What are the most important considerations for CCTV camera Installation ?

The market in 2020 is full of IP CCTV cameras of various types such as Power of Ethernet cameras, Wireless (WiFi) cameras, battery powered cameras, solar cameras, LTE cameras, and so on. A good installation can make a inexpensive CCTV cameras very reliable & effective for meeting the purpose it was installed (assuming it satisfies the functional requirements), whereas a poor installation can make even the most expensive and capable camera an unreliable system. So how do we ensure we have less installation failures ?

In our opinion, any CCTV camera installation needs to carefully consider THREE critical infrastructure aspects :

(1) Power

(2) Network

(3) Vandal Resistance

You need power to just run the camera. It should be *un-interrupted AFAP, otherwise you may miss recording critical events and raising alarms. Power can be supplied using electrical outlet (AC-DC adapter typically 5V or 12V), Over Ethernet (PoE or 802.3af/at/bt/*), Battery, and Solar. Even a combination of above methods such as Battery-cum-AC-DC adapter (battery gives backup in case of transient loss of power), Solar-Panel-cum-Battery, etc. Not every power supply suits every installation. You may not have power adaptor or ethernet port nearby, might be indoors ruling our solar option, not suitable to do any retro-fit wiring, and so on. Irrespective of the constraints, the facts remains that you need to supply *un-interrupted power by some design method.

Similarly CCTV recorded footage can be stored on camera, in an off-camera location like recorder rack nearby, a recorder in central location or in a cloud service or a combination. In either case their is a need to access or transfer surveillance footage from camera and for this a network is required. This network can be Wired Ethernet, WiFi, 4G-LTE/5G radio or in worst case the camera needs to become a WiFi hotspot to which a client can connect and view/transfer surveillance footage. Again like power this provides challenges. You may not get a strong cellular signal (indoor locations like basement, pump rooms, etc), may not have a WiFi or ethernet availability, etc. Nevertheless, one network connectivity method has to be found out OR the camera will have to be removed, taken elsewhere for viewing/transferring footage, which means a break in service. 

A third aspect worth considering is the vandal resistance of installation. It should not be very easy for anyone to tamper with the camera setup. Putting cameras at a height, hiding them, using special vandal resistant constructions (like domes), redundant storage (Cloud storage, SD Card + NAS, Recorder + Cloud, centralized off camera storage in secure environment, etc.), hidden (secured) cabling, having alarm/notification when camera is down, UPS functionality in case of blackout, etc. can be critical to prevent a criminal from committing a crime by tampering with the camera and getting away with it, even if their is no live monitoring of camera feeds by a dedicated surveillance system operator.

If an installer (Professional or DIY) gets these aspects right and selects the most suitable camera, he will end the project on a very satisfactory note AND have less lifecycle headaches to deal with during camera lifetime.

- Suman Kumar Luthra @ APRC-P3 Telecom Sub-Committee

How can we make our CCTV systems robust so that nothing escapes it ?

Any CCTV system with enough eyes and fair stability & availability will be very effective deterrent against unorganized, opportunistic, impulsive, hot-headed and petty crime or undesirable acts committed by vandals and ordinary citizens, but the same may not hold true against organized crime where you need additional measures to make the system robust. So before we charter into this territory first think if your requirement is to curb un-organized crime or organized one and read the rest of the post only if you feel the need of additional protection against sophisticated and organized vandals. 

If you want to make a very robust system, you have to first get into the mind of AND think like a vandal or criminal looking to commit the crime. A CCTV system is like Human body sensory organ sub-system viz. eyes (+ears), optic nerves & brain. To defeat the CCTV system it has to be deactivated before or made in-accessible at least after the crime is committed. A skilled vandal therefore can resort to one or more of the following tactics:

(1) Blind the CCTV system (cameras) before committing crime.

(2) Impair the communication mechanism between the eyes and brain (recording system) *before committing crime

(2) Impair the brain of CCTV system *before committing crime

(3) Destroy the contents of the the brain *after committing crime or run away with the brain. 

The above objectives can be met by either physical and non-technical actions, or by cybersecurity breaches.  A vandal who does not follow the above *before and *after tactics, will likely either be caught on camera committing the crime or leave enough circumstantial evidence for law enforcement to get him into the investigation net. 

And so our objective is to make it difficult (if not impossible) for him to do so, if we want to make our CCTV system robust. Its like an arms race. Lets see how this can be achieved in *abstract terms.

(a) Two eyes are better than one. 4 better than 2. More so if one eye watches the other. Do not think having one camera or a camera on main door is enough to deter crime inside the home. You need to have few inside, few outside at different locations, cameras on opposing diagonal room corners is even better,  so that it becomes difficult to bypass system by compromising one camera. A good camera density is a must so that its impossible to erase *all traces of circumstantial evidence even if *clinching evidence is erased. Less is not necessarily the best. 

(b) Another way of blinding the eyes is to smoke them by cutting fuel like power. If cameras are supplied power from a common source and that source is cut, then the eyes stop working. If camera is not on UPS and power is cut, the cameras all go down together and it does not matter if you have one eye or four. Therefore making it hard to reach common power source, distribution of power sources, redundant sources (Emergency Battery backup + UPS + Utility/DG supply) all help as counter measures. In case a common source is used, the common source itself can be watched by an eye, so that the act of disruption leaves a trail of circumstantial evidence.

(c) If a breach like above does happen, it may help if extra countermeasures are deployed. For that incidents like multiple cameras going down together can trigger notifications/alarms that alert the system owner and he can initiate manually a sanity check and any extra safety measures.

(d) The communication mechanism between eyes and brain could be the network. That network can be wifi or wired or cellular. Wireless signals (wifi or cellular) can be jammed, but this is a sophisticated cyber attack beyond the reach of an ordinary vandal. Wired networking can be disabled by cutting either cutting the networking cables and/or networking equipment or the power . Power we have dealt above, but typical counter measures for securing wired networks is not exposing cables (retrofit installation is weak), Putting cables in rigid conduits, junction boxes and not exposing any part, Securing networking switches just like power sources, obscuring the raceways/conduits by mixing them with others (at cost of maintainability), etc. are all strategies that are useful in deterring the vandal. If their is dependency on Internet access (cloud storage), having redundant internet connections can improve the vandal resistance as it *may get difficult to cut 4 connections together, and where the cabling is together the area should be on CCTV coverage also. 

(e) The brain of the camera can be on-board SD card, an off-camera but on premise-recorder, or Cloud storage. A cloud storage is very hard to tamper (governed by rules, no single person control, democratic governments,  geographical redundancy, etc). the only way you can compromise it is my keeping is so less that before the crime is detected, the footage of it is overwritten. It will however be helpful if cloud storage is augmented by an on-premise storage in either camera SD card or NVR/File-Server/BaseStation. Similarly having duplicity of storage in home such as both on camera and on NVR/File-Server/BaseStation etc is helpful if cloud storage is not used. Another tactic is to hide the Recording device and make it harder to access (lock it, put at height, cover by camera footage, etc), so that attempts to tamper with it (steal hard disk, cut power supply, etc) before and after the crime, cannot escape the eyes and brain. 

(f) Lastly keep the methods deployed top secret. Many crimes are and will be committed with insider help. So if the vulnerabilities are known, the risks multiply. Which means we will not tell what all &  how we have deployed these vandal resistant methods in our apartment complex ;-))

Despite all this you cannot make an unbeatable surveillance system. You can just make it harder to defeat, because a vandal will need to deploy many tactics together and in unison to do so. And if after all this you are still defeated, give credit to the vandal and accept fate. Its survival of the fittest and he clearly came out first in the arms race.

- Suman Kumar Luthra @ APRC-P3 Telecom Sub-Committee

Where all CCTV cameras should be installed in residential apartments ?

For apartments complexes, 

1. Gates

2. Basement car parking driveways

3. Visitor parking areas 

4. Gardens 

5. Walkways and Jogging tracks

6. Common  facilities (STP, WTP, Generator room, Filtration plants, Transformer Yards, water storage area, communication rooms, supermarkets, ATM, etc)

7. Club and other recreational sports facilities (incl. kids play areas)

8. Elevators & Elevator lobbies 

9. Building entrances and exits 

are all places where surveillance cameras should be installed to ensure tenant safety. Few mobile cameras (battery powered  which can work without WiFi and record to SD card) should be used for dealing with dynamic surveillance requirements on areas not otherwise covered by CCTV in response to incidents. Any private areas like public urinals, change-rooms (in gyms), toilets, etc. should be strictly skipped.

