One of the draws of the luxury apartment buildings on New York’s Park and Fifth Avenues has been the access control provided by uniformed doormen; trusted employees who know every resident by sight and can be counted on to screen all visitors and grant them access only after announcing them and gaining permission over the apartment’s intercom.
The cost for such security: co-op and condo prices that reach into the two-digit millions. But there’s an alternative for those of us who cannot afford to live in such luxury – a digital doorman.
IP surveillance cameras are ubiquitous today. Everyone who sets foot out his door is well aware that somewhere, sometime on his journey he will enter into and out of several cameras’ fields of view.
Since very few everyday security cameras are covert, one has only to look several feet up at buildings, light poles, retail store ceilings to see this is true. There is a reason for this – the sight of a surveillance camera can be beneficial in deterring crime.
But there are also cameras capable of surveying an area, sight unseen, from, literally, miles away. These surveillance cameras fall under the heading, long-range cameras.
A physical security system is a collection of equipment and software that provides security and safety. It can use a variety of network-attached devices as well as a number of software products that can be integrated to provide a unified solution.
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To be more specific, the integration of the latest video management software (VMS), with door access control software, and emergency paging software along with IP cameras, IP sensors, IP door readers, and IP paging amplifiers can provide a very complete physical security system. These IP based security systems provide similar capability to Physical Security Information Management (PSIM) software at much less cost.
Why should I use an IP camera when the analog cameras are so much cheaper?
That’s a question we get especially from those people who have been using analog CCTV (closed-circuit TV) systems for many years. Actually CCTV has been around for over 45 years. Olean, NY was the first municipality in the US to use cameras on its main street to help reduce crime (according to Wikipedia this was back in 1968).
Not only have the analog CCTV systems been around for a very long time, but they also haven’t really changed from their original capability. Well yes, they have gotten much cheaper, and there are efforts to use higher resolution cameras, but their capability hasn’t changed. The first systems were based on the TV standards established by the National Television System Committee (NTSC). The standard indicated that there should be 525 vertical TV lines, with a frame rate of 30 frames per second. Take a look at our video, How the Video Camera Works.
Emergency paging increases safety because it provides immediate notification of dangerous situations. By adding panic buttons, you can make these emergency pages very quickly.
Push the button and the paging system will let everyone know that the school is in lockdown, or that they should exit the building. These prerecorded announcements can cover many emergency situations.
Of course, you don’t have to use just the panic buttons, a person can still make a manual announcement. Since IP Paging systems connect to your network, they can handle many different emergency situations. They also can be used not only in one building, but in multiple buildings, or even on multiple campuses.
Here’s how to add an emergency IP paging system that includes panic buttons to your organization.
The intercom has been with us for a long time, although we rarely acknowledge its presence. That’s because an intercom on its best behavior prefers to avoid the limelight and let the voice take all the attention.
Like any staple of technology, the Intercommunication Device has seen its share of change over the years.
Remember when door readers were connected to the central control panel and how difficult it was to run all the connections?
Oh wait, people are still doing that. The new IP connected readers have been available for a number of years and it’s surprising that they haven’t made more of an impact in the market. I talked to a number of people about this and the conclusion is that security dealers like to do what they know and find it difficult to work with computers and networks.
Are the IP door readers actually better, or as some people say, too expensive?
In this article, we reviewed the cost of the two technologies for an 8 door system.
Once residing only in the realm of science fiction, biometric authentication has moved into our everyday worlds. And if it’s not part of yours, hold on, it soon will be.
Once upon a time a driver’s license or photo ID was all it took to gain access to a secure building. Life was simpler then. But then, terrorism reared its loathsome head and made it apparent that these simple tokens of identification are woefully inadequate. Today’s security climate demands that secure access control be based on identity authentication. It is not enough that a person may already have security clearance.
Biometric authentication has stepped up to fill that need since the cardinal rule of authentication is that proof of identity be based on a trait or characteristic that is unique to the person, not just a piece of plastic or badge that has the potential of being misappropriated.
Some applications require IP cameras with a wide dynamic range (WDR). What is a wide dynamic range? It means that the video will look much better in situations where there are very wide light differences in the scene. You may have seen this type of problem, where you are viewing a person in front of a bright background. The background is clear, but the person is very dark and hard to see. The older IP (and analog) cameras used “Back Light” control to enhance the darker area (foreground) and ignore the background.
In this case, you can see the person but the background is lost in a bright haze. If there are people in the background you can’t see them. Today’s new IP cameras use a wide dynamic range to allow you to view both the foreground and background.
