CCTV cameras hit the headlines when they were chosen for the BBC?s ?Dream Lives? TV programme.
Philips CSI?s latest LTC 0500 and 0600 CCTV cameras hit the headlines when they were chosen for the BBC?s ?Dream Lives? TV programme which focuses on helping local communities achieve their ?dreams? using the latest science and technology. Each week, the programme helps a different group of people from all parts of the UK who are struggling to improve some vital aspect of their daily lives, from housing to sport. In the programme, presenter Sophie Raworth demonstrated how the latest CCTV technology was helping combat social problems and vandalism on a difficult housing estate in North London. The Nightingale Estate in Hackney is home to about 2,000 residents and one of their main concerns was security. For example, in Olympus Square at the heart of the estate, there’s a children’s playground, a nursery, a back-to-work club, a pensioners’ luncheon club, a caf‚, shops and even a radio station. The children’s playground and other areas have been vandalised and several shops robbed. So ?Dream Lives? decided to make it safer by installing CCTV cameras to cover all areas of the square plus personal/panic alarms to provide improved security and safety in the shops. Independent systems integrator Integrated Security Systems (ISM) of Crawley was called in to design the CCTV system. They recommended a mix of vandal resistant dome cameras and column mounted cameras, some with pan, tilt, and zoom – all based on Philips CSI?s latest LTC0600 & LTC0500 high performance cameras. According to ISM, the Philips LTC0500/0600 cameras were found to be the most reliable low light models available, allowing excellent quality video images to be viewed and recorded in high resolution, even in very poor light conditions. In fact these cameras are so sensitive, they provide usable images with only 0.037 lux which means they operate virtually in pitch darkness, eliminating the need for expensive additional lighting. Their automatic image and contour enhancement plus backlight compensation allows them to operate night and day. The security system uses a digital hard disk to record all cameras simultaneously with a refresh rate of one frame per second and allowing instant playback. When an alarm is activated, this rate is increased to a faster six frames per second to capture more detail. Built-in movement detection allows the system to record only when movement occurs within the frame. The images are highly compressed using wavelet compression allowing about 10 days of video recording on the recorder’s hard drive. Backups can be taken on tape or disc, and these are watermarked so evidence cannot be tampered with. All the cameras and alarms are linked to a security management system provided by ISM. The operator screens use touch-screen graphics to show the position of all cameras on a plan of the estate. The operator just touches the icon to bring up a camera’s pictures on the main monitor. When an alarm goes off, the operator can instantly see exactly what the problem is and how to respond. They can also speak to the people involved using a PA system to actively discourage any problem behaviour. In addition to the CCTV system, three shops in Olympus Square were fitted with panic alarms, linked directly to a central control point, allowing the shops to call for help at a moment’s notice. The alarms can be activated either by pressing a button on the hand-held unit or by pulling out a pin. A panic alarm in the concierge desk in Seaton Point also causes a camera inside the reception area to zoom in on the incident ? to provide protection for staff working on the frontline. An important feature was, especially in the residential area. Privacy is protected using specially developed dynamic privacy software which allows dynamic blanking of an area such as a window even when the camera zooms in or out. This unique blanking system can also be adjusted from completely blacked out to opaque, allowing the operator to see a blurry image with no detail. This protects the residents privacy whilst allowing security staff to track the movements of potential criminals.
