JVC Professional Products has announced that Oregon’s Canby School District, a public school district that supports approximately 5000 students has installed an IP-based video surveillance network to monitor its facilities. The network supports almost 50 JVC V.Networks IP cameras — a mix of VN-C215V4U fixed mini-dome and VN-V26U brick-style models — as well as four powerful JVC VR-N1600U 16-channel network video recorders (NVRs).
At Canby High School, the district’s only public high school, 32 cameras have been installed for strategic monitoring of interior and exterior areas, including entrances, parking lots, hallways, and the cafeteria. The campus features five buildings, including centres for fine arts, physical education, and career development. The cameras are triggered by built-in motion detection and record onto two of the 16-channel VR-N1600U NVRs, which can record high-quality Motion JPEG or MPEG-4 images.
There are eight cameras located at Ackerman Middle School, which record to a VR-N1600U on site. The fourth NVR is located at the District Office, and it records eight JVC cameras that monitor six elementary schools and a business office.
“We chose the JVC cameras based upon their great picture quality and reputation for reliable operation, especially in low-light and extreme weather conditions,” said Joe Morelock, IT director for the Canby School District. “Other compelling features included Web-based setup and access, and a JVC app enabling monitoring on an Apple iPhone.”
The remaining ports on the NVR at the District Office are being populated by eight legacy analogue cameras that are being modified with IP devices. As a result, these will be monitored by Xprotect IP camera management software from Milestone Systems, which JVC has embedded within its VR-N1600U. “We like Milestone because we are able to manage the view/access rights to all of the cameras from one central server, allowing only one point of entry with multiple access security roles,” Morelock said.
The district has a virtual local area network (VLAN) supported by a fibre-optic backbone, which allows authorised personnel to view video data without interfering with regular enterprise data traffic.
While the video cameras can be viewed in realtime and monitored 24/7, Canby School administrators prefer to review the recordings to investigate suspicious incidents that have taken place, such as thefts or student skirmishes. School officials may be granted access to monitor all the cameras – or just an individual camera or select portion of the network – using any Web-enabled device. Also, law enforcement agencies can monitor school cameras remotely from their squad cars by tapping into the school district’s IP-based Wi-Fi network.
The adoption of camera surveillance was seen as a positive move by the community. “School security has become an extremely important issue and trend,” Morelock explained. “The closed-circuit security system was funded as part of a bond issue that voters approved for the construction and renovation of Canby’s public schools. The mere presence of these cameras acts as a deterrent as well as an investigative tool that is already serving to keep our schools safer.”
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