Blog Post

What is a CCTV?

CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) is primarily used for monitoring, recording & analytics. Nowadays it became an essential requirement across different industry verticals, public sectors, houses & offices.

In CCTV solution there are multiple components such CCTV Camera analog or digital (IP camera), DVR/ NVR, servers, storage, power supply, cable, connectors & display.

Here’s Are The Top 10 Things To Consider For CCTV Requirements.

1.Site Survey – This is the first stage you must follow to get an idea of the area, camera location, coverage distance required, no of indoor & outdoor cameras, cable length, power requirement, and other passive infrastructure requirements. This will help in the CCTV solution design.

2. Understanding the requirement – This is the second stage you must follow post the site survey. In this stage, you will get more clarity on the primary use case, camera resolution, recording schedule, storage, IR range, analytics requirement, etc.,

3. Solution Design – This stage includes planning, finalizing the specifications & bill of material, designing, Implementation plan & timelines.

4. Vendor comparison & order placement – We suggest you research & explore in this stage. You will get to know which vendor is best in terms of features, quality, support, warranty & cost. Then finally choose the best vendor and place the order.

5. Material delivery – Usually material delivery will take 3-6 weeks’ time depending on the material availability, order value & destination location. Once the material is delivered then we suggest cross-checking the packing, make, model, part number, qty of the delivered material, and then accept the material. Then power on and test all the delivered hardware. If there are any software licenses validate the same.

6. Prerequisite’s readiness – We suggest you ensure all the prerequisites such as site readiness, power, UPS, cabling, LAN connectivity, wall mounting/ pole mounting kit, IP Address, NTP server, list of ports to be opened in the firewall, Active Directory, etc., Once all the prerequisites are met then we are good to start the implementation activity.

7. Implementation – For CCTV solution implementation the sequence should be unboxing the hardware materials, Powe On Self-Test, If the proposed solution is server & NAS/SAN storage-based solution then initialize the server, install operating system/hypervisor, initialize NAS/SAN Storage then configure the storage parameters according to the requirement and then install & configure the CCTV management application. If the proposed solution is NVR/DVR based then install the hard disk and power on the appliance, initialize and configure the required parameters then mount the cameras on the decided locations and connect the LAN cable in cases of IP camera. For Analog cameras connect the power and data cable then check the live view and align the position. Adjust the camera resolution and other parameters as per the requirement.

8. Testing – For better life & recoded video feeds, availability & performance, testing is required. In this stage, the testing of all the components hardware/software must be done. We should do all the possible testing & validation such as camera resolution, recording settings, live view, recording view, night vision, time, events, alerts synchronization, role-based access control, bandwidth utilization, SNMP, SMTP, testing of the camera application access in mobile/ remote system over the internet/VPN if required.

9. Go-live – Once all the components hardware and software performance, availability and accessibility are tested successfully then you system administrators can access can bring the system to live. Operators/ the live/ recorded feed from the command-and-control center/any remote system which has access to the application over the internet/VPN.

10. Operations & Maintenance – For better availability, reliability, performance of the CCTV network continuous monitoring is required. The system administrator can access the CCTV management application dashboard to monitor the overall system status, can enable the SNMP for monitoring the overall system health status through any monitoring software, SMTP for email alerts, configure the event triggers/alarms for any critical events/ performance issues.

Here are the few best CCTV Camera brands for the small and medium requirements in terms of cost, quality, support, warranty   

Hikvision
CP Plus
Dahua
Axis
Honeywell

For the larger requirements in industries/ public sector/ enterprises below are the few best CCTV camera brands

Bosch
Sony
Panasonic
Honeywell

Here’s are the few best video management system vendors for CCTV system management on a larger scale

Milestone
Avigilon
Bosch VMS
Axis cam station
Honeywell VMS

Are you looking for the best CCTV solution for your industry/campus/office/enterprise? Our Techs at Zindagi Technologies can help you in giving the right solution. You can drop us your We have designed and implemented the CCTV solution cameras starting from 50 + to 10,000+ for multiple customers across different industry verticals. We have done consulting, designing, implementation, operations & maintenance for not only the CCTV solution for the complete Data Center as well. Call us on +919773973971.

Author
Leela Krishnan
Data Center Consulting Engineer