Why do we offer Digital Surveillance System?
When it comes to security systems, and specially security surveillance, the system quality and the visual clarity becomes a vital aspect of the system. It would be extremely disappointing to the system owner to have a recorded footage of burglars looting his shop but with hard to identify faces in a very low quality clip. Face detection or Cars Number Plate identification became a quality measure for the cameras when compared. For this reason we recommend our customers to be careful comparing specs with cheaper cameras, there is usually a good reason they are cheaper. One important technical feature to consider is the pixels quality equalisation across the whole frame. Different cameras will create different quality levels at the same pixel density. This means in cheaper cameras, not all pixels are created equal, thus resulting in an image that clear in the centre but smudged towards the corner. And if the critical event happened in the corners of this smudged frame, what would be the used of the so called surveillance system?
Also, motion detection is a feature that is rapidly growing in this market. In analogue systems, the cameras have not smartness at all, the detection happens in the centralized recording unit, the DVR. In contrast, digital cameras have the ability to detect motion within the camera unit itself, thus giving the option for the clients to use the cameras as single units in a decentralized system through recording directly to the cloud or on SD cards. Which means that the digital camera performs as a single web server unit that does not depend on a centralized unit to record, analyze, transcode and serve the content to the net for remote viewing. Such cameras in general differ in their ability to record higher resolutions footages for better facial recognition and cars number plate identification out performing cheaper analogue CCTV systems.
But, How the cameras work?
Digital Cameras, also known as Internet Protocol cameras, or IP cameras, like the cameras from our vendor Y-cam, are like a webcam you would find attached to your computer. However, Y-Cam is much more advanced as they have their own web server inside them plus a processor and various network connections, so your computer doesn’t need to be on for them to work; they just boot up, connect to your network and are ready for you to access them and are super mobile. As accessing the camera works like a webpage, they allow multiple users to access, view & record video from anywhere in the world via an internet connection. The cameras also connect to your computer network, so if you are in an office you probably already have this cabling in place and if you are at home they can connect through your Wi-Fi network so no cabling is required.
Traditional analogue CCTV (closed-circuit television) gets its name from exactly how they work – they use wiring around your premises to create a closed-circuit system. These systems have tried to move forward with the market, however some still use old methods of transporting information through cable; they need to be viewed on dedicated televisions or monitors adding more cost to installations. Some systems allow for displaying multiple cameras on one screen.
What about Quality & Storage?
Y-cam’s IP cameras offer detailed, high quality images, available from 640×480 to 1080P, which can be stored either directly to a PC, built in SD card or direct to NVR or Network Attached Storage (NAS), creating high quality footage to multiple storage devices. To digitally store images from analogue CCTV systems requires that the signal to be converted (digitized) this often leads to a loss of picture quality (which is already low in the first place).
Y-cam IP cameras offer a multitude of beneficial features including remote vision via PC, Mac and all mobile phones, motion detection email and any kind of alerts via SMS or sending image through E-mail, IR night vision, PoE (Power over Ethernet), two-way audio and much more. These cameras are totally universal. They are there for people with no technical knowledge. Y-Cam creates a professional security cameras for homes and business keeping people connected with their lives from all over the world. Y-cam does not do anything else but rather gaining more professionalism in manufacturing IP cameras for over 10 years now.
CCTV cameras don’t have audio built in, this often requires an additional microphone and separate cabling, which complicates the installation and can add significant cost. Y-cams, by contrast, have audio capability inbuilt making it possible to listen in on the location you’re surveying. Also, Y-cam Bullet HD 1080p camera has TWO-WAY Audio allowing you to speak out to the camera environment making it a good option for Gate/Door solution.
So how secure is this?
Security is a huge factor between these two solutions. It is relatively easy to tap into the analogue signal from a traditional CCTV and replace the live feed with any desired image. On the other hand IP cameras have built-in encryption and require password authentication, making it very difficult to tap in or replace the video information. The digital system provides total privacy and secure picture capture & transmission.
Also, any intruder with low technical knowledge can easily trace the cabling to the centralized DVR, since the system is “Closed-Circuit”, and snatch the unit (DVR) along with the items being looted, leaving the owner without the recorded footage of the event. In digital systems, and through Y-cam, there are three methods for recording, on a built-in SD card, on a NAS, or on an online FTP Server. For the SD card option, there is no centralized unit in the system, each camera works on isolation. While for the NAS, it can be considered as a centralized recording unit, however, it stays on the network with numerous number of devices connected on the same network making it hard to identify the function of each device. It is also hard to trace cabling between the camera and the centralized unit given the complexity of the network, or if the cameras are wifi connected. The NAS can also be used as a Media server, thus it can be hard to be identified as the recorded for the camera streams. The FTP online server has huge dependency on the internet, but also carries the advantage of the footage being immediately transmitted to another location.
For the second option, recording on a NAS, in AcuZon we offer two extra add ons that can serve in extending the security level, and the safety of the data. We offer the clients the option to choose a unit for Live display on TV. This unit has no recordings on it at all, but gets connected to the same network as the NAS, and fetch the live stream data from the cameras directly to display on the monitor. A smarter burglar may pick this unit confusing it with the centralized recorder. As well as this, we offer our clients with high-availability NAS servers, where two NAS servers get synchronized all the time. The first server functions as the recorder while the second synchronizes itself with the first one, leaving the data available on both units at the same time. The two units can be distributed in two far locations in the network.
Future-proofing
IP cameras also benefit from the possibility to add other additional cameras with very little effort thus making bigger installations. Any number of security cameras and devices can be connected to the system with minimum intervention to the existing infrastructure. In the analogue system, each camera cable runs directly from a surveillance camera to a monitoring station, whereas Y-Cam network IP cameras can be connected and removed from virtually anywhere, creating an extremely simple method to grow your system, whether your business expands, you obtain new contracts or see new crime hot spots cropping up, you can easily meet any new requirements.
This is not the same for traditional CCTV as systems are much harder to move and relocate due to the excessive wiring and cabling, plus they are much harder to expand as DVR’s can only support so many cameras; once this limit is reached it’s either stop or start again with a bigger DVR.
Below is a 6min long YouTube video explaining the main advantages IP Cameras offer over Analogue Cameras: