29 Jul 2006

University of Costa Rica has four analogue speed domes on one of its buildings that is very far from the monitoring centre.  It would cost the school a significant sum of money to extend coaxial cables between these two locations.  Actual coaxial cabling work would also have taken a lot of time and caused considerable inconveniences to the people in the university.  Fortunately, ACTi's partner in Costa Rica, Sonivision S.A., successfully solved the university's headache by a hybrid CCTV + IP system solution using ACTi's IP video surveillance products and the university's existing IP network infrastructure.

Sonivision S.A.'s solution composed of four pairs of ACTi's SED-2100R (MPEG-4 encoder) and SED-3200 (MPEG-4 decoder).  One unit of SED-2100R was connected to each of the four analogue speed domes and is receiving analogue video from and sending RS-485 data to the analogue speed dome.  The analogue videos from the analogue speed domes were encoded into MPEG-4 video streams and sent across the university's IP network to the monitoring center.  At the monitoring centre, four SED-3200 receives the MPEG-4 video streams from the SED-2100R and decodes them back into analogue videos.  The university's existing DVR and CCTV monitor then records and display's the decoded analogue videos respectively.  A PTZ control panel can also be connected to the SED-3200 to allow easy remote controlling of the Pan/Tilt/Zoom movements of the analog speed domes by sending RS-485 data across the IP network to the SED-2100R.

This hybrid solution using ACTi's encoders and decoders is a simple, quick, highly flexible and cost effective system that can be implemented at much lower cost and higher efficiency when compared to pure analog CCTV system.