In The Trenches Video Series
Multi-building Security Camera Systems
Ben Larue: Today is an installation focused episode where we'll be talking about securing sites with multiple buildings
Our speakers today are:
- > Gil Illescas
- > Calver Brewer
- > Benjamin Larue
- > Micah Shearer
Video Transcription
Gil Illescas:
... wait, sorry. Did he say, "Budget's not an issue?"
Micah Shearer:
He said budget's not an issue.
Ben Larue:
Yeah, it's just one scenario.
Gil Illescas:
Just clarifying that.
Micah Shearer:
This is an imaginary environment.
Gil Illescas:
That's right.
Ben Larue:
Hey everyone, I'm Ben with SCW and welcome to our new discussion series. In the Trenches Roundtable. Today is an installation focused episode where we'll be talking about sites with multiple buildings. We have an awesome panel of experts with us to discuss this, so let me take some time to introduce each of them. We have Gil Illescas, he's our director of installation services.
Gil Illescas:
Hello, everybody.
Ben Larue:
Next we have Micah Shearer, she's our chief operating officer.
Micah Shearer:
Hi, folks.
Ben Larue:
Last but certainly not least, we have Cal Brewer, our national installation project manager.
Calver Brewer:
Hello all.
Ben Larue:
Awesome. So now that we know everyone, we're excited to jump into this. This is a situation and a problem each of us can attest to, that comes up very often, are sites with multiple buildings and seemingly complex network. So today, we're going to be jumping into a very common issue that comes up often and that is going to be an auto dealership. Auto dealerships are perfect examples of scenarios where this takes place. In this specific scenario, you'll see this site map here where we have multiple buildings, service building A, service building B, showroom, and then a couple of other outbuildings. What we have is a network connection between the showroom and service building A. So I'd love to start off, maybe Gil, we could start with you, knowing the problem of connecting interconnecting these buildings and thinking of it from a security standpoint, what are some of the first things that we should be thinking of, knowing what we know about this site?
Gil Illescas:
Well, first thing is we have to know where our head ends are. In this particular case, we could either have one or two, depending on how we end up finishing out the layout. With that said, our head in, which includes usually the recording devices and some of our main networking devices to bring in the cameras, we also have to have data come between the buildings. In order to do that, we will need to transmit that data in some form or fashion. Typically, that's either going to be underground, which is direct burial with conduit. Aerial, which we can bring wires over across from building to building, usually buildings closer together. Then the third one being wireless.
Wireless is always going to be transmission media that we probably consider on a last resort, as long as we can try to get wires first, if not, wireless is quite effective these days and we can get it to get our data from A to B. No problem. Those scenarios are very important to this project because this project may involve all three of them. So we haven't decided that and that's what we're kind of going over right now. So with that said, looking at direct burial, what are your thoughts on that, Cal?
Calver Brewer:
Well, I think we have a couple instances here where it is a possibility that it would be from service A to service B, they're very, very close together and the customer might be willing to do some small trenching 18 inches deep, to connect service B to service A. Also, let's see. Well, no, I'd say that's probably the only way, that only one that'd be amenable to trenching for. The other or big distance between service building A, service building C, service building A, security station and we've already got conduit in place for service building A in the show.
Micah Shearer:
Can you talk a little bit about what the ... Sort of the pros and cons of trenching are?
Calver Brewer:
Well, the cons of trenching, we're going to say that first because it does get a little bit expensive, especially if you have asphalt in place, you're going to be wanting to cut that asphalt and be able to drop some PVC conduit in between buildings about 18 inches deep. So it does get a little bit costly when you talk about cutting asphalt and you have to call before you dig and see if there's anything in the way that you might hit while you're digging any utilities. So I always lead with the cons when it comes to trenching first because those are definitely the most time consuming and the most expensive option.
Micah Shearer:
Yeah. It also kind of requires some specialized equipment as well. So you get limitations on who's willing to do it. You can go rent a trench or at Home Depot, but the efficiency of using that when it's just not something you do every day as part of your scope of work gets tricky.
Ben Larue:
I was just going to ask that. Who would do that type of work? Because it sounds like a lot.
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, usually trenching subcontractors are going to take that you look out for a trenching subcontractor in your area and try to rope them in for that situation.
Gil Illescas:
There are electrical costs. Electrical contractors will definitely get involved in that.
Micah Shearer:
Yeah.
