Help selecting IP Video system and Software

[Paul Goldstone]

I am new to this forum so please excuse my inexperience with video surveillance. I manage 6 apartment buildings in the San Francisco Bay Area and would like to install IP video surveillance in all of the buildings and be able to monitor each building from the individual building offices and remotely from 2 central offices or from a laptop when necessary. The buildings range in size from 36 to 212 units. We have commercial DSL or cable at each location and a symmetric 10 Meg microwave service at our main office.

I intend on starting by equipping one of the building with probably 6 cameras just to make sure I select the right type of equipment. If all goes well I will proceed with the other facilities. I will need to monitor garage areas that are enclosed on three sides so they are mostly protected from the weather but are subject to tampering, common area hallways, building lobbies, and a few outdoor areas.

Because no surveillance system is in place currently, I can design an entirely new system without being concerned with integrating any older equipment. It seems to me that an IP system would be ideal. So far it has been suggested that I consider using a “Power over Ethernet” system with Axis cameras and Milestone software. Can anyone give me a little guidance putting together this type of system or perhaps alert me to some of the pitfalls I might encounter? I am also open to working with local consultants if there are any who frequent this forum.

Thanks very much in advance.

Paul Goldstone
paul@goldstonemgmt.com

[Josh]

Hi Paul,

The closest Milestone partner to you is probably Remote View Security. Einar Mikkelsen is the technical/sales contact there, and the number is 415 240 3135

It sounds like XProtect Enterprise would serve you well. It sounds like it will be a relatively low number of cameras overall, and the master/slave functionality of Enterprise would allow you to tie all the sites together neatly to make all cameras viewable from all locations. A small(ish) workstation could be used for recording at each location, and each workstation could be configured so that when you login, you have access to the cameras on that server, or any of the others.

PoE is definitely the best way to go if you are starting from scratch. This cuts the cabling cost by quite a bit, and helps to simplify the installation. Your choice of devices are limited a bit by sticking to PoE, but Axis, IQInvision, Arecont, Panasonic etc all make excellent PoE powered cameras.

Some general recommendations I have are...

- Since there is no existing infrastructure yet, go with gigabit all the way. This will help "future-proof" your properties.
- If you are interested in incorporating an access control system, S2 and Paxton Access both have existing integrations into the XProtect Enterprise product. Middleware Associates is in process of designing an integration as well.
- Depending on the number of cameras, image sizes, and framerate, the 10Mb connection will likely have difficulty displaying all cameras simultaneously at the full framerates, but viewing one location at a time should not be a problem.

Starting off with one location and an essential number of cameras is a good start and will help you to become comfortable with a solution without locking you into a specific vendor. Choosing Axis cameras gives you the possibility of exploring multiple software vendors since Axis is a well known and generally supported camera among all of the open platform software vendors.
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Support Engineer
Milestone Systems Inc.