Austin Security Camera Installation

Before the days of reality television, the idea of a person watching hundreds of hours of people going about their daily activities seemed far-fetched. Reviewing CCTV footage misses a certain amount of preposterous, staged drama, but it does protect businesses.

Humor aside, closed-circuit television systems provides a multitude of benefits to a business. Provided, of course, that the security camera installation company follows best practices. Just hanging cameras wherever you want does little to deter perpetrators or secure premises.

Professional installation services keep Austin businesses thriving and surviving. Using the latest in technology and tried-and-tested know-how, professionals installers get results.

We’ve laid out this handy guide to help you see the benefits security cameras bring to your business. We’ll also go over the technology and how it saves you time and effort in keeping your business secure.

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Security Camera Installation for Austin

A great shame of the DIY market and gig economy is the loss of accountability. With some jobs, you really want licensing and certifications backing up the work.

Cut-rate security measures work about as well as cut-rate plumbers and roofers. It all looks good upfront and fails in a month with nobody around to take to task.

Let’s be real clear, quality installation leads to quality visuals. Visual quality in the security game is the difference between a shrug and a successful investigation.

Check out these benefits of hiring a quality security camera installation company.

Benefits for Business

Clearly, you want your business to be protected by a security system. That’s the whole point of ‘security’. What you may not know is that keeping a business secure entails more than keeping bad actors out.

Our security installation services work to protect your business from threats, internal and external, that affect your bottom line.

Productivity

Ever notice how staff tends to look busier and get more done when a supervisor or boss is keeping a careful eye on them?

That’s less about looking good for management and more about accountability. It’s the reason people drive more carefully when they spot a cop. Remembering that rules exist reminds workers to stay mindful.

Obvious security cameras in the workplace keep employees thinking about their jobs and, in turn, working on those jobs.

In retail situations, employees are also bolstered by knowing that any dispute with a difficult customer can be seen. That kind of back-up helps employees stand ground and defuse situations that otherwise cost your business.

Security and Safety

Safety for your customers and employees, as well as security for your goods and premises, are still the primary concern.

When placed properly, creating overlapping and thorough zones of coverage, security cameras deliver results. The definitive surveillance study showed that 48 percent of commercial centers were safer after camera installation.

External coverage protects your business from becoming a target. Employees arrive and leave with confidence knowing they won’t be attacked in the parking areas.

Vandalism and random violence are also curbed by visible and covert cameras working together.

Workplace Disputes

As previously mentioned, sometimes arguments escalate in the workplace. These problems may be between customers and employees or employees against each other. In either case, records of incidents help solve problems.

Knowing who is taking items from a breakroom fridge, who started a verbal altercation, or who moved all documents all reduce incidents and improve productivity.

Workplaces can be filled with one person’s word against others type disputes. Visual evidence allows a fair and impartial adjudication from management.

Processes

These benefits sound good but they can’t exist if the system isn’t put together to deliver on that promise.

Check out this detailed breakdown of our process to understand how camera installation works.

Planning

Planning isn’t just about picking locations or types of cameras. The planning step creates a security plan from top to bottom.

How long do you expect roll-out to take? What training will your teams need? How much storage will be required based on duration of archived footage?

Your budget, operational hours, and access to internals all mater when creating a plan. Expect a lot of questions and a few visual walkthroughs in addition to demonstrations of tech.

Equipment Procural

Next, you select the equipment to form the actual CCTV loop. This will include the cameras and storage units, as well as the connection between them. You’ll also want to make decisions on numbers of concurrent monitors or other image access points.

You’ll decide on wired only units, WiFi-enabled, or a combination of the two. Do you want to access the data remotely or keep it accessible only from the storage drives themselves?

Camera selection depends on elements such as depth of field, quality of visuals, wide-angle, or low-light capabilities.

Budget constraints affect choices in the equipment area. Sometimes it’s best to plan small and allow room for upgrades as you see the need or have the ability.

Selecting Locations

Once you know what equipment you want to install, it’s time to design a coverage grid. The coverage grid needs to address several vital factors including height, accessibility, and obstacles.

You don’t want gaps that can be exploited. You also don’t want to cover low-priority areas at the expense of higher priority ones.

Cameras also need to be high enough to avoid tampering while still providing clear images.

Mounting

Before a camera gets mounted, the site needs to be inspected for potential complications. Is the wall strong enough to hold the weight? Will the cables receive interference from other electrical wires?

Mounting needs to also take into account future changes to an area that may restrict views. Mounting areas also need to be shock-resistant. An area that can be bumped will change the focal point of a camera.

Cabling

Cabling of cameras includes the video link systems between the camera and recording systems. It also includes the power the cameras need. Some cameras require batteries, as they can’t be placed adjacent to a building’s power supply.

Cables then need to be run through infrastructure to ensure quality and longevity. Any type of external cabling creates a risk of tampering, so it’s important that all cables be considered caefully when selecting mounting sites.

Initial Setup

With everything in place, the system needs to be crosschecked that each piece is functioning individually.

The crosscheck also accounts for programmable options. How long should a given camera record, does it move on a timer, does it need to track motion?

At this stage in the process, remote connections, if they exist, are checked. Encryption and transmission for remote access are also checked.

Testing

With everything individually in place, the final step is to do a run of the whole system. System testing looks for holes in the surveillance grid, fluctuations in quality on cameras and feeds, and any storage device issues.

Technology

Camera and recording technology continues to develop and improve. What was sufficient at one point won’t be forever.

This section runs down some of the most important technology on the market now.

Fire Detection

Unlike other surveillance issues, which can be acted on or retrieved later, fire is an immediate issue. Newer camera control programs can determine if activity is a fire and trip the corresponding alarms.

They do this using image processing and algorithms designed to spot temperature variations.

HD

Better DPI and enhanced wide-angle lenses create clearer images and pick up more frames per second.

Working with an HD image versus something 720 p or less makes a big difference in the efficacy of the footage for investigators. A British study showed that HD footage led to breakthroughs in 65 percent of cases. Lower quality footage only assisted in 29 percent of cases.

IP

Cameras linked through Internet Protocol (IP) make inexpensive and versatile platforms. These require less cabling and long term storage. IP cameras can be linked to a cloud server and accessed remotely from a variety of devices.

IP cameras see a lot of use in home security camera installation.

Recorders

The cloud is enormous and allows for a cheap way to store a lot of data. It is less secure than an in-house network video recorder (NVR).

For monitoring sensitive work areas, those dealing with patented technology or guarded processes, NVRs are the way to go.

Analytics

Going through hundreds of hours of footage looking for a problem takes time and effort. It’s also often taxing on human faculties.

Utilizing analytic programs to scan footage for irregularities saves time. An analytic can be set to review footage before deletion or to bring to attention possible irregularities.

Video analytics provide options for recording on-demand, rather than always on. If you want to conserve power and record only when something is in the camera’s field, analytics saves you those resources.

Remain Vigilant

There’s a lot of steps to security camera installation because of the importance of doing it right. No one solution fits all businesses. Your business is unique, and so are your security needs.

No guide, no matter how comprehensive, covers all the bases. You probably have some questions. We’d like to hear them!