Suggestions for new configuration in our surveillance room

[survtech 0]

You are going to multiplex up to 128 channels? Is that for monitoring or recording? You do realize that at best, 16-channel multiplexers will give you less than two frames per second? Even worse if you enable motion detection.

 

That reminds me of a story where someone was stealing meat from an outdoor freezer. The camera was fed through a 16-channel MUX. In successive frames you saw the door closed, then open, then closed again. No video of anyone entering or leaving.

 

Also, if you MUX the video of front-of-house cameras prior to recording, you will not meet NIGC MICS requirements for 30fps.

 

Also, if you plan to use the system as your primary DVR for cameras, I would not recommend PC-based DVR cards. They don't have the reliability and redundancy of a dedicated system like the Honeywell Enterprise or Dallmeier or Pelco Endura, among others.

[MetalguitarJames 0]

You are going to multiplex up to 128 channels? Is that for monitoring or recording? You do realize that at best, 16-channel multiplexers will give you less than two frames per second? Even worse if you enable motion detection.

 

That reminds me of a story where someone was stealing meat from an outdoor freezer. The camera was fed through a 16-channel MUX. In successive frames you saw the door closed, then open, then closed again. No video of anyone entering or leaving.

 

Also, if you MUX the video of front-of-house cameras prior to recording, you will not meet NIGC MICS requirements for 30fps.

 

Also, if you plan to use the system as your primary DVR for cameras, I would not recommend PC-based DVR cards. They don't have the reliability and redundancy of a dedicated system like the Honeywell Enterprise or Dallmeier or Pelco Endura, among others.

 

My nightmare is getting worse now. The only reason we got the multiplexers was because we wanted to be able to use 42" LCD Monitors and have a split up view. At first we were told to get "Multiviewers" and then they told us that we needed multiplexers because we needed MUX control from our keyboards. Yes we do have to meet the MICS requirements of 30FPS on all front of house cameras. This is rather frustrating because we got quotes from all different sorts of vendors and the biggest issue was the cost from each of them. Honeywell was the most expensive. Then came Vigilant, Nice, Reliable Security, Aventura, and this obscure company "Adtech" in that particular order. We aren't exactly a big casino. LOL. We only have around 230 machines. We actually flew out to their place of business to check them out. I've seen how they are built and they saved recordings and playback is pretty good quality.

 

 

We aren't going to be actually recording the multiplexed image. With the loop outs it shouldn't effect the FPS. On live viewing through the matrix I have seen the FPS in action an it is a bit choppy but on the recorded image, I didn't see frame loss as you are describing because they weren't actually recording the multiplexed image. I went to the pelco training down in Clovis, CA and saw this first hand.

 

We will not be recording the multiplexed image. We will only be recording the cameras themselves. The way the multiplexers work in this type of scenario is that you use the multiplexer main monitor out into the multiplexer server and out from the mux server into a camera input on the matrix. (We were told by pelco that we had to have a mux server if we had 8 mux's). We only do this so we can split up the screen on the 42" LCD's. We were prepared for the choppiness on the 42" LCD's for live viewing. I've tested the 19" LCD's and there isn't any choppiness with a single camera being displayed at a time. The only issue there is that it takes the monitor 3.5 seconds to pick up the image every time we switch to another camera.

 

James

 

P.S. we had the same issue with someone stealing meat from our outside freezer. What a coincidence!

[rory 0]

Okay so basically just recording on the PC DVRs.

Once you have some inhouse IT tech/s, should be okay then for the PC maintenance part.

 

Yeah I was going to ask about the quality from the composite to the VGA.

 

So the converter is basically a Composite to VGA converter right?

I havent really used them myself so I cant say, but I just asked someone that has and he said there is no delay with the ones he has used. Maybe it is just the converter being used?

[MetalguitarJames 0]

Okay so basically just recording on the PC DVRs.

Once you have some inhouse IT tech/s, should be okay then for the PC maintenance part.

 

Yeah I was going to ask about the quality from the composite to the VGA.

 

So the converter is basically a Composite to VGA converter right?

I havent really used them myself so I cant say, but I just asked someone that has and he said there is no delay with the ones he has used. Maybe it is just the converter being used?

 

Hey Rory,

 

Would you be able to find out where this person got their converter from and a model #? Is he using a regular PC LCD also?

 

James

[rory 0]

He mentioned ViewSonic .. yes he uses various models, Olivia 42" LCD TVs as well as various regular PC LCDs.

