Surveillance Systems

When you are looking for surveillance systems what should you consider?

For residential customers, you need to consider the angles of your home. What I mean by that is, do you have a perfect square or rectangle style home? Do you have a covered porch in the front or the back? How much light do you have around the areas you want to protect? Do you want to have audio, one-way or two-way audio? What kind of resolution are you looking for?

 

There are a wide variety of cameras with different features that should be considered. Most of the big box stores have very cheap systems that are very attractive to most consumers. The problem with most of these systems is that they are cheaply made, they have a narrow field of view and they send cheap wire that has many points of failure. When you have a professional design a system for you, they can get you many different styles of cameras with wide angles, the cameras will be made of better material, we can get sufficient storage space for your specific needs and we will use professional grade wire. Another thing you need to consider is the support you will get with the big box store. The support that the big box stores will give you is phone support and that is it. When you go with a local security company, they can offer phone support but if you need further support, they can always send someone out to troubleshoot further.

 

When you are looking for cameras for your business you need to look at different aspects of your coverage. You should have a camera on the inside and outside of every exterior door. When looking at the door from the inside you need to make sure you have a camera with true WDR and varifocal capabilities. WDR stands for wide dynamic range and what this does for you is when the camera is in a dark place then the door opens it adjusts the light depth so the subject entering can be identified. How many registers do you have? Each register should have a dedicated camera that can identify the denomination entering and exiting the register. Along with a dedicated camera, you should also have microphones wherever there is customer interaction. This will allow you to review how your employees are treating your customers and help with any kind of complaints that customers may have. Anywhere customers or employees have access should be covered. This will ensure that if an accident occurs you will have footage of what exactly happened. When considering a camera on the outside you should have full coverage of all parking lots and walkways. This gives customers a piece of mind when they are at your establishment.

 

A quick explanation of the different types of resolutions. Your older cameras around 5-6 years ago where 480TVL or 600TVL. TVL stands for TV lines of resolution. These are all way out of date please don’t let anyone install this outdated tech in your place. What you are looking for is megapixel cameras. The bottom end of the megapixel camera is 1.3MP. 1.3MP is 720p. The next would be 2MP which is the same as 1080p. 2MP is around 2000MP per sq. inch. There is also 8MP which is considered 4K to most and this is equal to 8000MP per sq. inch. The newest resolution to come out is 12MP. Thesis cameras right now are very expensive but provide an awesome picture for