For individual homes, the following page gives a good starting point (and are applicable to villas as well as independent houses):

https://www.safety.com/security-camera-installation/

- Suman Kumar Luthra @ APRC-P3 Telecom Sub-Committee

What is a distributed IP CCTV network system and where it can be applied ?

Distributed CCTV design concept comes mainly from the concept that the *storage of CCTV cameras is distributed or *NOT put in a central location like on-premise command center. As such each camera will have its own *exclusive storage on or near to it. This concept is used by OEMs like Mobotix and many wireless/wire-free cameras when *not using cloud storage. Now the centralized IP CCTV vendors like Hikvision, Cpplus, Dahua, etc are all jumping into this domain.

An important characteristics of such system is lack of physical *wiring work and more suitability to a DIY/Retrofit installation, not requiring a professional installation and big $$$ in equipment & labor costs. Therefore, most system integrators discourage this for N number of *invalid reasons like poor quality, reliability, etc. whereas the fact is that they are equally competent. Beyond networking, it is the feature of camera like lens quality, Sensor, face/object recognition, etc. which dictate its value. 

Consider a small home installation. Less than or around 4 cameras. Retrofit as no wiring (or option to do) available. Mobile cameras in setup like kids and elderly watch. No 24x7 live monitoring but event based surveillance footage view. Smartphone as choice of viewing surveillance footage than dedicated screen inside house. Many cameras at a height, making them vandal resistant. And availability of 24x7 consumer broadband & WiFi networks. Quarterly maintenance work like cleaning, battery replacement, etc practical. This is typical scenario for many apartment or small villa. Above case immediately force you to ask whether we need to go for wired systems, whether we need to buy & maintain dedicated recorders (NVRs) with unreliable mechanical disks (HDD), etc. 

Today IP cameras support the most efficient H.265 encoding, 15-20 fps, Motion triggered and AI augmented smart recording  making them spectrally and temporally very efficient wrt to video storage requirement. They may generate 1-2 GB of surveillance data per day at max. SD cards come in capacities of 64 GB, 128 Gb and even 256 GB and easily available  making 2-4 months quite common on SD cards. An SD card sector can be read, erased and written maybe 300 times giving a lifetime of card exceeding 10 years, which is way beyond the usable life of camera considering the rate at which technology advances. In 5 years you would surely want a better camera and want to upgrade.

Wrt to our 3 key installation considerations, our view is:

(a) Its also easy to maintain a 24x7 BB connection that reboots every night or weekly/monthly by software/hardware timer and provided the required wireless networking access, not just inside home but anywhere away from it to on your mobile device. Many cameras will support software timer based graceful reboot. All this makes the networking part very reliable.

(b) Most Wireless cameras are powered by 5V or12V supply or a battery. many support dual mode like Micro-USB charging port and internal battery with the battery providing backup in case power is lost on the charging port. DC-DC UPSes exist in small form factors. Small Solar Panels can support outdoor installations by charging internal battery daily. All this makes the Power supply part very reliable.

(c) The only nitpicking you can do is the vandal resistance [if camera lost/stolen/malfunctioned, footage access is also lost perhaps permanently], which can be worked around by having cloud storage back of a week, backup storage on LAN, etc. The real cost or value is not of the camera or the recording device, but the content recorded and we have ways to improve its security without abandoning the system design concept.

We would go as far as to say that unless you have a home where nobody stays (no maintenance) for long periods 3-12 months or more), wired cameras are an overkill and increasingly are beginning to  look like the mainframes of the IP CCTV world. 

However these are not suitable everywhere. Its unsuitable if you have a large number of cameras (overloaded wifi, software limitation, less capable video decoding or viewing device, etc) OR need 24x7 centralized live monitoring (like apartment common areas, offices, malls, hotels, casinos, etc). Because of this reason, our apartment CCTV system is centralized one, while we recommend that tenants needing dedicated cameras to monitor their personal car parks, main door, homes use distributed IP CCTV cameras. The apartment does not have resources to manage and monitor their personal space (besides privacy implications) surveillance.

- Suman Kumar Luthra @ APRC-P3 Telecom Sub-Committee

What is a centralized IP CCTV network system and where it can be applied ?

