Physical Security & Surveillance
CCTV & Video Surveillance
Camera systems designed around what each area has to prove — identification, recognition or observation — and recorded for as long as the regulation actually requires.
The question a CCTV design answers is not how many cameras, but what each one has to prove. A camera that lets an operator observe that somebody is present needs a fraction of the pixel density of one that has to identify a face to an evidential standard, and specifying every camera to the highest grade is how a budget gets spent three times over on coverage nobody needed.
SOT designs to that distinction. Each area is assigned an operational requirement — identify, recognise, observe, detect or monitor — and the camera, the lens and the mounting position follow from it. That is what IEC 62676 grades, and it is the difference between a system that produces evidence and one that only produces footage.
Retention is the second decision that tends to be made badly. Storage is sized from stream count, resolution, frame rate, codec and the real retention period — and a system encoded in H.265 at a sensible frame rate holds far more days on the same disks than one left on the vendor's defaults.
What this covers
Camera selection and lensing
Fixed dome, bullet, PTZ, multi-sensor and thermal, with focal length worked out from the distance and the required pixel density rather than chosen from a catalogue.
Recording and storage design
NVR or server-based VMS sized from real bitrates, with RAID level and redundancy chosen against how much footage loss is actually tolerable.
Low-light and harsh-environment imaging
Infrared, white-light and low-lux sensors for night coverage, and wide dynamic range where a camera faces a glass frontage or an open loading door.
Analytics and search
Motion, line-crossing and object classification, so an operator can find the ninety seconds that matter instead of scrubbing through twelve hours.
Remote and mobile viewing
Secure access for authorised users, with the network exposure designed deliberately rather than by port-forwarding an NVR straight to the internet.
What we will ask you
These are the questions that decide the specification. Having the answers ready is what turns a first conversation into a real quotation.
- 01
How long must footage be kept?
This drives storage far more than resolution does, and it is usually set by regulation or by an insurer rather than by preference. Settle it before the camera count.
- 02
What has to be provable?
Identification at an entrance, plate capture at a gate and general observation in a corridor are three different specifications. Naming the requirement per area is what keeps a design honest.
- 03
Who may view and export?
MOI rules and your own policy both bear on this, and it has to be configured as user roles at commissioning — not left as one shared administrator password that half the building knows.