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Modular Communications secures Volkswagen's exhibition at Summit

At the recent World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), Volkswagen attended the event in Johannesburg as it did the World Environment Congress in Rio de Janeiro 10 years ago. The highlight of Volkswagen’s activities at the 2002 WSSD is its acceptance as a member of UN General Secretary Kofi Annan’s ‘Global Compact’ initiative.

In addition to the 'global compact' joining ceremony, a further important event during the WSSD was the opening of Volkswagen's Technology Exhibition at the Midrand Volkswagen Conference Centre.

Among its exhibits was the world's only 'one-litre' car - a passenger car capable of covering at least 100 km on one litre of fuel. This is the first time the 'one-litre' car has been seen on the streets outside of Europe.

Delegates to the WSSD Summit view VW’s ‘one-litre’ car

The value of the exhibition demonstration vehicles and equipment was estimated at more than Ç2 million, while expected guests visiting the exhibition included heads of government, industrialists and UN officials.

Because of the nature of not only the exhibits but also the high profile of the visiting dignitaries, special security arrangements had to be put in place in anticipation of any eventuality. As part of this exercise Volkswagen identified the need to have high resolution CCTV coverage of the whole event which included build up and break down of the exhibition in Midrand.

To this end, Modular Communications of Port Elizabeth was contracted by Volkswagen to fulfil the CCTV surveillance requirements for the exhibition.

The following operational requirements were expected from the system:

* High resolution colour digital recordings of all cameras to hard drive for the duration of the event.

* Access via a local LAN PC workstation to review live and recorded video footage on site.

* Archiving recorded digital events to the workstation hard drive or cutting same to CD as well as printing recorded or live pictures directly.

* Automatic e-mailing of alarm pictures and/or SMSs to designated recipients.

* ISDN connectivity to access the recorder, and hence live and recorded images, from anywhere in Johannesburg as well as from SecuricorGray's video control room in Port Elizabeth.

* ISDN connection so Modular could provide technical support at Midrand from its head office in Port Elizabeth.

* High resolution colour video coverage of all cameras displayed on sequential basis on a colour CCTV monitor.

For this project Modular employed one of its new Convision digital recorders. The recorder comes standard with LAN and ISDN direct connectivity as well as having a composite video output connection to enable sequential switching of the video inputs to a standard CCTV monitor for the local guarding detail.

Remote monitoring

Remote monitoring was possible from SecuricorGray's control room in Port Elizabeth that has been set up as a joint initiative between Securicor and Modular. Currently a number of other sites are monitored from this control room via ISDN and GSM networks for video and alarm monitoring.

The Convision, being LAN ready was assigned an IP address and access to it from other PC workstations was possible via the standard Internet browser or by the application specific program ConSafe. The ConSafe software was used to back up recorded digital footage to the PC hard drive or to directly print to a high resolution network printer in 600 dpi colour formats.

Built into the Convision recorder is a multilevel e-mail protocol that can be set up to mail pre and post alarm video pictures to a number of recipients that can simply be down loaded to a PC via the Internet. This feature is suitable for people who do not need to connect to the recorder to access alarm or event driven information. This feature can also be triggered by a timed event so that e-mails of video footage can be sent on a regular daily basis to specific recipients for general progress monitoring.

During the exhibition Modular engineers were able to keep a check on the system from their offices in Port Elizabeth. Similarly the manufactures of the recorder, Convision AG were able to monitor the performance of their machine and during the exhibition the machine software was updated to the latest version from Germany.

This machine also has the capability to remotely adjust picture brightness and contrast without having to adjust the cameras. The Convision recorder, manufactured in Germany, is relatively new on the South African market and has been used locally for a range of applications from covert activities to high level applications like the World Summit.

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