The following article appeared in Florida Restaurant and Lodging, Vol. 14, Number 1

POS Integrated Video Surveillance: A Quick Primer

By Ken Opalenick

One of the hottest new applications in POS is integrated video surveillance. But in order to make an informed decision, it’s important to understand exactly what’s involved. Let’s take a quick look at the individual parts of the puzzle and see how they all fit together.

At the center of the video surveillance network lies the Network Video Recorder (NVR). The NVR accepts video feeds from the various network channels, records the information—both video and POS transactions—and digitally stores it for fast search and retrieval. Unlike the Digital Video Recorder (DVR), the NVR offers vastly improved capabilities, storage, and network security. Additionally, the NVR can accept information from both digital and existing analog cameras.

While the NVR in itself can control a network of multiple cameras, the Network Video Server (NVS) provides tremendous system scalability and flexibility. The NVS can manage multiple cameras and mix the feed into a single channel for storage anywhere on the network, typically the NVR. The addition of one or more NVS nodes allows the easy management of even the most complex video surveillance networks.

The Network Camera combines the utility of both the NVS and the video camera. Available in both wireless and traditional hard wired models, the network camera is useful in applications in which a more complex network is unnecessary but tight security is.

Dome cameras are by far the most common video surveillance image capture devices. Small, sleek, and unobtrusive, these cameras are welcome in even the finest dining establishments. Interestingly, the dome camera’s subtlety is perhaps its strongest feature: it’s impossible to tell by looking at it what the camera is actually recording behind its shiny black glass dome.

Bullet cameras, on the other hand, are anything but subtle—it’s obvious what they are recording to both the employee and the customer. Its mere presence provides a significant deterrent factor. Bullet cameras can offer better resolution than dome cameras and are used in applications in which detail is important. When used in outdoor applications, the bullet camera can offer infrared video, excellent for monitoring such things as parking lots at night.

Its cousin, the Box camera offers the same capabilities but is built to far more rugged standards, allowing it to perform reliably in even the most extreme weather conditions. Additionally, box cameras are typically varifocal, allowing the capacity to zoom in and out on an event.

PTZ cameras (pan/tilt/zoom) are similar to dome cameras but offer far greater image capture flexibility. PTZ cameras are useful in real time applications, allowing an operator to selectively monitor closely an activity of interest, for example, in parking garages. However, PTZ cameras can also be programmed to continuously sweep an area, allowing the replacement of multiple fixed image cameras.

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