews, view recent video messages or generate a new access transponder for a guest with just a few simple swipes.

Able to be operated wirelessly, the MxDisplay can also be used as a base station for other displays in the building. Additionally, smart phones and computers can also be used to log into the display and perform a variety of functions including video forwarding from a ringing doorbell to a selected device. The MxDisplay can be integrated flush with the wall and is available in black or white.

Distributor: Mobotix - Central Security Distribution Contact: 1300 319 499

n ew p rod

duct showcase / n ew p ro d u ct s h owcas e / new pr o d u ct showcase / new p roduct showcase / new p roduct showcase /

Illustra 610 mini bullet

Vivotek does the splits l VIVOTEK has announced its compact split-type Camera System VC8201, which is comprised of 2 camera units, CU8131 and CU8171, and a VC8201 video core.

Designed separately, the bodies of the camera units are much more compact than general network cameras, making them easier to install and harder to notice.

The CU8131 and CU8171, 2 camera units especially developed for the Split-type Camera System, are both designed as recessed dome type. With a 1-Megapixel CMOS sensor and WDR Pro technology, the CU8131 can capture clear and detailed images in environments with sharp lighting contrasts. The 5-Megapixel CU8171, featuring a fisheye lens, provides a 180-degree panoramic or 360-degree surround view without blind spots. In addition, the VC8201 video core supports different combinations of the two camera units (up to two 5-Megapixel fisheye camera units) with 8-meter long cables, dramatically simplifying the installation process.

l Tyco Security Products, part of Tyco, introduces the Illustra 610 Compact IP MiniBullet Camera, an ideal video solution for small to mid-size businesses in need of reliable, affordable outdoor surveillance.

The Illustra 610 Compact IP Mini-Bullet camera provides exceptional video quality within a small framework, making it appropriate for indoor or outdoor active surveillance situations where the camera needs to blend into the environment. With 1080p resolution for crisp, clear high-definition video, the camera provides various viewing angles, including a horizontal view and a corridor mode to capture video in narrow hallways or other areas where the traditional landscape format wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do.

Using a built-in IR LED, the camera delivers useable video surveillance in a variety of lighting conditions. Its wide dynamic range further minimizes the impact on surveillance video caused by glare and high-contrast scenes.

Multiple streams of H.264 and MJPEG compression ensure excellent image clarity with controlled bandwidth usage. A built-in micro SD/SDHC card slot enables several days of recording to be stored on a memory card. Also, when triggered, the embedded motion detection sensor in the camera can send an alert to the operator or an email to any address or handheld device.

Distributor: QSS Contact: +61 3 9646 9016

Axis mobile apps l AXIS has introduced mobile apps for Apple iPhone and Android devices for use with AXIS Camera Companion and hosted video solutions.

The mobile surveillance apps allow the user to easily switch from live view to recorded videos from any location within their surveillance system. The integrated timeline notifies about triggered events and allows the user to take immediate action. Single images and video of interest can easily be stored to their mobile device and shared when needed.

To further strengthen its offering, Axis launches the mobile apps with the updated AXIS Camera Companion 2.2, with support for Axis Mobile Streaming. This technology is specially designed to give quick and easy access to live and recorded high definition videos even for installations where bandwidth is limited.

Distributor: Axis Communications Contact: +61 3 9982 1111

Distributor: Vivotek Distributors Contact: +886-2-8245-5282

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re g u lars help desk

helpdesk

Q: I want to put facility passes into a secure container with remote access control and Wi-Fi, ideally with a cloud based app. I want to identify who opens and closes the box using biometrics, so as to know who has these passes at any given time. I want something that’s cheap.

What would you suggest?

A: You are way ahead of the curve with the idea of a biometric safe ported via WiFi to a local network and then to mobile devices. There’s also a challenge with the identification and control side. Remote access control of a secure container controlled by a biometric reader and the word ‘cheap’ do not go together. These components would need to be integrated.

