Background

As criminal activities become more and more sophisticated, constant upgrades for surveillance technology are imperative. For a local police station and City Hall in Halle, Belgium, it was no exception. In order to meet numerous complex technical specs and requirements for this city surveillance project, many different types of cameras were sought after. Some of the challenges facing the VIVOTEK teams and system integrator included varying lighting conditions at the station, from dimly lit parking lots, to outdoor entrances, interior corridors and a jail.

Mission

Optima Networks, VIVOTEK’s valued partner in Belgium, worked closely with Tech Session, a Belgium-based, experienced system integration services provider, to develop the most suitable solutions for the project. Despite challenges with implementing cameras within such diverse environments, Optima Networks and Tech Session, along with the VIVOTEK team, proposed an installation of a series of diverse, versatile network-based cameras from VIVOTEK.

Solution

The government project inaugurated with the installation of VIVOTEK IP7361s in the parking area. The IP7361, known as the first generation of the IP8361, was then a 2-megapixel camera designed for outdoor surveillance with outdoor-specific features such as concealed wiring to prevent tampering. Other than parking lots, the application in this case, gas stations and building entrances are ideal sites for installation. The next step of the project included the entrance of the community sports centre and the interior corridors and hallways. Part of the SUPREME series, the 2-Megapixel VIVOTEK FD8162s were set up at these areas, where the lighting condition is constantly changing and at times to the extreme. The Wide Dynamic Range (WDR) technology available on the FD8162 was one of the major reasons why the model was chosen. When a camera attempts to capture footages in a high-contrast, backlight, glare or light-reflective environment, where the weather, lighting and other natural causes are rather unpredictable, subjects generally become unrecognizable. WDR compensates for the unbalanced lighting, restoring the details throughout the field of view.

In the jail, VIVOTEK SD8121 was the chosen one to monitor the facility, supervise the inmates and keep the operation on track. The SD8121 is a high-performance day/night speed dome network camera geared for professional surveillance applications, including but not limiting to places like prisons, jails or detention centers. For this specific application, Tech Sessions was seeking a fast pan/tilt/zoom (PTZ) with strong zooming capabilities for surveillance and monitoring purposes and VIVOTEK SD8121 was a perfect match. The device is equipped with a 12x optical zoom lens and SONY‘s EXView CCD sensor, which allow for close-up images with exceptional details and provides fast, precise movement with 360-degree pan and 90-degree tilt. The end-user can easily control the lens position via mouse or joystick to track the object of interest and set up to 128 preset positions for patrolling at the jail. During nighttimes, immaculate footages are the most crucial. 3D Noise Reduction, which is available on this model, further perfects the image quality. Image noise is an undesirable by-product of image capture. 3D Noise Reduction refers to noise reduction that operates both spatially and temporally, which delivers the result of 3 dimensions (3D). Such function helps to assure optimal image quality at all times, even at night when the lighting condition may be challenging. The same model was also used in the indoor parking lot of the police station to cover the overview of the parking with the 360-degree pan and 90-degree tilt solution.

Customer Feedback

Tech Session and Optima Networks were extremely pleased with the cameras. According to Gerrit Lammens, owner of Tech Session, VIVOTEK cameras are well designed and highly user-friendly and the price-quality ratio is perfect. The cameras were equally compatible with the Network-Attached Storage (NAS) solution from Synology, DiskStation (DS) 1512+ solution, a 5-bay Hotplug. Compatible with VIVOTEK, the Synology DS1512+ runs on Synology DSM, a renowned operating system with comprehensive network protocol support assuring seamless file sharing across Windows, Mac® and Linux® platforms. According to Scott Lee, Manager of Surveillance Division of Synology, "VIVOTEK is a well recognized brand in the surveillance industry. Synology is glad to see two fine products come together to offer total property surveillance solutions and benefit our users."

Sven Philips, Dealer Account Manager at Optima Networks, VIVOTEK‘s distributor in Belgium, also echoed Scott’s statement, endorsing VIVOTEK. "Tech Session and Optima Networks have had a long history of collaborating together and we both enjoy working with VIVOTEK very much," said Sven. "VIVOTEK offers excellent technical support, pre-sales and after-sales services. We would definitely recommend VIVOTEK cameras to anyone in the industry!"

Special Thanks

• Optima Networks
• Tech Sessions
• Synology