7 Horrible Mistakes You're Making With Business Security Systems: plus, the simple fixes
1. Are you seeing spots?
Who doesn't clean their eyeglasses daily?
Yet as basic as it sounds, IP security camera lens cleaning is often an overlooked source of security system maintenance.
2. Don't blind your IR Night Vision cameras: From glare to bare
Your exterior lighting, adjacent lights, street lighting, or direct oncoming vehicle headlights are possible culprits for compromising the effectiveness of your business security system. Since many of those variables are beyond your control, you’ll have to get creative.
A nighttime site walk before installation could eliminate future headaches by determining sources of glare.
You can’t have your IR Night Vision surveillance cameras pointed at the headlights of oncoming traffic, flood lights, or motion lights. Even pointing them at windows causes the infrared light to bounce off the window and look like a flashlight is being aimed at the camera.
Well-planned lighting acts both as a deterrent to criminals while also providing ideal conditions for IR Night Vision video capture. SCW also offers IR Night Vision cameras that provide their own bright, white light when activated.
3. Cheating yourself by missing corners
Who doesn't clean their eyeglasses daily?
Has cutting corners got you missing corners? Your business security system likely contains gaps, areas lacking camera view coverage. Some of your employees could tell you. They quickly discover the blindspots where the electronic eyes of your system are not at watch.
Mischief zones.
Both inside and out of your business lie sectors that are unsecured. Often the addition of a single camera or two can solve coverage shortfalls. Particularly if your business surveillance system is fortified by adding IP PTZ security cameras.
Bullet-style IP Security Cameras outsell other models. Often seen as the industry standard, they’re a fixed camera, so to speak. When they are directionally aimed, the field of view changes only if they have zoom capability. That zoom is not vertical and also has limited capacity horizontally. Therefore, your business surveillance system can be improved by incorporating additional IP Security Cameras with greater ranges of features.
An IP PTZ Security Camera can Pan left to right, Tilt up and down, and Zoom in and out. You can control it with any of our software interfaces: our PC/Mac Software, Webview, or by using the NVR itself. A physical joystick is not required.
You can tilt between –15° ~ +90°. Pan (spin it) 360° in an endless manner (you can keep turning left or right forever, without the cable getting tangled or caught). It moves up to 240° per second when in free-form movement and up to 300° per second when moving to a preset.
It’s fast!
A PTZ Security Camera could be the single, missing component to rev up your business surveillance system.
4. Outdated and underperforming
Here’s a true-life story.
Brian Miller of Parkway Ford North, Winston-Salem, NC, shared an outstanding incident that justified their purchase of a new system from SCW.
“We had an older cable system that didn’t allow us to make out what color a stolen vehicle was, barely what kind of vehicle. The deciding factor was when we had an $80,000.00 Ford Expedition stolen and we couldn’t tell if it was black, blue, red, or green. That one vehicle almost cost as much as the entire system.”
Unconvinced? Check out our blog article: 7 Ways Small Business Security Systems Pay For Themselves
It’s a no-brainer. Your new business security system investment begins repaying you from day one. See for yourself!
5. Scrimping on storage
Anyone else forever buying more cloud storage for their smartphone? How about the storage capacity on your business surveillance system? Do you have enough? Is it easily retrievable? Would you greatly benefit from having more NVR storage capability?
As with the smartphone, when it comes to video surveillance storage, more is always a favorable option.
SCW carries NVRs for any sized business with storage to spare.
Our goal is to be prepared to meet whatever need you have. That’s why our line of NVRs reaches up to 128 channel model supporting a 4K security system. It’s a monster!
Each one of its sixteen hard drive slots offers you the option of how much storage space you want at your disposal. 2TB? 6TB? How about a whopping 12TB of surveillance-grade hard drive per slot?
We also offer network-attached storage. The 4 Bay Synology NAS can accommodate another 48TB of memory while enhancing and speeding the overall performance of your system.
Your storage needs may fall way less than our super-sized system. We’ve put together a calculator page that solves your problems and includes several helpful storage tips.
6. Tangled in the web
Let’s start with what may be the biggest factor regarding your future business surveillance system happiness.
At the core of your system is the need for power--the power of the Internet--your specific connective availability at the installation site.
“Needs a strong Internet to work best,” is an actual quote from the purchaser of a wireless camera system. We couldn’t have said it plainer. Poor internet connection is a headache.
Bits? Bandwidth? Upload speed? Download speed? Any of those terms sound familiar?
Bandwidth is like the food that your surveillance cameras gobble up. It’s typically measured in bits, and it takes a lot of bits to send video.
Bandwidth is measured per camera. The amount of bandwidth each camera needs can vary significantly. By adding up the bandwidth requirements of every camera within a system, the total load is determined.
But first, you’re going to need some numbers having to do with the speed of your computer’s Internet connection.
Time for an Internet speed test. It’s free and easy, though they all are similar. The results will supply you with both the upload speed and the download speed of your Internet connection.
Upload refers to how many megabits of data per second you can send information from your network’s location to another. Download speed refers to how fast you can receive information at your location.
When it comes to viewing IP security cameras remotely, a good upload speed is necessary where the IP security cameras are mounted and a good download speed is required where your viewing device (such as your phone) is located.
For more details about how you can overcome internet speeds take a look at Internet Speed--Restrictor Plates On Your Surveillance System Engine?
7. Not working with a provider with good technical support
We saved the biggest mistake for last--not taking advantage of SCW’s host of free services.
Our business was built on supplying do-it-your-selfers with everything they needed to install their own professional-grade security system. That meant lots of service after the sale for us. Loads of installation and operational questions to answer.
Maybe that’s how we came to have the best tech support group in the security industry. Every member is US-based and a pro at business surveillance systems installation. And when you purchase your equipment from us, that FREE support is yours for life. Simple as that!