Ideally, you’d need to leverage an existing access control or alarm/ access solution. To manage access control of a lock you need a controller to throw a relay, or you need an input to a controller to report an event. You might put a reed switch on the door of a safe that reported access incidents as alarm events to a controller and then to a remote app but there would be no discernment. You would have to integrate a biometric reader to a database and an event log. There would be nothing simple about such a solution. It would cost thousands.

If you want a system that’s cheap, I

80 se&n

Our panel of experts answers your questions.

think the best bet would be to put in a simple mechanical combination safe like an Allsafe Supra 7 – they are less than $100 – and change the combination weekly or even more often. That way only the person/s you gave the combo to via email or text could open the box. Alternatively, for less than $500 you can buy a PS20B biometric gun/ammo safe to handle authentication (these are about $150 at Walmart if you can arrange shipping).

For identification you could put a network camera recording on motion at 4CIF and low frame rate onto your network, with the backend pointed at a convenient server or an internal SD card where it over-writes the disk when it’s full. That way if there’s ever an issue with access of the safe, you have footage of any event showing time and identity. A simple 720p camera from Axis or Hikvision would cost no more than $300.

Q: We’ve had a couple of fuses blow in a site we’re installing a system in and it seems like whoever was here last used a lower than required rating but the fuses have nothing stamped on them.

A: Common 12V fuses are often actually 32V automotive fuses bought cheaply and stamped 6V, 12V or 24V. While fuses should not be used in circuits that carry higher

voltages than they’re designed to handle – a 32V fuse in a 240V application for example – it’s better to use a lower voltage fuse than to have no fuse at all as long as the Amp rating is right.

Remember that fuses are current-specific and they’re not much affected by minor variations in voltage. It’s the Amp rating of a fuse that’s the vital one and employing a 20A fuse in a 2A circuit is a recipe for disaster – either component/system destruction or fire.

Q: Is it possible for fibre optic links to degrade? With an inherited system we have variable performance on a number of single mode fibres. In fact, none of the fibres shows consistent performance with any of the others, and none meets the original specification!

A: A quality fibre optic link may have originally represented a comparatively perfect connection, but in a typical network installation, fibres are simply butted up against each other in mechanical ferrules, not bonded to each other as they might be by arc fusion techiques. That means often they aren’t completely sealed. Dirty industrial and external environments, especially if they’re moist and/or dusty, can challenge fibre connections, with moisture seeping into the fibre tips, or fine dust

getting in the way of signals.

You’ve got a couple of choices – the first is to just keep cleaning the fibre tips when you notice performance is falling. The second option is to replace your connectors with IP-67 rated units. There are several advantages. One is that signal loss will drop to just 0.20 dB from a typical multimode fibre loss of greater than 1dB with SMA connectors. But the big advantage in your case is that LC ODVA compliant IP-67 rated connectors resist moisture, humidity, dust, industrial gases and anything else an installation might throw at them.

Further, LEDs and VCSELs are fabricated on semiconductor wafers and this means that light is emitted from the surface of the chip directly into the connection where it scoots down the fibre link. If any dust gets onto the surface of the LED, then you’ll get attenuation of the signal until the surface is cleaned. Terminations and connections are almost always the location of attenuation in a fibre optic signal path. Fibres can be damaged in other ways but a crushed fibre will suffer catastrophic signal degradation.

Q: I’m using a long lens to look from a structure at one end of a facility towards an entrance point. This distance is several hundred metres. We are using a good lens but looking at the picture on full screen, the image looks unusual. Poles in the field of view look slightly bent and the centre of the image seems to be bulging. Is this the lens or the camera?

The lens is third party and the camera is under warranty.

A: It’s definitely the lens and it sounds like a combination of barrel and pincushion distortion, a complex effect called moustache distortion. These are quite common effects with big zoom lenses and they may be possible to correct in real time,

depending on your software platform.

In the first instance, barrel distortion is image magnification that decreases the further away from the optical axis you get.