[MetalguitarJames 0]

He mentioned ViewSonic .. yes he uses various models, Olivia 42" LCD TVs as well as various regular PC LCDs.

 

 

Was he using a converter also? If so what was the model # and place he got the converter?

 

James

[rory 0]

ill have to ask him later on, he was sleeping when I called .. yes Composite to VGA convertors for stand alone DVRs.

[MetalguitarJames 0]

ill have to ask him later on, he was sleeping when I called .. yes Composite to VGA convertors for stand alone DVRs.

 

I see what you mean now. The way this LCD is hooked up is coming from a bnc monitor output from a Matrix bay into the converter and into the LCD Monitor.

[survtech 0]

We actually flew out to their place of business to check them out. I've seen how they are built and they saved recordings and playback is pretty good quality.

 

We aren't going to be actually recording the multiplexed image. ...

 

We only do this so we can split up the screen on the 42" LCD's. We were prepared for the choppiness on the 42" LCD's for live viewing. I've tested the 19" LCD's and there isn't any choppiness with a single camera being displayed at a time. The only issue there is that it takes the monitor 3.5 seconds to pick up the image every time we switch to another camera.

How many channels per monitor?

 

I know you need to save money, I've dealt with a similar situation. I chose the Sanyo DSR-M8xx series for another casino despite its limitations (latency and slow, clumsy interface), they are simple and bullet-proof. The thing is, have you seen any of their other installs? Have you talked to any of their users to see if they are satisfied with the product in a similar application, preferrably another casino.

 

There have been a lot of companies come and go already in this field. I would think twice before I invested in an untested technology.

 

Was Bill at Reliable selling the AD Intellex? AD, like Sanyo and some of the others, is not going to go out of business next week. That means a lot in a casino environment.

[MetalguitarJames 0]

We are going to do a quad split on the 42" LCD's because 9 may be a bit much. We will get less latency with a quad split instead of a 9 split. Yes it was Bill that came and showed us the intellex system. Bill is a really great guy and was an excellent businessman. Out of all of the companies we got quotes from he treated us the best. It was just too darned expensive. The gaming commission expects a Mercedes at a Pinto price. If we would have went with any other company we would have had to do it in pieces meaning that I would have had to deal with surveillance operators not saving the video properly because they "didn't know how" and it would fall on me to save these incidents. We are getting ready to put in a 4 story Hotel and it'll be operational by Spring of 2008. Ever since the MICS required 30FPS and Front of house it has been a nightmare. We have too many budgetary issues to begin with.

 

James

[rory 0]

Sounds like fun really .. maybe i need to visit the casino on my next trip to the US (we locals cant gamble in the casinos in my country!)

[MetalguitarJames 0]

While you are here Rory maybe you could stop me from going nuckin futs.

[survtech 0]

We are going to do a quad split on the 42" LCD's because 9 may be a bit much. We will get less latency with a quad split instead of a 9 split. Yes it was Bill that came and showed us the intellex system. Bill is a really great guy and was an excellent businessman. Out of all of the companies we got quotes from he treated us the best. It was just too darned expensive. The gaming commission expects a Mercedes at a Pinto price. If we would have went with any other company we would have had to do it in pieces meaning that I would have had to deal with surveillance operators not saving the video properly because they "didn't know how" and it would fall on me to save these incidents. We are getting ready to put in a 4 story Hotel and it'll be operational by Spring of 2008. Ever since the MICS required 30FPS and Front of house it has been a nightmare. We have too many budgetary issues to begin with.

 

James

The new MICS for DVRs is not a real regulation - it is only suggested. I'm not saying that your gaming commission shouldn't use the rules as a guideline, but there apparently would not be any adverse consequences if you don't follow them exactly.

 

We have the same quandry and are in the process of deciding how and when to implement the latest recommendations. 14 days on all drops and count operations would mean another 100TB(+) of storage since their suggestions encompass nearly 80% of our cameras.

 

Automatic failover is not a simple thing to accomplish with many of the systems out there. 4-hour repair times are a bit onerous and unnecessary if you have automatic failover capability. I would also dispute the need for 4CIF on the whole gaming floor.

 

We run all of our cameras at 30fps but vary the resolution and bit rate to suit the need of each camera and situation. High resolution and high bit rates on table games, cash handling, WAP slots and some other areas; medium in other areas and low resolution and bit rate in little-used, and especially small, areas. That saves us appreciably on the storage.

