How Integration Got Into Our Systems
Integration has been a buzzword in our industry for a long time. Whether it’s an access control system tied to a video system to provide video verification of a card swipe, or a perimeter fence protection system that can trigger pan/tilt/zoom (p/t/z) cameras to hit
a preset when triggered, the ability to integrate systems together is a goal worth working toward. As the convergence wave has changed the technologies our systems and products rely on, the technologies connecting these systems together must also change. This month, we look at systems integration —where it has been, and where it is going.
Systems Get Serious With Serial
Integrating systems together is obviously nothing new. Ever since it was discovered that an alarm contact closure can trigger another device to respond, we’ve been able to link multiple systems together. This method (contacts and relay magic) is the foundation of our ability to get multiple products to talk to each other. This is analog thinking at its most basic. At some point, however, a more intelligent system of triggers needed to be invented. Alarm 
switches and relays were fine for basic duties, but what if I wanted to add conditions? What if I only wanted certain conditions to cause an event?
This is where the advent of serial communications came in handy. All of a sudden, two devices that wanted to communicate at more than an “on/off” level were able to do so. Common ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) text strings could be sent between systems and instead of on/off you now had IF/THEN — if “x” happens then do “y.”
This opened up a whole new world of integration. An access control system could tell a matrix switcher to call up cameras to monitors and send p/t/z cameras to presets, all automatically depending on the condition.
UTP Enables Smart Buildings
We now, however, find ourselves in a very different situation. Systems integration means much more than two products talking to each other. Integration in today’s terms means managing many different kinds of systems, all working both independently and together to provide a level of intelligence to the user never before available — the smart building.
The concept of a smart building can be as elaborate as the technology providing it. Imagine every electronic device in a building communicating with every other device, from video security to HVAC to power to elevator control, all sharing information in real-time with one another and a control station. The true capability and popularity of smart buildings can primarily be attributed to the availability of one thing: unshielded twisted pair (Cat-5/-5e/-6), or UTP, cable. It is the presence of this common infrastructure in almost every new construction project that has really made this idea come to life.
It is more than the cabling though; it is also the type of information being sent across, which is really what brings it all together. All of these systems utilize the Ethernet network to communicate. It is the availability of set standards, along with the infrastructure, that allows this unprecedented exchange of information.
Software Brings It All Together
The piece of software often referred to as a video management system, or VMS, is usually the center of a true, converged building. In the past, the only additional system controlled by the VMS might have been the access control system. Now, however, they are being asked to do much more. Imagine having a map of your facility up on a display on the wall. On this map are icons representing CCTV cameras, controlled doors, lighting systems, elevators, etc. Clicking on any of these icons brings up a menu, with commands to control each device that allow you to move a camera or unlock a door, all seamlessly as one big system.
Need to conserve power? How about if your cameras don’t see any motion or activity for a set period of time, the lighting and HVAC will turn off until someone enters the room again? Or maybe you want to track a person, so every time they swipe a card at a door the nearest camera activates, and you also get a playback stream from where that person last was, all with one software interface or even a Web browser page!
Programming Becomes Paramount
All of these different products wouldn’t stand a chance of having this level of communication without some common ground. Whereas before that common ground was a standard set of text strings, now it is with programming and scripting languages. It is in the world of bits and bytes that we see the next generation of convergence happening.
Whether it takes the form of an installed application or a Web browser-based page, software programming is a necessary element of a converged project. Not everyone uses the same programming language, and the software code itself is usually a closely guarded secret and proprietary information. So how do we communicate with one another? We do it with the use of an API, or application programming interface.
The API is essentially a “hook” a programmer provides so other applications or products can use it to access certain parts of the program, to either extract information 
from or cause an event to happen in the original application. An example is video stream playback in an access control system.
The access control system makes a request, or a “call,” to the API of the video system, let’s say a DVR. The access system tells the DVR what camera it wants to see, and when to start and stop sending that video. This is accomplished through a set of instructions provided by the DVR programmer to which both devices can understand and respond.
The actual set of instructions is included in another acronym, the SDK (software developer’s kit). The SDK is a package provided by the device manufacturer, usually downloadable, that includes all the necessary instructions, sample code and other development tools that are used to create the hooks necessary to communicate with the device’s API.
The terms API and SDK are often confused or used interchangeably. So for clarification (and extremely oversimplified), the API is like the doorway into a computer’s (or device’s) programming, and the SDK is the package with instructions on how to open the door and pull out what you need.
Speaking the Same Language
Even with available APIs and SDKs, the applications themselves may not be written in the same languages. A program you install on a computer is written with a different language than a Web page. There needs to be some sort of common pathway between the two.
Enter XML (extensible markup language). XML is not really a language, however, despite the name. It is a set of standards that allow a user to essentially define their own language. You may have heard of HTML when dealing with Web pages. HTML is a language that defines how a Web page should look. XML provides a common way that information should be defined.
XML code looks like this: Steve Payne. All of the fancy symbols around the words simply tell the computer or device that the important information is between the <> and symbols and that if someone asks for the information related to , it should return my name. Any other device that can read the XML file will always know what the data is that’s available under the tag, no matter what programming language it was originally written. The XML file is usually shared as part of the SDK.
Time to Open Up
The traditional security industry has alwa
ys been considered to be very closed. Each manufacturer had
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