Gil Illescas:
There's a lot of them that can handle that on their own or they'll sub out the actual digging part and then handle the layout and everything else from there. But we're missing one thing here, guys. Did we even ask if they have conduit between buildings yet? Did we even ask if they might have some available either copper or fiber available? Because we don't even want to talk trenching with them if we have something available, then again, if we have something available, is it workable? I think on this one, Cal, we did have some fiber somewhere and I think some copper in between a couple of buildings. Do you remember that?
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, I believe we got fiber from service A to showroom.
Micah Shearer:
I think service B is not networked at this point.
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, service B is not networked at this point, but service A and showroom or network with fiber. So there's got to be some conduit in place, but I'd be a little timid to do that, to try to pull anything extra through conduit with fiber already, unless it's armored fiber. That's something we want to make sure that they have in place is armored fiber because we'd hate to damage their connection between service A and showroom.
Ben Larue:
So am I hearing there's different types of fiber?
Micah Shearer:
Yeah.
Calver Brewer:
Say again?
Micah Shearer:
There's two different types of fiber.
Calver Brewer:
Yeah. Yeah. So everything underground, you want to use armored fiber. It's got a really strong jacket and it's really, really hard to damage, especially when you're pulling in other cable into that conduit.
Gil Illescas:
Well, don't forget, we're also talking about single mode and multi-mode fiber. Those are the two main types of fiber for transmitting data. It's a little weird sounding, but single mode actually transmits more data further distances than multi-mode data does. Multi-mode fiber because it's basically got a smaller pipe in it and the laser can go more direct and it gives you as much data as you need for as long a distance as you want depending on the laser. This situation's not going to require that. Multi-mode fiber is less expensive, it's readily available, it's easy to connect and it's a lot easier to put in situations like this and have it work and the amount of data we need is fine. So that's the big question is, do they have either of those types of fibers in dark form right now? Which basically means, is it not being used and can we use it? Because that second question right there sometimes isn't allowed by IT departments even though it's available.
Calver Brewer:
Very true.
Ben Larue:
Right. Right. As you mentioned that, Gill, I was just thinking about most customers when they're considering these type of overhauls, would want to probably utilize these backbones for more than just surveillance cameras.
Gil Illescas:
Absolutely.
Ben Larue:
That might look like other security servers and that might just generally look like other IT equipment in general. Is that a possibility? Is that something that we could consider? I know a lot of clients like to future proof as much as they can.
Gil Illescas:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean it's really going to be their decision. I mean we're going to offer our solutions of what can work and they're going to tell us whether that we can use that stuff or not. Having plenty of strands of dark fiber typically is not a problem if they have fiber at all because they usually will run many ... At least quite a few more strands than is required just for future proofing.
Ben Larue:
I understand, understood. So you mentioned trenching is one of the three different ways to get these buildings interconnected. The other two ways, I'd love to jump into that a little bit. Are those maybe more cost effective? Are there reasons if we would want to use wireless overhauls, things like that instead of underground trenching?
Gil Illescas:
Cal, we can probably eliminate aerial right now, but why don't you give the pluses and minuses of that?
Calver Brewer:
Well, aerial yeah, it is cost effective. Basically what it entails is mounting a tension wire from building to building and then strapping your cable along the tension wire. So that adds a connection from service A to service B.
Ben Larue:
We're we're literally talking about cable physically in the air, right?
Calver Brewer:
Right, right. Absolutely.
Ben Larue:
Got you.
Calver Brewer:
Absolutely.
Gil Illescas:
They have cable that they call messenger, which is the actual ... The tension wires built into the cable. It's kind of interesting, it's kind of old school but it works in a pinch. But the problem is Cal will tell you this is that yeah you can get from A to B but then you got to worry about getting it down into the building and then to the locations that we're going to. Sometimes it's way messier than coming up from the ground.
Calver Brewer:
Yeah. Absolutely, it is. Yeah. You got to keep in mind that you only have 50 feet inside of each building that you can work with too. Once you bring that outdoor or messenger cable or underground cable into a building, you only have 50 feet that you can work with before having to splice and then move to indoor cable. So you really want to make sure that the penetration points that you're going to use, whether it be aerial cable or whether it be underground cable, you set yourself up for success where you bringing into the building. So it can be hidden, it can be as neat as possible. All that stuff.
Ben Larue:
So you're mentioning a lot of things you're saying, we need to think about how we get the cable, obviously from point A to point B in the air, but then from point B down to the actual devices, or?
Gil Illescas:
Yeah, buildings is not our first step. It's like the first of three or four steps typically.
Calver Brewer:
Right.