A centralized IP CCTV system is the exact opposite of a distributed system, wherein, the storage of all cameras in put in a single common location (in one or more recorder devices).  It comprises IP camera, Network, recording & viewing sub-systems. This is the traditional PoE based IP CCTV design, very similar to Analog CCTV. It is especially suitable for scenarios where one or more of the following requirements apply:

(1) Need live monitoring 24x7

(2) Cannot guarantee safety of surveillance storage on camera and nearby locations (like multiple buildings in a multiple building setup)

(3) large number of cameras
(4) Need special smart camera like High-end PTZ, Number/License Plate recognition, Thermal, People Counting, etc.

It requires a network to function which may be wired ethernet, WiFi or even 4G-LTE/5G cellular. And this network design and performance is very critical to ensure security and performance. And just as Distributed system vandal resistance can be *augmented by having centralized cloud storage, a distributed system's weak point (the network availability) can be overcome by implementing an onboard storage cache (flash or SD-Card) to temporarily store footage if network goes down and send all data to central location once network becomes available again. 

Needless to say installers love the on-premise installation of this architecture. They require extensive investments in installations (cameras, cabling, switches, recorders, TVs and monitors) and operations (maintenance, live monitoring) which is big $$$. Our own apartment network is of this type, and costs nearly INR Rs. 20,000/-  per camera to build and usually has 50% cost distribution in IP cameras, Recorders & Storage, 10% in networking gear, 20% in cabling(passive) parts, and ~20% labor. A huge effort & time (90% plus) is spent in creating the supporting cabling and networking infrastructure, while the actual camera installation and configuration effort is minimal. It also needs 2% to 5% (depending on how well you bargain and who is doing it) of per camera cost annually in India for non-comprehensive maintenance & upkeep (add 10-15% annual wage inflation overhead on maintenance costs). Non-comprehensive maintenance covers labor only, while comprehensive maintenance includes parts and will be billed at a much higher rate (its more like insurance). 

They are extremely stable, of high quality, highly capable in terms of features and reliable. They will run for 5 years atleast if maintained routinely and actively. If maintained well, the lifetime could even be 7-10 years. But some replacement costs of cameras, mechanical storage (HDD), switches, recorders, etc. should be expected after 5 years. 

On the flip side, wired PoE installations are not easy to retrofit and need professional labor. If not done well they become eyesores and definitely not a great choice in all situation indoors (unless you have a comprehensive false ceiling running all through the home to hide the cabling & conduit/raceways). Even outdoors, their may be discoloration,  paint mismatch, wear & tear as time goes by. 

With the latest developments in wireless and wirefree camera design with cloud storage is becoming really popular. The ideal camera for home is wirefree, DIY installable/retrofit-friendly, runs for 6 months on battery, supports both onboard (for many months) and cloud storage (a few weeks atleast or subscription based) as well as cheaper with acceptable quality. We recommend such cameras for small home installations and personal use.

- Suman Kumar Luthra @ APRC-P3 Telecom Sub-Committee

What is a de-centralized IP CCTV network system and where it can be applied ?

Midway between centralized (fully) and decentralized (fully) deployment topology, lies the decentralized topology. In centralized system, their in ONE storage area for all N cameras in the system. In Distributed system, their are N storage areas for all N cameras in the system. In decentralized their are M storage areas for N cameras where 1 < M < N. The main motivation for doing this is when the network is highly unreliable (speed varies based on other factors) AND/OR hard/expensive/impossible to build. Very large systems like City Surveillance, Country surveillance etc will use such designs AND if multiple on-premise centralized setups (buildings) are linked to a common control room, then this larger system becomes a decentralized setup.

For eg, a villa layout wants to cover all roads and intersections and junctions. It can deploy a pole at each junction/intersection and at some midway point cameras to cover all roads running away from it. Since its not possible to network each and every pole in a retrofit manner with Fiber or copper cabling, it is not feasible to provide a wired networking and wireless may have bandwidth constraints. There the ideal choice is to locate small recorders on the camera pole itself , with UPS unit in weather proof housing and use wideband modem connectivity like 4G-LTE /5G to hook up to a centralized location, where surveillance video can be viewed. Similarly many apartment complexes may have multiple buildings each with a lobby and secure place to have local, manned surveillance command center, with each building coming up at different time of year/decade making a decentralized setup a logical way forward to start installing the system. Once the project is 100% completed a reliable backbone IP network can be built and the decentralized setup can be converted to a fully centralized setup or linked together to a bigger command center. Analog CCTV integrators typically follow this approach because that is what they are comfortable and experienced with [the NVR and TV is always an arm's throw distance away from the camera ;-))]. And also because they are generally ignorant about privacy and recording device safety.

