Installation Begins to Take Shape; Integration Capability an Emphasis

Once I was on board, we reviewed the design process to date. In the head-end area, we left raised computer flooring in the rack room and extended it to the adjacent technician’s shop. This would allow us to move the technician to another location in the future, if needed, and expand the rack room. We eliminated the raised floor in the surveillance room, and instead opted for two-foot-wide trenches running from the rack room to the operator and supervisor consoles. The Winsted console we selected features an integral cable management system that we used for console wiring, which also offered some cost savings.

Expansion was a critical factor as well. It is not uncommon for casinos to grow and expand far beyond their initial footprint and we wanted to be prepared. The initial system design called for roughly 800 inputs, so we sized the racking and infrastructure to support more than three times that number, or 2,500 cameras.

Our firm calculates HVAC and power requirements as part of the design process, so we provided this in two phases — initial system size and expanded size. It was decided to size the UPS system for the expanded capacity, but only purchase batteries for the first phase. This eliminated the high cost of purchasing more battery capacity than was initially required, since batteries are a consumable.

We also provided two areas for video review outside of the command center. Access to the monitor room was to be extremely restricted, so functions that would normally be done in the room at a supervisor console were moved to remote monitoring consoles. One was located in a common area of the surveillance suite, while the second was placed in a conference room. This allowed both semi-private and private viewing, as access to the surveillance suite is limited as well.

Most casinos divide video monitoring into two areas: the heavily regulated surveillance department tasked with monitoring the gaming floor and any money handling areas (including the passage of money into and out of the facility). The security department monitors all other areas including roadways and parking lots. A second command center was designed for security, but it was considerably different from the surveillance console in that it could accommodate more rack mounted security equipment as needed for future growth.

The two monitoring consoles and third security console served a dual role. If there was ever a system failure or condition that made the surveillance room uninhabitable, the operators could simply move to one of the other consoles to resume their duties.

To accomplish this, we designed the system as a single large system that was partitioned in such a way to limit access based on passwords and job functionality. In this manner, the security operator would not have access to call-up or control a gaming camera, but a surveillance operator, with access to all cameras, could send a gaming camera to a monitor in security. This allows a person with more restrictive system access to view an important image they wouldn’t normally be able to see.

On the software side, we focused on integration capabilities. We provided for full integration between access control and CCTV (fairly standard in high-end installations), but also provided for communication between a variety of subsystems such as slot data systems, cash registers, casino marketing cards and slot cash voucher systems. Also included was audio recording from a variety of sources and in selected areas as required by tribal and National Indian Gaming Commission (NIGC) regulations.

“Working with a consultant [throughout the design process] really opened our eyes to the different technologies available to us,” says Cook. “We had previously focused primarily on coverage and video quality, and there were things like automatic camera call up on alarms that we just hadn’t thought of. Adding these features and capabilities has put us light years ahead of where we were before, and our being a part of the design process, from start to finish, has been a huge help.”

Robert Grossman is president of R. Grossman and Associates in Egg Harbor Township, NJ.
This column was originally published in the September 2007 issue of Security Sales and Integration magazine. Material copyrighted and the property of Security Sales & Integration and Bobit Business Media, with all rights reserved.