Ben Larue:
Got you. There's a lot of consider.
Gil Illescas:
Yeah.
Ben Larue:
So in regards to codes and zoning and getting approvals and permits and stuff, is that needed for aerial cable? Because it sounded like trenching it was pretty significant.
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, no, I don't think you ... Yeah, aerial cable, I don't think you need to get any inspection or anything involved. I could be wrong, it might differ from state to state, but in my experience, I've never had to go pull permits or anything to do aerial cable from building to building on one site.
Gil Illescas:
Fair enough.
Micah Shearer:
We have run into situations where it literally gets pulled down by passing vehicles. We had that happen recently.
Gil Illescas:
That's true.
Micah Shearer:
So you be to be very, very careful.
Gil Illescas:
Yeah, it's not a great solution. We did actually just have that happen at one of our sites and we did have to go replace four cables because of it. It also can affect the equipment it's connected to. I mean you could really damage that stuff, it's a big problem.
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, it [inaudible 00:12:08] some details.
Gil Illescas:
That kind of leads us to the building to building outside that's not wired. I think Micah is kind of an expert at wireless, all those plants-
Micah Shearer:
You might be overstating the case a little bit.
Gil Illescas:
Tell us about it though.
Micah Shearer:
I like the wireless backhoes. I understand there's definitely some nervousness around them because the technology has changed. I mean, pretty rapidly. I mean even in the time I've been in the industry, it's gone from something that people are very, very nervous about to something that we've seen be consistently far more reliable recently and easier to configure as well. A lot of that technology's come a long way. So wireless back essentially means you put an antenna, you put a radio in one building, you put an antenna on the other building and they're communicating. The key things you're going to need there is you have to pay attention to line of sight and you've got to pay attention to the whole scope of how many antennas you're putting up. If you're putting a bunch-
Gil Illescas:
Well, explain line of sight because in some people, that's-
Micah Shearer:
Different things to different people.
Gil Illescas:
Yes, different things to different people.
Micah Shearer:
Yeah. Line of sight can the antenna, the short version is can the antennas see each other? When you're answering that question though, you have to take a account, everything in the picture. So are you going to have leaves sort of blowing over time? Are you going to have trees growing over time and sort of obstructing that as time goes on?
Gil Illescas:
I've had a job where a tree grew up to interfere with the line of sight.
Calver Brewer:
Right in the middle.
Gil Illescas:
Right in the middle.
Micah Shearer:
Yeah, yeah. So you have to be committed to maintaining that line of sight. The other thing I've seen folks run into, if they don't plan ahead is just vehicles going back and forth if you have large trucks. So that's something we would have to look at in this situation in particular. Because if we're talking about service C and security station doesn't look like there's any major physical obstacles, the line of sight, but what kind of vehicle traffic do you have coming through and making sure those antennas are high enough that you're not running into that. Cal, I know you had a project where you really had to plan around that recently.
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, I really had a plan around that. I mean it's one thing you really absolutely have to take in into consideration is the Fresno height. Because you got your one antenna here, your one antenna here. It's not just a straight line. You're going to have your Fresno that-
Micah Shearer:
The signal kind of spreading out a little bit.
Calver Brewer:
Right.
Gil Illescas:
Spreads out in the center, yeah.
Calver Brewer:
Yes.
Ben Larue:
Got you.
Calver Brewer:
You got to take him into contact or into consideration that there could be vehicles that catch the bottom of the Fresno and you're out of luck, so.
Micah Shearer:
Well, let's talk about out of luck there because out of luck doesn't necessarily mean the signal's gone and you never get it back. It means you're going to get an interruption, you're going to get a dropping of a little bit of footage. In some circumstances people look at all of those variables and they say, "I'm not going to trench, I'm not going to run an aerial cable so I'm going to have to put up with a little bit of signal disruption and just understand that that's just part the physicality of this location."
One thing we can do sometimes is put an SD card in the camera and RNVR have a technical feature on them that will allow it to, if the signal drops, go grab that footage and sort of recover lost footage. So if you're talking about very brief intermittent drops, that can help compensate a little bit. But we found if we don't warn people, if you don't prepare them, "Okay, here's what you're looking at, here's some of the things you're going to experience." They get a little upset and anxious that they're missing footage but it will come back, if that makes sense.
Ben Larue:
It does. I was just going to ask, that would scare me talking about dropping footage and all that. So it's important to know that there are backup and there are other options to salvage that.