This makes straight lines in an image bow like the staves of a wooden barrel. The effect is worst at the middle and wider ends of zoom performance so the zoom you are using must be a monster – at least 200mm.

Conversely, pincushion distortion is image magnification that increases the further away you get from the optical axis. That means lines on either side of the centre of the image bend inwards. Moustache distortion involves both these types of distortion in the same zoom lens at a particular focal point – typically, wider angle settings of very big zooms.

If you are using something enormous on the front of the camera, it might be worthwhile swapping it out for a 16-120mm or similar, especially if the client is going to be viewing the scene at full screen regularly.

Bear in mind, you can clean up moustache

Dirty industrial and external environments, especially if they’re moist and/or dusty, can challenge fibre connections, with moisture seeping into the fibre tips, or fine dust getting in the way of signals. distortion screen grabs in Photoshop very easily. Alternatively, knowing what the cause of the image distortion is, the client may be happy to live with it for the time being.

Q: Is there an easy way to check whether or not a cable has a dangerous level of current running through it without breaching the conduit?

A: Yes, a clamp-on meter. These are essentially multimeters with the ability to measure currents up to 1000 amps (a standard DMM only goes up to 10 amps).

Clamp-on units will also measure voltage and while they’ll do it with a little less accuracy than a direct circuit connection they’re a lot safer to use if you’re around AC power or high levels of direct current current.

The beauty of a clamp-on meter is that it allows you to establish AC power delivery in nearby AC cables so you can be alert to EMI radiation. It also allows you to make informed guesses about possible faults on AC circuits without opening an AC cable jacket or busting AC connections. zzz

se&n 81

events

december 2014 – july 2015 December 2014 Issue 361

2014 STATE OF THE MARKET

ISC West Date: 15 - 17 April, 2015 Venue: Sands Expo & Convention Center, Las Vegas, NV, U.S.A. Tel: 1-203-840-5602 With more than 26,000 industry professionals and more than 1000 exhibits, ISC West is the largest physical security event in the Americas. ISC West’s attendees represent over $US50 Billion in buying power.

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l Installing DSC IMPASSA l Darkfighter turns around l Axis releases recorders l Hills VDS1 cloud l The Interview: Ray Mauritsson, Axis l EDS14: Synology’s mini marvel l Could cellular bandwidth double? l Latest CCTV technologies

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27/11/14 8:22 PM

Secutech 2015 Date: 28 - 30 April, 2015 Venue: Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, Taiwan Tel: +886 2 2659 9080 Email:intl@newera.messefrankfurt.com Secutech is where technological innovations become business opportunities and suppliers of security components, devices and total solutions gather here annually and present their solutions to the industry.

SecTech Roadshow

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Date & locations: Brisbane, Monday 4th May, 2015 Sydney, Wednesday 6th May, 2015 Melbourne, Monday 11th May, 2015 Adelaide, Wednesday 13th May, 2015 Perth, Monday 18th May 2015, Contact: Monique Keatinge on +61 2 9280 4425 www.sectechroadshow.com.au SecTech Roadshow is a dynamic new event that will put the latest security products into the hands of installers and end users in the capital cities of 5 Australian states over 2 weeks. SecTech is an exciting new concept – a pop-up roadshow with one stand per exhibitor – no one company dominates the floor. At SecTech, new products do the talking.

IFSEC Date: 16 - 18 June, 2015 Venue: ExCeL London, U.K. Tel: 44 (0)20 7069 5000 IFSEC International is the only event to bring together the entire buying chain, from end users, installers and integrators to consultants, distributers and manufacturers.

Security Exhibition & Conference

= DAILY, WEEKLY, MONTHLY.

Date: July 15-17, 2015 Venue: Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre Contact: Kylie McRorie on 03 9261 4504 or www.securityexpo.com.au for more information.

Australasia’s premier security industry event, the Security Exhibition & Conference, will return to Melbourne in July 2015. In 2014 more than 4500 security professionals attended, there was a record number of individual registrations and 170 brands exhibited on the show floor.