surveillance cameras?

Hello Missy,

Work is beginning this week on cameras for our pool, clubhouse, and front gate. We were lucky to have a community member who is a senior security analyst for a major security firm, so he spec'd out the job and made recommendations.

I would recommend finding someone to do the same for your community, as there is a lot of technology out there, and someone who knows what they're doing can probably end up saving you quite a bit of money.

-JF

Hi Missy,

The good news is that all the components for a video system continue to go down in price, from the cameras to the recorders. You can probably buy color cameras today for less than black and white cameras cost three or four years ago and both VCR type recorders and DVR type recorders have also dropped in price.

You should contact several local security companies and have them come check your property and make suggestions.

Consider setting up a system at the larger or busier pool first. If it's helpful, then do the other pool. Unless the pools are very close to each other, you're going to need two entirely separare systems anyway.

Our pool has a four camera system with a commercial VCR recorder. We have one large camera that's quite visible and three "lipstick" cameras that are much smaller. They're called lipstick cameras because they are the size of a tube of lipstick. The video quality from the tiny cameras is just as good as the big camera.

We have a "quad processor" which takes the videos from the four cameras and splits them into four images so all four cameras show up on the video on a quarter of the screen.

We have a commercial quality VCR which can record up to 240 hours on a single video tape. We set it to 120 hours so we get five days on tape before it rewinds and starts recording again. It basically takes a picture of each camera image every 1.5 seconds and puts it onto the tape. We buy a package of ten new tapes each year for $ 10-12 and throw away the old ones to keep the picture quality good.

Usually on Monday or Tuesday, a Board member will go to the office in our clubhouse and switch out the tape for a new one. That way we'll have a tape covering from the previous Wednesday or Thursday through the weekend. If we get a report of any problem during the previous weekend, a Board member can take the tape home and review it.

The DVR type recorders have become very popular because they can record an enormous amount of video onto a hard drive. The problemm with those is that you'll need a television or computer monitor hooked up to it to see the video and you have to sit wherever the DVR is located to watch it unless you can copy the video to a disc to bring home to watch.

Start shopping around and talk with several vendors. You'll probably get a good idea of what will and will not work for you.

Good Luck.

HI.. our association has 5 cameras with all the installation, dvr ect this cost us about 6500.

Missy. We had them installed as a package with the new cable co. Problem is no one knows how to use them! The former BOD did not take time to go see how they are run. Ours is complicated and I have no time to learn this. Have 2 or3 people know about the system.....Good Luck, LaVerne

I would recommend that you consider assigning the duty to a committee. The more your delegate to others, the easier your job will be.

For that matter, I would recommend that any board consider forming a small ad-hoc committee to study the issue and make some recommendations.

A common problem. I once managed a self storage that had a really nice DVR and camera system. We had an incident on the property right after I took over and I discovered that I had no instructions for retrieving information from the DVR. I also found that the previous manager was equally ignorant as the time-and-date was the system default of 01/01/2001 instead of the actual date of June, 2007. Even though the cameras displayed images on the monitor, I could not verify that the system was actually recording them and I was never able to retrieve the events from the previous day. This high-dollar system was rendered totally useless by the lack of training, the lack of manuals, and a high employee turn-over rate. The monitor in the office was visible to customers, giving them the false sense that we had video surveillance when, in fact, we had nothing.

My suggestion would to purchase your system through a local vendor who can and will train your operators on how to use the system. You will pay more but you should end up with retrievable videos instead of window dressing.