 

The 2007 NIGC DVR recommendations are here:

http://www.nigc.gov/ReadingRoom/Bulletins/BulletinNo20072/tabid/738/Default.aspx

[MetalguitarJames 0]

I doubt our commission will do anything unless it's an actual regulation. If 14 days turns into a regulation for drops and counts then we are going to have more issues than just our LCD screens. It means more $.

 

James

[survtech 0]

If 14 days turns into a regulation for drops and counts then we are going to have more issues than just our LCD screens. It means more $.

That's for sure. I figure at least $100k to add 100TB for our system, not including the additional electrical and cooling needed for 10+ RAIDs. We're using Infortrend 24-bay and 16-bay fibre/SATA units.

 

By the way, I forgot to answer your question about monitors. I still believe that one-for-one CRTs give the best picture when using analog interlaced cameras. We are using JVC 21" monitors mounted in racks that are approximately 4-5 ft. away from the observers for the matrix and 19" hp LCDs sitting on their desktop for the DVR Viewstations.

 

The problem is CRT monitors are getting harder to find and the quality has been dropping so next time we replace monitors, we may have to go with LCD. 16:9 seems to be becoming standard so we will be wasting part of the screen, though. I've also found that most analog-to-VGA converters are not very high quality. De-interlacing seems to be a problem and the conversion process appears to be somewhat lossy on cheap units.

 

I guess we are lucky with our Gaming Commission and casino management. The casino pays all capital expenses for Surveillance (equipment, etc.) and they and the commission have been very generous when we have asked for new/additional equipment. It also helps that DVR upgrades have usually been required by and coincided with major projects that the casino plans. Our latest upgrade of servers and RAIDs was necessitated by a new parking structure that adds 80 cameras.

Edited April 8, 2007 by Guest

[MetalguitarJames 0]

If 14 days turns into a regulation for drops and counts then we are going to have more issues than just our LCD screens. It means more $.

That's for sure. I figure at least $100k to add 100TB for our system, not including the additional electrical and cooling needed for 10+ RAIDs. We're using Infortrend 24-bay and 16-bay fibre/SATA units.

 

By the way, I forgot to answer your question about monitors. I still believe that one-for-one CRTs give the best picture when using analog interlaced cameras. We are using JVC 21" monitors mounted in racks that are approximately 4-5 ft. away from the observers for the matrix and 19" hp LCDs for the DVR Viewstations.

 

The problem is CRT monitors are getting harder to find and the quality has been dropping so next time we replace monitors, we may have to go with LCD. 16:9 seems to be becoming standard so we will be wasting part of the screen, though.

 

That's one of our issues right now is that we don't have a very big surveillance room. It's only 19 ft long and 9 ft wide. We already have 16 CRT Monitors in a huge rack and our DVR's and Matrix are in the room here too. Ya, not to much space in here. So we took over the room next to us and have already started running new cables from the new system under the sub-flooring over to here. We are going to connect them together with barrel connectors. The reason why we went LCD was so we could have some room to do some work in here. We wanted to get rid of the 2 racks holding the DVR's, Server, KVM, and Matrix along with the Rack holding 16 CRT Monitors and have 3 separate desks with 3 19" LCD's on each desk (2 for each PC and one for Main CCTV Monitor use) and 3 42" LCD's. It hasn't been a fun ride because I'm the one supposed to find a good price on everything. I finally found a 17" LCD that has the BNC inputs on them for around $338.00 a piece from searching through google. Problem right now is that my supervisor thinks that we can make it work with the PC LCD monitors that we have. I really don't think that we can considering that every time you switch to another camera the LCD screen goes black for around 3.5 seconds. We can't have this especially when we are tracking someone.

 

James

[rory 0]

Plenty of LCDs with BNCs on them now, they just have Composite to VGA converters built in, so quality will be about the same as using a separate converter.

 

Also, i connected a non PC DVR to a 37" Olyvia LCD TV before and quality was good using the RCA input. LCD TVs seem to be much better for those DVRs as opposed to PC LCDs. Also used Samsung 15" LCD TVs and those were also decent quality.

[survtech 0]

You might also look at consumer LCD TV's. I wall-mounted 17" LG's in another casino that had the same issues as you (11' x 19' Surveillance room for everything, including the equipment). We had custom swing arms made for the wall mounts so that they could not only be tilted, but also turned to make the far end units visible from each station. That worked out pretty well except for the 16:9 format on the LCDs. I hate wasting the space for the format differences but also I would never stretch the picture to fill the screen.

 

I'll never understand why many casino designers think that Surveillance can fit in what amounts to an office. Where do they think we will put all of our equipment? What about the noise from it? And the cooling and fire supression systems requirements play havoc with the room design.

