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VoIP Supply and MOBOTIX

The VoIP Supply President, Paula Griffo, and I just got back from the MOBOTIX East Coast Partner Conference on Friday and are we excited where this security company is going!

VOIP Supply and MOBOTIX have had a beautiful relationship for years. When the MOBOTIX Partner Program went into effect last year, VoIP Supply was immediately an Advanced Partner. We’ve been trained on the products and we can get directly on the phone with MOBOTIX, which is a huge benefit to you, our customers.

If you’re not familiar with MOBOTIX, they are a full solution surveillance company. Dr. Ralf Hinkle founded the company back in 1999 in Germany by building a DVR directly into an IP camera. This decentralized system was revolutionary, and since then MOBOTIX …

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More from IP Camera Supply

To provide more insight into the event management features of an IP video management system a post was dedicated to video motion detection and this one will detail an integrated feature that completes the circuit of responding to triggered events.

Input and output ports (I/O ports) that are built into IP cameras and video servers are used to connect to other devices in an IP surveillance system.

These devices can be programmed to the users specifications to provide a response when, for example, motion is detected or the camera has been tampered with.

In the picture to the right you’ll notice that the Sony SNC-P1 Fixed IP Camera, for example, has a bank of (4) I/O ports.…

Responding to disasters or emergency medical situations requires triage — the process of determining the priority of treating patients based on the severity of their condition.

Video motion detection employs a similar process in that it prioritizes only the important events and area’s of a camera’s view that you specify to be included or excluded for motion detection.

By prioritizing video recordings, video motion detection (VMD) saves on storage space and bandwidth by not having to record everything making searching for occurences easier as well.…

Moving along in this IP Video Management series, event management is responding to events that have been triggered by built-in features of IP cameras, video servers, or intelligent monitoring software.

An event can be scheduled or triggered and once one has occured you can automatically program alerts and notifications to be sent to cell phones, via email, or even pop-up windows on a computer screen.

One of the most important functions of event managment is saving bandwidth and storage space. That is, video will not be needlessly viewed or recorded unless an event has happened.

Further, you don’t have to worry about constantly monitoring your IP camera surveillance – You will be notified if something happens.

There are several ways an event can …

Managing the video captured from your IP cameras is an important function of your surveillance system. I’ve talked about the hardware platform and software platform options that are available. Once you’ve made the right hardware and software choices for your surveillance system what features and functions can you expect from the video management system?

This post is about recording and viewing features which probably sounds like the simplest and most obvious functions but, there are interesting options available that you may not have considered.…

A couple days ago I linked to an Axis study that set out to prove that the cost of IP surveillance is now less expensive than its analog counterpart.

Now there is a healthy debate over at IP Video Market Info about the validity of this study. Check it out:

Debating Axis’s IP vs Analog Cost Comparison

Some of the major sticking points are:

The Axis’s study assumes that no surveillance equipment is currently being used (i.e., ‘greenfield’). A majority of organizations buying surveillance systems already have some cameras and cabling installed and a large portion of that infrastructure can and regularly is reused.
For any given feature set, IP cameras always cost significantly more than analog. While a DVR costs more than PC plus

…

IP video management plays an important role in your surveillance system. I’ve already discussed the hardware platforms options. The physical devices that manage video. Now we need to move on to software platforms.

The IP camera software you choose allows you to view your IP video in different ways. The platforms include:

Built-in web interface
Windows client-based programs
Web-based software

…

Thanks to the heads up at Security Products, a study has been released by Axis Communications that compares the cost of a traditional analog surveillance system to that of an IP video surveillance system:

Total cost comparison study of analog and IP-based video surveillance

This study was conducted in the Spring of 2010 by the research group Lusax. Some highlights include:

There’s a perceived higher cost of IP cameras versus analog
Cameras are only one part of a video surveillance solution, and the total cost of a complete system is dependent on a number of factors.
Recording is the most significant cost category in the analog alternatives
Savings derive from off-the-shelf IT and server recording equipment
Scalability and flexibility are mentioned as two main

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What is video management? Once you’ve got your IP cameras up and running video management is an important tool to properly manage, record, store, and view video.

Not much happens in the majority of recorded video – you need a smart system to control this so you don’t consume too much of your time, bandwidth and storage space.

Depending on the size of your IP surveillance system there a couple systems to choose from.…

I’ve been talking about the different video storage options for your IP surveillance system and I happened across a good article that goes into more detail about server-based, network-based, and camera-based storage architectures. Additionaly, the redundant storage options that focus around RAID and hot standby servers.

There’s an interesting mention too about the growing capacity and reliablity of the on-board camera storage options of flash drives and SD cards — that eventually months or even years worth of video will be able to be stored within a camera.

Check out “Eye on Video: New storage media; Revolutionizing the way we archive video,” by Fredrick Nilsson, GM of the Americas for Axis Communications:

Until recently, storage was a bottleneck for video surveillance and represented …

The previous post talked about the different methods for IP video surveillance storage. When selecting the right kind of storage for your IP surveillance system, you’ll need to review your current server set up and ask yourself what you’re aiming to accomplish from your surveillance video information.

Keep in mind that once your IP cameras capture images you need a system that handles all of these video functions:

Monitoring
Recording
Managing
Archiving

Those factors are an important consideration when determining server configuration and the amount of storage that you will need.…