We assume above that power can be supplied in such distributed setups. If not off-grid solar (or on-grid in case of large outages) is the only option, further adding to the costs & complexity.

- Suman Kumar Luthra @ APRC-P3 Telecom Sub-Committee

Do we need a maintenance contract for CCTV systems

This reply is based mainly on business situation in India and may not be applicable in other markets with labor shortage and expenses.

In our opinion, for DIY systems like wire-free or wireless systems with small number of cameras (<=8), their is no need of AMC contracts with any vendor. Since you have installed it yourself, you can make an effort to troubleshoot & maintain it yourself. If you have got such setup installed by a vendor, then its better you engage him on a per call basis to maintain rather than enter into an AMC contract with him. The vendor is not going to make a loss and their is not much money to be made by him anyways. If a camera or SD card or adapter or battery needs replacing, just pay him to replace it.

However the same strategy may not be useful for larger camera setups involving 16/32 cameras or more if using wired PoE installation (both centralized and decentralized designs). Often such setups are outside your home in apartment complex, where you have no business of doing DIY activities. You  may need to use ladders, power tools, etc  which only a professional installer has.  The question here is whether you should do an on-call maintenance or AMC contract. In our opinion for <32 cameras (or in worst case 64 cameras) and simple setups on-call maintenance is just fine, and you can keep switching vendor if a particular one is slow to fix or does not give a satisfactory service. Remember engaging an on-call service requires you to spend your personal effort for coordination & management (this need maybe very low for small systems but can be substantial for large systems)

But for bigger or complex setups (involving smart switching, optical fibers, elevators, etc) involving more than 32 cameras and 2 NVRs, you should engage the services of a professional installer/maintainer on a maintenance contract basis as you simply will not have the resources, tools and time to do it. Such contracts can be of two types:

(1) Comprehensive - Both Parts and Labor covered AND are costly. This is similar to insurance and will go up as time progresses (more parts expected to fail). Enterprises, Medium to Large  Commercial establishments, Senior Citizen homes, etc would like to use this method and outsource this activity completely. It is very hard to judge what the right pricing & terms should be  and MOST small installers will never enter into such contracts because of the risks involved. The upside of this is that vendor will do very good job as he can minimize failures and maximize profits with that approach and the customer has to spend very little effort & time on this. Done well this is what should be done. Big installers and security firms prefer to enter into such contracts as they can potentially profit and have the resources to manage well.

(2) Non-Comprehensive - Only labor covered. For parts, the customer has to pay separately. Most small installers prefer this as this reduces their risk exposure and they can focus on what's the work and what's the remuneration for it and whether its profitable enough for their time. They may also like to retain such work to showcase their capability and get more work elsewhere. Its also fair on the customer as he has control on maintenance costs. However the downside of this is that the vendor does not have a very big incentive of doing a good job as he is *not accountable for failed active components (cameras, recorders, storage media, hard disks) and cables rarely fail completely by themselves unless compromised by rodents, elements, vandalism (which anyways they will try to get indemnity from in the contract). So having a water tight contract listing down activities to be performed AND ensuring that those are carried out properly falls on the customer. And often the AMC providere will have a big list of rather important *exclusion clauses in the agreement for common problems to protect (reduce) his *contract covered effort investment.  So there is a constant tug-of-war between the parties.

Our community has chosen Option (2) - Non-Comprehensive maintenance contract presently AND have been using it by donating personal spare time and part of weekend to keep the large system running for 3+ years now. Out of 450 cameras, despite our strong design, installation, and maintenance practice,  2-3 cameras cameras go down every month and we need corrective maintenance work at-least once a month on average to bring them back up (usually cables have to be re-terminated or some entity restarted or some consistency check done on storage media or even a faulty camera replaced). We intend with this process, to keep the system running for  12 years at-least before we start upgrading equipment. and we are paying 2.5-3% of system installation CAPEX cost *annually for non-comprehensive maintenance (a 12 year contract will cost upwards of 30% and bring stable long time revenue to our system integrator)

Our contract template and verification checklists are attached:

(1) AMC Contract Template

(2) Preventive Monthly, Quarterly, Half Yearly and Annual Maintenance Checklists

If you go through them, you will get an idea over the whole CCTV system maintenance concept & activities.

- Suman Kumar Luthra @ APRC-P3 Telecom Sub-Committee