Intersec Dubai news and reviews

Intersec is over for another year and the wonderful country of Dubai has waved off the hundreds of over sea Manufacturers and Distributors within our great Industry!

Intersec Dubai

I was looking to post daily, but 3G conspired against me and wifi within the show was well used shall we say!!!

But here goes…

Held in the wonderfully situated Dubai Convention and Exhibition Centre in the main Business sector of Dubai, the show was a very well laid out expo, held over several halls split into country zones. I liked this format and am sure those visiting with specific technology in mind would find this method an easy way to navigate what was an extremely large show

It seemed larger than our own UK based IFSEC expo based in Birmingham, and yet the halls and stands interconnected in a logical, Milton Keynes road structure way!

Notably, our Far Eastern friends find value in the Middle Eastern region, occupying large sections of the exhibitions in ‘China’, ‘Taiwan’ and ‘Korea’ sections – all showing a mixture of their latest Tech goodies including Megapixel cameras, NVR Software solutions and other ‘must have’ gadgets!

What was interesting was the distinct lack of HD-SDI solutions – HDCCTV in another name – and I can kind of understand why………

3G (despite my own woes) was prevalent EVERYWHERE in Dubai…….and this is mirrored throughout the Middle East. Our Arabian friends have embraced IP Technology, spending huge quantities of money developing envied high speed internet links throughout their regions……….visitors to any CCTV stands would always be heard asking ‘is that camera available in IP’

So, with such high acceptance and embrace of IP technology, why would they need HDCCTV?  I cannot argue against this on this occasion – the regions are developing from a relatively recent existence and therefore their ‘retro-fit’ market is much, much less than ours in the UK – if it’s new, it’s IP…..

I did spot an excellent gadget on the Cominet stand though!! a 3G HD-SDI Link to extend HDCCTV connectivity to upto 30Km !!!!! Nice!

So, with the focus on latest products & technology, here is a summary of the key exhibitors and their Intersec offering !
Cominet  – 3G hdsdi link 30km
CPPlus – a nice range of HD-SDI cameras and DVRs including a good looking  3MP Mini-dome

Norbain with their VIP Overt PTZ and Arecont ‘exclusive’ IP Product range.
Comnet showed a very nice PoE+ to provide power over copper to 1km.
Optex/Redwall had a very impressive stand with a PTZ Ganz unit to support their perimeter detection devices.
Hall 3 was set aside for more Integrator/Solution Provider presence relating to homeland security – One notable exhibitor was the Soncell Corporation including the Panoptech team.
Axxon from Russia showed their excellent BMS IP solution.
Bosch – IP all the way but only had one of their flagship MIC units on display !!
Axis IP air conditioned dome!! – yep, a dome with air conditioning on the side !!
Samsung  – interesting to see their inclusion into thermal imaging solutions and also their HDCCTV products!
Panasonic solar wireless CCTV – well, there is always an abundance of sun in the Middle East, good call Panasonic!
Videotec from Italy showed their PTZ positioning device – not the smallest but certainly very well made!
Genetic IP software to rival the Milestone revolution
UTC/Chubb showing their System Solution skills

and not forgetting……
Vivotek
Sony
FLIR
Honeywell
Mobitix

So, was it a success? in my opinion a resounding yes!

Well laid out, wonderfully positioned, excellent cross section of exhibitors, great facilities (catering, rest rooms etc) and with great travel options including the excellent Dubai Metro

In fact, probably the best Security Show currently available!

Get your tickets booked for 2013 !

IP camera systems.Time to upgrade from analogue

IP camera systems  have long been the preferred upgrade path for the CCTV industry as whole. This is however a little behind schedule as far as we see it and mainly due to the reluctance of end users to waste the investment they have already ploughed into their analogue CCTV solutions. This is where the use of Hybrid CCTV solutions can gently push the industry into the area where they really want to go. IP camera systems have been around since around 1996.

IP camera
Videosphere MegaPX nanodome

Bandwidth and network capability have always been the factor that has slowed the move to IPCCTV however recent advancements in broadband speeds and network performance means that all possibilities are now very much in the frame. Security equipment manufacturers are however pushing harder for their kit to be totally all IP based .This is also backed by IMS research figures that predict a spending of 2.6 billion US dollars on ip video systems by the end of last year. Other limitations on the growth of IP camera solutions has been the global recession and an apathy towards IP CCTV training from entrenched CCTV installers. This will of course change as the price of IP video systems fall and the benefits become ever clearer. In the meantime however as we mentioned earlier Hybrid solutions will help ease us all into the IP surveillance way of thinking.

ip cameras

Why though has the transition to IP camera solutions and Video management systems been so slow? Well cheap imports have meant that many end users have decided to make do for the time being. With money tight in the UK spending on security has gone into reverse something that none of the IP camera manufacturers could have predicted when they planned their upgrade paths some 5 years ago. All is not lost though.The pure quality and flexibility that can be produced by HD cameras and now megapixel IP cameras mean that at some stage the tipping point will be reached.  IP camera systems will become cheaper and the natural progression to IP camera systems will start to snowball.

