With property developers, Land Charter Homes, Comelit UK has supplied an IP-based door entry system for an eight-storey office block in the centre of Chelmsford, pictured. It’s been converted for residential use.
Overlooking the river Can and the Essex county cricket ground, ‘Canside’ offers 33 luxury apartments. The Essex-based electrical contracting company, Frost Brothers, was tasked with installing a dedicated LAN for Comelit’s ViP system, providing connectivity for all devices including external and internal units. The maintenance and programming for the system by the building owners is through Comelit’s remote monitoring software tools.
A total of 33 video entry phones were installed at the apartments. These included 7-Stelle and Smart ViP full-duplex hands-free monitors. Black Ikall panels featuring Simplekey proximity readers were used at the two main entrances. These devices offer residents audio and video communication, as well as other features that cannot be provided with traditional analogue video entry systems, the makers say. For example, Comelit’s Smartphone App lets residents receive audio and video calls from the external unit to a smartphone or tablet via their Wi-Fi network at home and through a 3G data connection when they are away. ViP can also be used to record messages at the external unit if the owner is away – in fact up to 100 ten-second video clips can be saved to an SD card within the video monitor.
A site gateway was installed in the building, enabling all devices connected to the network to be configured remotely using ViP Communication Manager software. ViP also offers the option of sending text or image messages remotely to all users within the network or to a recipient, should an issue with the system arise. Land Charter use this function specifically for advising residents if there is any schedule maintenance due that might temporarily disrupt their service or if a service call is needed. A list of user names can be entered, saved and updated from a remote location. ViP is based on peer-to-peer architecture that does not require the presence of a network server. This means that in the event of one device failing, the whole system will continue to run as normal. As a result, facilities companies or building owners are able to offer a high level of service and reliability at minimal cost. Using an IP door entry system overcomes potential issues faced by building owners, according to the makers, such as network redundancy and the need to go onsite for routine maintenance.
Construction Partner for the project developers Land Charter Group, Leigh Knevett said: “We were aware of the obvious advantages of using IP as opposed to traditional analogue door entry. We particularly like having the ability to send messages to the residents remotely. Ultimately, it will be possible to link all of our developments back to one central point for monitoring, which will have huge cost-saving implications for us or whoever may be looking after the system in the future. For this reason alone, we plan to use the ViP system on several other projects we are working on currently.”
The Comelit ViP system is connected using standard Cat5 wiring. Using the same IP network, ViP also allows other security devices and video surveillance methods to be integrated into the entry phone.