Gil Illescas:
Hey Ben, when you're working with the client and you bring that stuff up, do you get hesitancy? I mean what happens in that case when you give them all these scenarios and say, "Might lose a little footage, but generally it should work."
Ben Larue:
Yeah, definitely. I think it's definitely a cause for concern. Anytime we talk about losing footage or the potential of dropping footage, I think that raises some eyebrows. I also want to note that sometimes that's the best option for the given scenario and that's going to be the course of action for that plan. I would love to get your guys' input on though, introducing more links to the chain can sometimes increase the probability of something happening. If we're all on equal playing fields here and all scenarios are equal, what options would you guys recommend? What would be the recommended option if budget and those type of things weren't an issue?
Micah Shearer:
I mean my instinct and I think we probably all have both similar and different answers to that. So it might be worthwhile hearing from multiple voices.
Gil Illescas:
Wait, hold on.
Micah Shearer:
Yeah.
Gil Illescas:
Wait, sorry. Did he say, "Budget's not an issue?"
Micah Shearer:
He said budget's not an issue.
Ben Larue:
Yeah, just one scenario,
Gil Illescas:
Just clarifying that.
Micah Shearer:
This is an imaginary environment.
Ben Larue:
That's right.
Gil Illescas:
Never really heard that before. That's a sentence I've never heard of.
Ben Larue:
That's right. It doesn't exist but in this case, it does. Right?
Gil Illescas:
Just making sure. All right. Go ahead. Sorry, Micah.
Micah Shearer:
Budget's not an issue. You want one cable from point A to point B with as few pieces of equipment or other disruptions in between as possible, which is going to lend towards trenching. But trenching unfortunately is the most expensive. It is the highest barrier of entry and it's the least likely to be a possibility when you're dealing with multiple buildings. So yeah, ideally you want a hardwired cable.
Gil Illescas:
You do. You want fiber. Fiber.
Micah Shearer:
You want fiber everywhere.
Gil Illescas:
Number one. But sometimes that's a hard sell for sure. Especially with trenching and the cost.
Calver Brewer:
Especially if it's in a post site. Pre-con, pre-construction, that's whole other different beast. Then we can plan for-
Ben Larue:
Yeah. Con, standing for construction there?
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, yeah. Cons scanning. Yeah. So pre-con, we can go ahead and plan out where all of our conduit needs to be trenched and cool, we'll have everything exactly where we need it. But it is a little bit different when you're working with a post-con site and there's already asphalt and there's already utilities in underground and all that good stuff.
Gil Illescas:
But in this scenario though, and I believe we've got some wireless back hauls out in a parking area and I think it's coming from two different directions. Can we bring that into to one receiver? I don't remember how we set that up.
Micah Shearer:
Yeah, I mean in this scenario I would probably recommend just using a 360 antenna and putting it wherever your MDF or your main sort of hub of all the equipment is going-
Gil Illescas:
I go on the building, receiving the signals from the parking lot.
Micah Shearer:
The thing you're going to have to, I mean I'm looking at this and you need to find a good spot on that showroom building where you're going to be high enough to get both sides because they're basically in a direct line. You can and we have in some circumstances put the receiving antenna someplace other than the MDF, it's just sometimes referred to as the AP. You can do that when you need to achieve your line of sight considerations. The struggle with that as if that AP goes down, you lose the whole network. So in an ideal situation, you want that hub and spoke. I think as Gil has spoken about before, you want to avoid daisy-chaining.
Calver Brewer:
Right. Let's not forget about the telescoping poles too, because that is something that we've done on several jobs too, to achieve line of sight. So say your showroom is 15 feet tall and your service A building is 25 feet tall, well, we can mount a 10 or 15 foot telescopic pole to have the antenna on top of that to be able to achieve line of sight past that building. So that's something that we've done in the past and had success with.
Micah Shearer:
Yeah. As a side note, if you're doing that, make sure we have inline search protection properly grounded.
Calver Brewer:
Yes. Because you basically have a lightning rod at that point.
Ben Larue:
I was going to ask ... Yeah.
Gil Illescas:
Talk more about. Yeah, talk more about that.
Micah Shearer:
I mean, anytime you're sticking a piece of electrical equipment at the top of what is essentially a lightning rod, you want to make sure it's grounded and you've got what's called inline search protection, which basically means you put a little search protection device in between sort of midway point or at some point on the cable itself. So that if that camera or that antenna gets hit, it gets absorbed before it goes down to your switch and your other equipment. I mean you actually can do it in the reverse as well coming up from the switch or the other equipment in case there's a power surge. Did I get that right?