IP CCTV from EyeSpy 247

Eye Spy247 has just released their new external IP network camera. Aimed at the domestic and small business sectors, this camera is IP65 rated and is small and compact in design.
The camera can be used to watch pets , children or your vehicle on your drive and of course, your home. If you are in business you would be able to keep you eye on events as they take place in your absence giving you back control while you are away.
Several benefits include the ability to connect to the camera images via BT home hub and many other common routers on the market, auto registration makes this process simple.
IR, means the camera can see up to 10meters in total darkness and in addition to this alarms can be raised through on board PIR detection and sound trigger sensors.
At a price that will appeal to the mass market so far excluded from the benefits of IP CCTV, this camera, with recording options and simple installation, will appeal to many and is looking to be a good buy.

CCTV security news. Financial report on security companies

CCTV the state of the industry

Plimsoll analysis have recently produced an interesting report on the financial health of the CCTV and security industry. They carried out an in depth study of 391 leading UK security firms and found that the majority of companies are coming under increasing threat of failure. Their study found that of the 391 companies only 159 were in a good or strong position, a somewhat frightening statistic if you are a CCTV security installer today.

Fierce competition.

The reasons however are clear , fierce competition has driven prices and margins down leaving profits hard to find. Logistics often means cutting engineers is difficult without seriously compromising service levels and those who have tried have and found it impossible to reach industry standards for service and response times and as a result have inevitably lost customers. It is estimated that of the 359 companies included in the survey as many as 33% are actually making a loss and are in danger of takeover or complete failure.

Solving the problem.

So how can this be addressed? well to be brutal some companies deserve to fail. Installing at a loss, as loss leader in the hope that service incomes will make profits in the end are short sited and simply drive good businesses to the wall . Some of the big boys have been guilty of this during this recession.

Cuts.

Most of the of the more clever players however have simply cut away the excess, driven down stock levels and hung on in there by the seat of their pants. Slowly but surely the CCTV security industry is emerging from the economic downturn, ready to take on the IPCCTV revolution and get back to see strong balance sheets by early 2011.

Seagate or Western digital

Seagate  or Western digital.

Hard drives! Anyone in the IPCCTV world will tell you these are the only two hard drives that are really used in most digital recorders today. They will also tell you that both are the same , there is no difference, it does not matter which one you use. This is especially true of installers who buy their DVR’s from the manufacturers and install their own hard drives .This can save a lot of money. Most manufacturers will advise against this but all in the know realize that on paper it makes little difference.

But……….

However we have come across a case where it seems some DVR’s really do need the hard drive installed that the product has been tested on. Below we carried out a series of test on a DVR that seemed to fail for no apparent reason the results were surprising and indeed could shed some light onto why DVR’s seem to fail for no apparent reason.

The test.

Below is the findings as described by the technician who carried out the testing…………………….

“I have been undertaking an extensive test on the DVR to emulate some of the issues we are seeing reported in the field”………..

The issues we were hearing were:-

  • Alarms locking up the units
  • Rebooting
  • HDD / recordings missing

I have set up a unit and  over the last 2 weeks, here are the results of my tests:-

Seagate 1Tb ST31000525SV – 2 of them to make 2Tb –  DVR 400ips unit

  • 5 cameras connected (1 camera looped to 4 other inputs)
  • CCTV Camera 1 is set up for motion and also I have turned on Sensor 1 and set to N/O – basically causing the alarm to be permanently on
  • Cameras 2-5 are set for motion
  • Recording schedule set for motion and continuous 24/7
  • Notify set to send alarm data to an internal IP address………….my laptop,……….so not always there (testing to see if a non-connection will cause lockup)

After 1-2 days of me not being present, the unit shows the ‘no HDD’ symbol with a red cross through the symbol………..looking at the System info, no HDD’s are present………reboot and they still do not appear……..when I do a full power recycle, both HDD’s appear again, the system continues recording and all video recording is still present (up to the point where the HDDs disappeared obviously)

last week, I observed the unit reboot after 3 hours, and when I checked the System info, one of the HDDs had disappeared……..a couple of hours later, both HDDs had gone after another reboot

So, I had taken delivery of 2 x Western Digital 1Tb HDDs Caviar AV 10EVDS and proceeded to put those into the  DVR in question

It is now Wednesday (5days later) and the exact same test has been performed with no reboot, lockup or HDD / Video recording loss……………….this leads me to suspect the following:-

  • The Seagate drives we were using were a faulty batch (possible but unlikely)
  • The Seagate drives we were using are actually not fully compatible with the DVR firmware, even though the manufacturer gave us the part number (possible)
  • The Seagate drives were not correctly inserted  by the client and my changing the drives to another unit is purely coincidental and corrected the fault – again  unlikely

Conclusion , it would seem that there is some subtle difference between the hard drives that has caused the DVR to crash although in practice this is not really possible the testing proves that somewhere within the firmware of the DVR a problem has occurred with the original hard drives.

When we at integrated CCTV asked the engineer if he thought there was a difference between the hard drives he replied.

“No same spec should make no difference, hard to understand, the Seagate is a good make so its not the Hard drive just the way it works with the DVR”

Feedback.

Has anyone else experienced hard drive failures on your own DVRs that may in fact be caused by a similar problem? If so we welcome your thoughts and feedback.