Old System Weeded Out

Although the existing 20-camera CCTV system was fairly new when Freeman joined Metrolina in 2006, it was riddled with problems.

“I found it to be very difficult to maintain and the previous contractor became hard to deal with,” he says. “The old platform lacked reliability. It had to be sent back to the factory multiple times for different issues, which would leave us without coverage for days at a time.”

Adding to Freeman’s quandary was inheriting a makeshift server room that at times had him running several fans to keep processors cool during heat waves and bailing water after downpours. These were desperate attempts to maintain automation functionality amid horrendous circumstances.

“The server room was a nightmare to anyone who has spent time in the IT industry,” he says. “The conditions were dusty, humid, and unsecure for the amount of hardware and infrastructure we had in that room. It also had inadequate cooling systems and a lack of redundancy built into those systems.”

Much to Freeman’s relief, not only was he able to overhaul his employer’s surveillance system but he also received the go-ahead to commission a new, state-of-the-art network server room.

“The new server room was built as a data center should be,” he says. “It has raised floors, water-detection systems, data center-grade cooling with dehumidifiers, UPS-controlled power, fire-retardant construction with fire suppression systems, and secure access.”

After learning more about their business, operations, budget and future needs, ESS recommended upgrading to a hybrid surveillance platform. This would allow retaining analog cameras mixed with new IP cameras, and leverage the newly fortified network.

Hybrid Allows Growth

For the heart of the system, ESS installed a 32-channel ExacqVision Pro hybrid DVR with 6TB of storage. A combination of 32 Pelco analog cameras, 10 Panasonic IP cameras, 6-megapixel cameras and three pan/tilt/zoom (p/t/z) cameras are used to capture the surveillance images.

The system also includes Altronix centralized camera power supplies. Camera coverage includes employee and visitor parking lots, chemical storage structure, water-pumping facility, maintenance garage, offices, driveways, boiler control rooms, and employee break areas.

“Mostly, the greenhouse and production areas are under one roof, but it is a massive site and the system is used throughout and within over a dozen buildings,” says Kottkamp. “Video cameras are strategically placed at critical production, storage and operational areas, and also traffic and parking lots.”

Due to the size of the campus, distances between cameras can exceed 1,000 feet. In some cases, fiber has been run to those locations and connected to American Fibertek transmitters. In other situations, IP networks handle the task. In addition, a Firetide wireless mesh link was installed to facilitate transmission among remotely located buildings.

“The physical size of the site has always been a challenge in deploying cameras due to the added cost of long cable
runs or using fiber optics and transceivers,” Kottkamp says. “The hybrid DVR allowed us to leverage the existing Ethernet backbone and add cameras in previously difficult-to-reach areas along with megapixel cameras to capture greater resolution and detail.”

In addition to the requirement of negotiating large expanses, there was  one other notable stumbling block.

“Installation was actually very simple since the majority of the infrastructure was already in place,” says Freeman. “The only real challenge was the original Exacq server would not power on after ESS had hooked it up in the rack. Apparently it was just dead on arrival. However, ESS took care of it without question and a new Exacq server was racked and running later that same day.”

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