For the past three years, Alloin, a member of the Kuehne + Nagel Group and an important international player in the freight and courier market, has been using an array of ultra-high resolution cameras to provide anti-intruder protection for 33 courier depots as well as monitoring the smooth flow of pallets and packages.
To this end, Alloin turned to E-Dentic, a company that had installed handheld terminal barcode reading solutions over a Wi-Fi network in its depots. E-Dentic has long-standing expertise in setting up wireless networks in industrial and logistic environments, the rigorous constraints associated with these environments being addressed specifically through the use of on-site surveys to pinpoint optimal access point locations. E-Dentic carried out installations on sites ranging from 1000-square metres to 700 000-square-metres at an airport and an exhibition centre. Today it finds this IP network architecture know-how extremely useful in deploying reliable high-bandwidth video surveillance solutions.
E-Dentic responded to Alloin’s defined requirements by deploying clusters of ultra-high resolution cameras at 33 depot sites connected via a wireless local VPN and operating with 4 or 8 megapixels, well beyond full HD (high definition) format. These megapixel formats were preferred because they enable very wide fields of view, showing the entire warehouse area and providing a perfect remote view of ongoing activity, load and traffic levels, such as pallet truck movements within depots with an area of 3000 to 3500-square-metres, monitoring up to 80 metres of loading dock area. As the very high resolution allows zooming in on the video software for an accurate detailed view, it is also possible to spot a handling error from the control centre even from a considerable distance.
Milestone XProtect Enterprise open platform video surveillance management software was selected, based on its rich functionality and resilience on high data traffic servers. XProtect handles the megapixel video perfectly and the solutions deployed at Alloin exhibit a high degree of image display fluidity, both live and recorded.
Alloin’s numerous courier sites are connected remotely to satisfy the requirement of displaying the entire gamut of the company’s activity and security from one central location. Milestone XProtect Enterprise is especially well suited for multisite operations; the software is capable of handling a large number of cameras. The feeds from the 170 cameras can thus be accessed from a monitor in the office of Martial Darras, Alloin’s director of security, or on his laptop equipped with Milestone’s Smart Client, to view video from any one of the 33 sites. A VPN has been set up using SDSL links.
For Martial Darras, "This is a very nice tool. What is more, we demand absolutely zero errors with regular remote monitoring being carried out by E-Dentic five days a week to ensure the systems are operating smoothly."
Recordings are retained for 30 days and, as Martial Darras puts it, "customers are demanding. If push comes to shove, they know there is a comeback. We want to be completely transparent in the way we work with them".
Ultra-high resolution cameras will soon be installed outside, similar to what has just been done on one site to monitor outside loading docks for even greater security and to track truck traffic around the buildings. There are also plans to call on E-Dentic’s know-how to deploy wireless cameras. Thanks to its high degree of scalability and unicast support, preferred for wireless, XProtect Enterprise will accommodate all this new data and technology.
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