[MetalguitarJames 0]

Well over the past 3 days my supervisor and I installed the new surveillance system with the new CM9760 Matrix, Multiplexers, and New PC-Based DVR's. It was quite a chore but we will be completely finished today! It was insane! The people that originally installed the Honeywell System that we were changing over from ran entirely way too much cable under the floors. Not too much cable as in number of camera cables but I mean the extra length! I think the surveillance tech that was there before me didn't know what the hell he was doing. He didn't zip tie anything under the floors at all! We had the biggest rats nest that I never want to deal with again. We only have a little over 100 cameras but still.....it was done with laziness. Oh, and check this out. Our original Honewell system had the DVR's with looping outs right......well they had the outputs from there going to the matrix down through the hole in the floorboard in the first rack and up through another hole in the second rack. The cables were 30ft long each! Another thing that got to me is why in the hell would anyone put the camera cabling conduits in the middle of a freaking surveillance room?!

 

Anyways. All we have to do now is regain PTZ control on certain cameras. It's interesting how reading further into manuals can save you so much headache in the long end. Apparently our Ultrak KD6's can do Pelco P and D protocols but there is a catch. Some of our KD6's have 4 dip switches and others have 8 dip switches. The ones with 4 dip switches can be changed to Pelco P or D protocol but the Pelco P protocol is supposed to be at a 4800 baud rate. The KD6's with the 4 dip switches can only do 2400 baud rate so we have to go back to every camera that has the 4 dip switches and change them to Pelco D protocol. Oh boy fun. At least we have 2 CDU's for the PTZ's and we can separate the ones with 2400 baud rate from the 4800 baud rate cameras.

 

When we first installed the matrix and had everything up and running we had cameras 1-16 feeds coming up again on cameras 65-80. Turns out we had a loose VCC in the first slot in the matrix. That took forever to find out. Thankfully I just had a feeling and decided to try it. At least it's all done now. I did test some of the video quality from the DVR's and it's pretty damn good. Anyhow I figured I'd give an update. We will be installing the 42" LCD's in about a month or so. Here is a picture of a little rats nest that plagued us for a good 6 hours. I took it with my cell.

 

James

[UMDRanger 0]

Reminds me of a job I did at the UI Art Mesuem. We did an upgrade and installed more cameras and replaced the old ones. The existing cables came up through several small holes in the floor under the security desk from the basement crawlspace. Since it was a DVR upgrade with a client PC at the desk, all the existing cables had to be brought down to the crawlspace and ran to the server room where the DVR was. Wow... it took me about 2 hours to untangle the wires. Then another hour to link them to CAT5 and coil them neatly. Even then it was a mess. To make it look really nice would have taken about another 4 hours we estimated.

 

 

James - would you be able to post a picture of the new camera room? I've always wondered how more advanced the casino rooms are compared to what we have in the retail world (which vary greatly from 1 monitor and 2 cameras all the way up). I walked into my old Target office a few months ago and they had upgraded, it was literally monitors, muxes, VCRs from top to bottom accross 8'. I looked at my crew "this is the standard, this is what we are aiming for", as we are upgrading my office in a month.

[survtech 0]

Having extra cable length is not a bad thing, it allows you to restructure the camera list if the need arises. But it should have been done neatly, which obviously, it was not.

 

If you have any other problems with PTZ control, you might want to contact Sennetech at http://www.sennetech.net/. They really understand control codes and make some excellent products. Many manufacturers recommend them.

 

The 9760 only outputs Pelco "P" protocol and can't run two different baud rates on the same port. You will have to set all PTZ's to "P" and 2400 baud or put the 4800 baud ones on a separate control line. You could use Sennetech's P to D and D to P translator (http://www.sennetech.net/manuals_pdf/SC%2050/SC-50-Pelco-422.PDF), but that is not the elegant way to do it.

 

One trick we use is to put Kalatel KTD-83 Data Signal Distributors out in the casino and a run single line back to the matrix for each port. You can daisy chain the PTZ's from there - as many as you want per line (up to 32 max per port) if you turn off termination on all but the last one in the chain.

 

KTD-83's come in two configurations - 1 in by 5 buffered outputs and 1 in by 16 buffered outputs.

 

The specs for the 5 output unit are here: http://www.gesecurity.com/portal/site/GESecurity/menuitem.f76d98ccce4cabed5efa421766030730?selectedID=6633&seriesyn=true&seriesID=.