Calver Brewer:
Yes, you did.
Gil Illescas:
Grounding. Grounding being key term there.
Micah Shearer:
Yes. Gil, tell us what happens if you don't ground it.
Gil Illescas:
Everything gets self sacrificed, that's what we call it, which means blowed up. So yeah, you have to be careful with that. But grounding is important. I mean they have actually self-sacrificing type of surge protectors, but they're still not the best thing. The best way to do it is grounded properly.
Micah Shearer:
In that situation, if it does self-sacrifice, you're going to have to replace the surge protector, or then you-
Gil Illescas:
And equipment, yeah.
Micah Shearer:
That's labor and that's additional equipment.
Gil Illescas:
Agreed.
Micah Shearer:
Talking about labor and additional equipment though, just really fast, it might be worthwhile to talk about all the equipment that goes into and the labor that goes into a wireless back haul. So when you're dealing with trenching, you obviously have the additional labor and expense of the trenching itself and that subcontractor you also have a little bit of additional expense because you're having to then go pull that cable through the trench and depending on how complex your sort of trenching is, that can add more versus just running a direct cable.
When you're dealing with a wireless back haul, you've got a lot of extra pieces of equipment, you've got to have electricity on the camera side, on the receiving side. So let's look at ... If we're looking at that, the main entrance in this circumstance, they're trying to get vehicles coming and going. They want to get license plates to the greatest extent possible. License plate captures a whole other conversation we could do an entire session on because it's not invincible as people think it is, but let's say we're putting those cameras on a light pole by that entrance, you have to have power and that involves probably another subcontractor.
Gil Illescas:
Oh, so wireless isn't completely wireless?
Micah Shearer:
Yeah. Yes. That's an excellent point.
Gil Illescas:
A lot of people think it is and that's the key ingredient right there. Got to have power.
Micah Shearer:
The wireless is about getting the data back and forth. It does not get power back and forth. So you have to have power on both sides for this to work. Typically, what we'll do in this situation with a light pole is we will hang what's called a NEMA rated box, just an enclosure on the side of that pole. Then an electrical contractor will connect that enclosure up to power for us and there's usually an outlet inside that enclosure that we can then just plug the switch and the antenna and all that other equipment into
Gil Illescas:
Perfect.
Micah Shearer:
So you need to evaluate the cost of all those additional pieces of equipment. You've got an enclosure, you've got a switch, you've got your surge protection and you have your cameras and your antennas.
Ben Larue:
Awesome. So now that we've covered some of the components and the different pieces of components that put together this wireless back haul, you mentioned data flow. Are there data flow of restrictions or things that we should consider the amount of data that gets pushed across or the amount of devices also, who the heck manages all this stuff? Is that something IT team's going to do? Is that interact with my current network? How does that play out?
Micah Shearer:
It is creating its own network so you would not sort of cross over with your existing wireless network. So there are a lot of ... If you want to get really nitty gritty in the configuration, you can get signal interference and so you will have to take into account all of that as you're setting it up. But that is something that the ... I'm just doing my best here. Though all the configurations for the ubiquity briefly log in allow you to look at what is the interference and what frequencies are available and kind of tweak and adjust. We definitely ran into that on that project up in New York where there was some interference from other networks. I mean we had to adjust the frequencies, but that was more in a handled on a configuration side as we were starting to set it up. Who manages it?
Gil Illescas:
Well, I think it's ... First off, if we install it and we're going to support it obviously, but with that said, back to talking with IT, they're going to want to know ... In this particular case, in this project, we did talk to IT about possible interferences and they did say that they did have some wireless back haul going on location, but they looked at the way we had our transmissions from point to multi-point I believe, and said it looked like it was going to pretty much stay clear of everything they had. So it shouldn't be a problem. So in that case they were good with it. So we would manage our aspect of it, they would manage their aspect of it. Then, when the two meet, obviously that's a conversation because you're going to follow the directions of the IT department no matter what because they're going to have their restrictions and guidelines and specific requirements associated with being on their network that we are going to have to make sure we follow. Period, so.
Ben Larue:
In regards to all of the components that we've talked about, all of the different ways to get these buildings interconnected, I'd love to reel things back a little bit because this is a real life scenario, it happens all the time. In real life budgets do exist. So there's only a finite amount of money that we get to spend on situations like this. If this client's coming to us saying, "Hey, here's my dealership, I've got fiber connection between my showroom and my service building A, I need full coverage security around the entire property, what would we recommend? How would we get this done?"
