Nothing gets a company’s finance department up in arms more quickly than the suggestion that equipment that is not yet obsolete be replaced. This kind of capital expenditure is inevitably frowned upon, when the potential remains for the business to sweat such assets further. This was the dilemma facing the Netcare Pretoria East Hospital when it chose to improve its existing CCTV systems.
Working with a limited budget and the requirement to retain as much of its existing equipment as possible, the hospital turned to Bytes Systems Integration to solve its challenge.
Andre Ellis, CCTV and BMS consultant at Bytes takes up the story: “The hospital required a centralised monitoring and viewing solution for security purposes. The trouble was that the existing solution was based on five standalone analogue systems, which were unable to communicate with each other. Moreover, they did not have the ability to remotely view groups or individual cameras.
“Understanding their desire to retain as much of the existing equipment as possible, we chose to implement a hybrid solution. This meant that we replaced the complete head-end and introduced a central graphical user interface that manages all the old analogue and new IP cameras.”
In addition, Bytes addressed the other challenges the hospital faced, including a small IP system, limited recording space and a very limiting control room space.
Apart from replacing the old standing cabinet with wall mounted cabinets, he explains, in order to increase floor space, Bytes also improved the screen layout on the existing five LCD screens. In addition, the embedded software was replaced with central control room software. This included a virtual video matrix, as well as the aforementioned interactive graphical user interface.
“The fact that we implemented a hybrid system means that we were able to reuse all the existing analogue cameras and cables, which were then plugged into the new network video recorders (NVRs) that offer a built in 30-day storage capability. 360 degree panoramic vision – or fish-eye – cameras were also connected to the new NVRs and central control room software,” says Ellis.
According to Pierre du Preez, Netcare Pretoria East Hospital Technical Services manager, the hospital’s aim was to plan for the future, despite a limited budget.
“Many of our cameras still have a number of years of service left in them, so the hybrid system implemented by Bytes gives us an opportunity to utilise a staged approach to their replacement. In other words, as each of these cameras becomes obsolete, they will be replaced with an IP camera, but this type of staggered migration will clearly enable us to stretch our budget that much further. It is a true win-win situation,” he concludes.
For more information, contact Lise West, Bytes Systems Integration, +27 (0)11 205 7000, lise.west@bytes.co.za
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