 

The 16 output unit's specs are here: http://www.gesecurity.com/portal/site/GESecurity/menuitem.f76d98ccce4cabed5efa421766030730?selectedID=6634&seriesyn=true&seriesID=.

 

Although they call them RS-422 data distributors, they will also work fine with RS-485 data.

 

In fact, based on Sennetch's advice, we daisy chain up to 3 PTZ's per output without turning off the termination on any of them. Although this makes the load 33 ohms instead of 100, the CDU-T's and KTD-83's can handle much lower impedances without problems. This allows us to run 15 PTZ's per KTD-83.

[MetalguitarJames 0]

Reminds me of a job I did at the UI Art Mesuem. We did an upgrade and installed more cameras and replaced the old ones. The existing cables came up through several small holes in the floor under the security desk from the basement crawlspace. Since it was a DVR upgrade with a client PC at the desk, all the existing cables had to be brought down to the crawlspace and ran to the server room where the DVR was. Wow... it took me about 2 hours to untangle the wires. Then another hour to link them to CAT5 and coil them neatly. Even then it was a mess. To make it look really nice would have taken about another 4 hours we estimated.

 

 

James - would you be able to post a picture of the new camera room? I've always wondered how more advanced the casino rooms are compared to what we have in the retail world (which vary greatly from 1 monitor and 2 cameras all the way up). I walked into my old Target office a few months ago and they had upgraded, it was literally monitors, muxes, VCRs from top to bottom accross 8'. I looked at my crew "this is the standard, this is what we are aiming for", as we are upgrading my office in a month.

 

I'm sorry but I'm not able to post a picture of the finished surveillance room due to regulations. This picture I posted above was of course ok because it didn't show the way our equipment and monitors was set up. I wish that I could but I can't. I'm sorry.

[MetalguitarJames 0]

Having extra cable length is not a bad thing, it allows you to restructure the camera list if the need arises. But it should have been done neatly, which obviously, it was not.

 

If you have any other problems with PTZ control, you might want to contact Sennetech at http://www.sennetech.net/. They really understand control codes and make some excellent products. Many manufacturers recommend them.

 

The 9760 only outputs Pelco "P" protocol and can't run two different baud rates on the same port. You will have to set all PTZ's to "P" and 2400 baud or put the 4800 baud ones on a separate control line. You could use Sennetech's P to D and D to P translator (http://www.sennetech.net/manuals_pdf/SC%2050/SC-50-Pelco-422.PDF), but that is not the elegant way to do it.

 

One trick we use is to put Kalatel KTD-83 Data Signal Distributors out in the casino and a run single line back to the matrix for each port. You can daisy chain the PTZ's from there - as many as you want per line (up to 32 max per port) if you turn off termination on all but the last one in the chain.

 

KTD-83's come in two configurations - 1 in by 5 buffered outputs and 1 in by 16 buffered outputs.

 

The specs for the 5 output unit are here: http://www.gesecurity.com/portal/site/GESecurity/menuitem.f76d98ccce4cabed5efa421766030730?selectedID=6633&seriesyn=true&seriesID=.

 

The 16 output unit's specs are here: http://www.gesecurity.com/portal/site/GESecurity/menuitem.f76d98ccce4cabed5efa421766030730?selectedID=6634&seriesyn=true&seriesID=.

 

Although they call them RS-422 data distributors, they will also work fine with RS-485 data.

 

In fact, based on Sennetch's advice, we daisy chain up to 3 PTZ's per output without turning off the termination on any of them. Although this makes the load 33 ohms instead of 100, the CDU-T's and KTD-83's can handle much lower impedances without problems. This allows us to run 15 PTZ's per KTD-83.

 

Well it turns out that the Honeywell Tech that my supervisor spoke with about the KD6 PTZ's that only had 4 dip switches only being able to do 2400 baud was wrong. We spoke with a more knowledgeable tech today and he told use that the cameras that only have the 4 dip switches will automatically adjust the baud rate accordingly to the Protocol chosen so we are in alot better shape right now! That makes everything easy! We daisy chained our CDU-T's into the CC1 and we can set every camera we have to a 4800 Baud rate, Pelco P protocol, and no parity. So much easier! No more headaches.

[rory 0]

james, was it you that asked about the VGA convertor before?

If so I just installed one this evening for my LCD .. its a ViewSonic model, does TV and more .. i can get the model number tomorrow if you like.

 

Rory

[UMDRanger 0]

I figured you wouldn't be able to, and I understand the reasoning (if I was dealing with that kind of money, I wouldn't want to disclose anything). But I figured I'd ask just to be sure. Thanks.