Micah Shearer:
First off, I would not trench, you've got existing business up and running, nobody wants to be tearing up their asphalt. So I think I would take trenching off the table immediately. Personally.
Calver Brewer:
Yes, agreed. Agreed. I'm thinking for most of these buildings, the antennas are probably going to be our best bet. Maybe service B could be done through aerial cable just because it is so very close to service A. But for everything else, I would think we would've some telescopic poles on top of the showroom and some telescoping poles on top of service A to hit the security station, the main entrance and service building C and I guess-
Micah Shearer:
I might put the pole, I might put the AP in the pole on the showroom if that's where we're putting the MDF, I might not put any antennas on service A because if you put it all on the showroom with a 360 antenna, like a multi-point in that way, then you only have one point of failure that they all kind of go back to rather than, I mean service A does have a better line of sight in some ways, but the advantage of not having a point of failure to me is slightly outweighed.
Calver Brewer:
No, yeah. No, you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. So yeah, I would say do a telescopic pole on top of the showroom and that can hit your service C, your security station, your main entrance, your service B and service A. We can just do a 360 antenna, catch everything.
Micah Shearer:
What if we don't have power on that main entrance? What would some of our other solutions be? Because I've assumed there was a light pole there, but we haven't done a site survey at this point, so that is confirmed.
Calver Brewer:
Right. Well, I'm thinking from the showroom, you could get line of sight to be able to do a long range camera to be able to hit everything at the main entrance.
Micah Shearer:
What would be some of the ... Do you want to speak a little bit to, if their goal is vehicle capture, what are some of the things that you're going to give up during a long range camera versus obviously the gain is you don't have to worry about power?
Calver Brewer:
As far as LPR goes? Yeah.
Micah Shearer:
Are you going to get much in the way of LPR there?
Ben Larue:
LPR is License Play-
Micah Shearer:
Recognition.
Calver Brewer:
Recognition. Sorry.
Ben Larue:
Thanks, man.
Calver Brewer:
Thanks, man. Yeah, I guess it just depends on how high you were to mount the cameras on the showroom. You possibly could catch license plates but it would take a lot of testing, a lot of having somebody in a vehicle going in and out of the main entrance and somebody viewing the cameras to try to just get all the settings and configuration down exactly where it needs to be. So that's pretty time consuming.
Gil Illescas:
This is where I would almost back us off a little bit because angle and distance really matter here also, are we getting front plates or rear plates? That's a discussion. Are we getting them at night? Front plates at night are difficult, obviously. There's specific cameras designed to do that. So yeah, you get into a kind of rabbit hole of questions when we start talking about LPR. LPR is really good and if we can do it from a distance, that could save some transmission media costs, which is the wireless. But that's a test case scenario. You'd really have to know what all the variables are and actually be able to test it out in those variables for it to be a proper solution, so. Yeah.
Micah Shearer:
Agreed.
Gil Illescas:
It's a tough one but something that it's done and we've done and we are successful at. But it takes a little more work on both sides, both the installation side and the customer side. Customer needs to be able to see the actual final product as it's being done so they can approve it so to speak. Sometimes that means at night.
Ben Larue:
Definitely. So it sounds like we're definitely recommending a high-end surveillance system. One, definitely getting ample coverage of the parking lots, area surrounding parking lots, entrances, exits, those type of things. Now it is a dealership though, so most dealership clients want their property to be open air. They want people to wander on, check out vehicles, do their thing. Any suggestions or tips, tricks to manage or maintain that get as much security as you can?
Gil Illescas:
Yeah. Well, it's my experience that they want that to a point, but there's different times in the night they don't want that. So they might have a little freedom, "Hey, come on and check out our cars from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM, but from 10:00 PM to 12:00 PM we're not so sure, we really want John our lot, but we'll let you kind of look around." From 12:00 PM to six in the morning, they don't want you on their lot. So there's scenarios there. I mean we've worked out scenarios where we actually had ... We set system up to trigger things if people cross the planes at certain times it could set off motion at certain times and relay messages or send out triggers to other things. There's a lot you can do with that said, it all depends on what the customer wants and how much security is important to them. So questions to be had.
Ben Larue:
Definitely. Definitely. That's awesome. What considerations are there in terms of, obviously security is a big aspect too, but with dealerships there's just so many moving parts. There's the service bay people coming in and going, vehicles getting worked on or not worked on. I know from my experience working with a lot of these clients claims with damage being done in vehicles is a big thing. Any suggestions in terms of camera placement or strategic locations in terms of those type of thoughts?
