Background
Sony IP cameras and RealShot Manager protect the Parliament building
The Junta General del Principado de Asturias is the autonomous parliament of Asturias in northern Spain. The headquarters of the parliament are located in Oviedo.
Customer challenge/ business needs
After 12 years, the technical services team of the Parliament of Asturias realised that the building's security system needed to be replaced. As the headquarters of the autonomous parliament of the region, the tender required the most technically advanced, yet economical solution possible. In addition the system had to cover both the outside perimeter and internal areas of the building.
The Sony solution
In response to the Parliament's requirements, Sony provided a system consisting of 16 Sony SNC-RZ30P cameras controlled by the Sony RealShot Manager. The SNC-RZ30P belongs to the IPELA™ range of visual communication products, enabling images to be sent and monitored through a standard IP network. The system was designed to record both the analogue composite video and IP digital video signals. The composite video is stored on a two-disk digital video recorder, which captures the images from each camera. The IP signal is sent to the control room by means of an Ethernet network.
"In effect, the recording system is redundant as even if the digital video recorder fails, we can still record from any of the cameras back to the control room," commented Juan Domínguez, Technical Services Manager of the Parliament of Asturias.
Sony RealShot Manager enables the simultaneous monitoring, recording and movement of all the cameras in the system, which could be expanded up to a maximum of 32 cameras, without additional investment. Transmission over IP means that this management can take place at the central computer in the control room. In the case of the Parliament of Asturias, it is the duty police officers who supervise the system from a conventional PC, without the need for additional multiplexers or other dedicated systems.
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| Sony SNC-RZ30P triggers an alarm when activity is detected in the surveillance field |
The SNC-RZ30P has a high-speed PTZ (pan/tilt/zoom) function, which allows any point in the camera's range to be quickly and easily located. The camera offers a pan range 340°, a tilt range of 115°, an optical zoom with a magnifying power of x25 and a digital zoom of x300. The camera completes a full pan range in two seconds and a full tilt range in 1.5 seconds.
The excellent image quality of the camera is due to the high-resolution CCD sensor. JPEG compression can be set to 25 fps with VGA resolution. In addition the SNC-RZ30P distinguishes itself from most other cameras on the market by its output connector to analogue composite video.
Customer benefits
"The quality of the image recorded by each camera can be individually configured, according to the requirements of each location. For example we are currently using maximum quality for the exterior cameras and medium resolution for the indoor cameras," said Juan Domínguez.
"In terms of frame rate, as the video recorder records the images from all cameras sequentially, just over one frame per second is taken from each source," he added.
One of the chief advantages of the SNC-RZ30P is the possibility to specify the triggering of an alarm when activity is detected in the surveillance field. According to user requirements, both the number of cameras and the amount of storage can be increased, therefore providing complete flexibility.
The Parliament of Asturias' system is currently configured so that the video recorder is continually recording and when the disk's capacity is reached the system automatically begins to overwrite. The system keeps recordings online for approximately eight days.
The system has very advanced control functions, through RealShot Manager, so although at a basic level any user on the network could access the images taken by each camera, in fact only authorised users can access them.
"Only the police officers who are on duty at that time can view the images," said Juan Domínguez. "I am the only user with authorisation to remotely access these images."
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| Sony RealShot Manager enables the simultaneous monitoring, recording and movement of all CCTV cameras |
Several months after the installation of the system, the technical services manager made his assessment. "The installation more than meets the requirements. It is a strong, reliable system that thanks to the cameras' IP control enables us to easily carry out operations which are far more sophisticated than can be carried out by other systems on the market."
In addition, the simplicity of the video-surveillance system's management and maintenance is greatly valued by Juan Domínguez as this has cut learning and system up-keep times significantly.
"The security procedures and protocol of the building have not changed. Instead we have simply been able to give the Parliament's police a much more modern and efficient security system than the one it had previously," he continued.
Sony - the market leader
Transmission of images over IP is revolutionising the applications of remote security, surveillance and monitoring. As the Parliament of Asturias testifies, the Sony IPELA range of products not only means cost savings, easy installation and less maintenance but, moreover, IPELA monitoring solutions actually provide better management possibilities and offer greater versatility for a variety of applications.
