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Surveillance in distribution centre

A large warehouse and distribution centre is benefiting from a 64-camera video surveillance system from Dahua Technology. The site is the main UK warehouse for Pets Corner, a nationwide chain of more than 150 stores dealing with pets, pet food and pet accessories.

The purpose-built 43 000-square-foot warehouse in West Sussex was opened last year and supplies all the UK stores and the company’s online business. The site features solar panels for lighting, heating and electric charging points and operates a zero-landfill policy.

The objectives for the surveillance system are to monitor the health and safety of workers, reduce stock damage and shrinkage and protect lorries parked in the yard overnight. Graham Denny, director of logistics at Pets Corner, said: “When building our new national distribution centre, we wanted a system that would not only give us maximum security but assist in maintaining operation and safety standards.”

The cameras – installed by Urban Security Systems & Fire – comprise a mix of Dahua Starlight domes and AI bullet cameras. All have a minimum of 5 MP resolution and feature AI analytics, enabling features such as ANPR, content analytics, incident detection, people counting and heat maps. Cameras have high image quality, bandwidth efficiency using H.265 compression and edge analytics and excellent low light performance. Cameras were colour-matched to blend in with the interior of the building by the distributor of the equipment, Oprema. The cameras are installed internally and externally, at the top and bottom of each aisle and at all delivery entry and exit points. The system is monitored out of hours by Southern Monitoring.

Power is delivered over Ethernet cable, so reducing and simplifying cabling requirements. Using ePoE (Extended PoE) cameras enabled the integrator to run cable over 95 m in distance and in one case as far as 160 m. Other Dahua equipment installed was a 64 TB NVR, three managed ePoE Ethernet switches and a 24-port Gigabit L2+ managed Ethernet switch.

Andy Lloyd, director of Urban Security Systems, noted, “The PoE-type cameras greatly assisted with the design and installation of the cable infrastructure and kept costs down, negating the need for additional PoE switches due to the length of cable runs.”

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