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, we're going to want to put cameras anywhere that cars are moving, anywhere that cars change hands where they go from let's say the lot to a service building or where they go from the showroom to another service building or as they move throughout the property. We weren't going to want to have as much coverage as possible while the cars are moving because that's when the majority of claims are going to happen. So your service base, you want to make sure that those are very well surveilled. Your showroom, you definitely want to have as much surveillance in there as you possibly can with entrances and exits and all that. Then in your service buildings too, I mean you're going to want to make sure that all the mechanics are surveilled as they're working on people's cars, so.
Micah Shearer:
One of the challenges we find with service bays is the multiple lanes of traffic and your common scenario of you put a camera in each corner and you're going to get pretty solid coverage. But those middle lanes get tricky. In some circumstances, we've addressed that by putting some 360 ... What do you call them?
Calver Brewer:
Fish eyes.
Micah Shearer:
Fish eye. Thank you. The fish eye cameras on the ceiling sort of strategically placed where we've gotten lucky, and the service bay entrance have been built with columns in between the lanes. You can put cameras there to capture that, that in between space. We've heard fair number of reports of issues sort of slip and falls or damage claims, things like that in those environments that gets tricky to capture if you're only putting cameras in the corners.
Gil Illescas:
Right. They want to be able to prove that if someone says this scratch wasn't here before that it didn't happen while it was in their service bay. Yeah, I've seen that happen.
Ben Larue:
Right.
Gil Illescas:
So like Micah mentioned though, the columns and the betweens. That's the tough part. So unfortunately, it requires more cameras. The only way you're going to get into those areas is to have the cameras that can see all of those areas. Sometimes that does not meet budget. We understand that. So the fine line between actually getting what they want versus paying for it and you play the middle, see the best you can.
Ben Larue:
That makes sense.
Micah Shearer:
Yeah, I mean that's often that equation that you have to run is sort of perfect coverage would be all these cameras in all these locations, but there's also realities of budget and time. So deciding, all right, what are my most important areas? Where are most of my issues happening? What is going to get 90% effective coverage? Because you can get a hundred percent but it's often going to involve more than 10% more cameras.
Gil Illescas:
Right, exactly. That's a good point.
Calver Brewer:
Absolutely.
Ben Larue:
Right, definitely. That's awesome. So with dealerships and in this one specifically, there's usually typically a lot of glass that takes place, especially around the showroom areas and some of the service bays, even a lot of the maintenance bays have glass doors, roll up doors. Gil, you mentioned that some of the cameras can do different intrusion detections and notification alerts and things like that. But are there other types of systems outside of camera systems or maybe it is a camera system that we could leverage If someone picks up a brick and throws it through the window, what happens then?
Gil Illescas:
Yeah. Yeah, I mean if they want to get into the security portion of it, the video surveillance obviously is going to pick up the who and the what. But actually having realtime action associated with it, that's a little bit different. You can do that through video surveillance systems if you have advanced analytics to do that. We happen to have that in our surveil line. But there's also different ways that you can work on that through intrusion detection, you can set triggers off cameras or from the recording devices to go into alarm systems alert at that point from the alarm system to the central station, which would pick it up and they could dispatch at that point. Those are all interconnected capabilities between camera systems and intrusion systems, which is alarm, even access control systems. That's another thing, what about access control? They'd probably something they'd be interested in also.
Ben Larue:
Right. Talk a little bit about the access control. That's like locking credentials for buildings, right? If I'm understanding.
Calver Brewer:
Correct, correct.
Gil Illescas:
Yeah. Go ahead, Cal.
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, I mean basically it would be all your points of interest and egress giving credentials to be able to enter an exit each specific door. Usually you're going to want to make sure that every single main entrance into a facility is covered and we can put it on timers to where nine to five, a normal business day, people can come and go as they please, but as soon as that five o'clock hits, then only certain people have access to certain areas of the property. Now that's also another pretty costly solution to when it comes to the security of this property. But it definitely would save a lot of assets in the long run. I mean you got your cameras that you're going to be looking at your inventory, but there's also going to be inventory inside and all the service buildings and inside the showrooms too. So I would definitely recommend access control for that application.
Micah Shearer:
As far as the multi-building aspect and how that interacts with designing an access control system, the ones that we use are cloud-based, they're networked. So a lot of these conversations that we've been having about how am I going to get the data, the signal from point A to point B with different ways of running cable or using a wireless back haul basically apply, it's pretty consistent across it. Instead of putting a switch, you're going to be putting a controller in the various sub buildings, but they're all communicating back via that network that you've established.
Gil Illescas:
Yeah. Speaking of networks, a lot of people will talk about the networks of video surveillance being large data throughput and a lot of IT centric departments don't want all that data on their main networks. So a lot of times, we segregate the network and video and what we call subnet or just keep it separate until it needs to be viewed. Then that stream or those streams of viewing are the only things that really go across the network, which saves a lot of data throughput. Access control is different. A lot of times IT departments don't mind putting any access control systems on their actual network for control. The data transmissions lot more smaller, it's minimal and it doesn't affect throughput of the network at all. It's usually very finite amount of information that's being transmitted between the panels and the network. So in those cases, we will plug them all into the network. Typically, every building would have its own panels and then they would all talk through the cloud through the graphical user interface, so.
Ben Larue:
Nice. Awesome. So it sounds like we've got a pretty solid plan. We know that surveillance is definitely going to be priority number one, possibly access control or different intrusion systems depending on clients' overall needs. So we've got our solution, we understand why we picked it and what we would recommend. How do we actually do this thing from a practical standpoint? How do we actually install everything?
Gil Illescas:
Well.
Calver Brewer:
It's a good question.
Gil Illescas:
Start like this, we do this, we talk about it and we get of all of our ducks in a row and we get everything laid out on the table. We have deep discussions with the customer about all of this. We really want to know most of this upfront of what their deliverables are and then we tell them what our deliverables are and then we make everything work in the middle because we need to have input from them on their network infrastructure, on what they have available, what they don't have available, everything they will allow versus won't allow. Security requirements, whatever it takes for them to be comfortable and us to actually implement what we need to do to get the job done. Those are discussions that are very important, but they mean a lot to success of the project when it's all final.
So I mean that's the gist of it. Then you have the logistics of it, of course everyone can talk to about what you need, you need to manage it, you need to have the personnel, you need to order the correct parts, everything you need to do that. But in essence, whether it's a small two to four camera system or an 80 to a hundred camera system, it's all the same requirements, we have to get the infrastructure put in to transmit the data for the video so it gets recorded on the recorder and people can view it just like that.
Micah Shearer:
I'm hearing Gil reference basically multiple stakeholders that have to be part of that introductory conversation. Your IT department is absolutely a stakeholder when you're dealing with a system as complex as this going across multiple buildings. But then obviously you're probably talking to your GMs and your service managers because everybody also has a stake then and where exactly the cameras are going to go, and your CFO has a stake and how much budget is going to go to these cameras, which is all of those pieces and all of those different perspectives have to be brought together before we put a boots on the ground starting to pull cable. Because once you pull that cable to a given location for a given camera, if somebody comes and changes their minds, that's a lot of work that has to be redone.
Gil Illescas:
Great point. Absolutely.
Ben Larue:
Right. That's a great point. Yeah. This sounds intense. Is this going to disrupt my day-to-day operations greatly, like running cable-
Micah Shearer:
Yeah, installation process? Cal, I feel like you should take that one.
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, I mean, minimally definitely something that we ... Especially with our technicians, we really want to make sure that we do not interrupt their day-to-day operations as much as possible. So yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, there'll be some times where we are in the way and stuff like that, but it's very minimal. Very minimal. With a project this size, say that they have something going on in the showroom. "Well, okay, we'll just go work in service building A today, or they have something going on in service A. All right, well we'll take service C today." I mean, it's easy to work with a customer and work around priority areas.
Gil Illescas:
Key ingredient here is the communication part. We can try to get that communicated ahead of time and say, "Hey, we want to be in building A on Monday. Can you please help us out with that?" A lot of times they have no problem doing that. It's the, when you just show up at building A and have those expectations, then that it might cause a little issue.
Calver Brewer:
Right.
Ben Larue:
Right. Awesome. That was amazing. Sounds like we have a solid plan and how we're going to execute against this. Thank you so much for your time today, Kyle, Micah, Gil, really appreciate it. Thank you for sitting in and watching this. We hope you learned a little bit about how we can connect multiple buildings on the single site. Some security things to consider. There's going to be a ton of links down in this description below to resources, assets that you can leverage and utilize. Then there'll also be a link down there where you can actually speak to a consultant of ours to walk through scenario symmetry lists or maybe a unique one that you're working on right now. Thank you again so much for tuning in to this round table of Multi Buildings on one site and looking forward to seeing you next week.