In The Trenches Video Series
Multi Floor Security Camera System Setup & How to Install CCTV Cameras in a Multi-Story Building
Today, we are discussing multi-floor security camera systems set up, and how to install CCTV cameras in a multi-story building. In this episode of In the Trenches Roundtable our installation team goes over the nuances and what to know about multi-story building security.
Our speakers today are:
- > Benjamin Larue (Sales Director)
- > Micah Shearer (COO, CFO & wearer of many other hats)
- > Gil Illescas (Director of installation services)
- > Calver Brewer (National Installation Project Manager)
Video Transcription
Micah Shearer:
For the sake of easy numbers, you've got 20 cameras in each story. If you take your top floor and you've got 20 cameras going to a switch, and then you run that switch to your next floor and you've got 20 cameras running to that switch, but you also have the first switch running to that second switch, now you have 40 cameras going through that switch. And then you've got 60 and then you've got 80. And a 24-port switch is not really equipped to run 80 cameras through it.
Ben Larue:
Hey, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us again. This is Ben with SCW, another episode of the In The Trenches Round Table. Today, we've got another installation focused episode. We're going to be specifically talking about multi-story buildings. I'm really excited about this one. This one allows me to nerd out so I'm really pumped. But we've got an awesome panel of experts with us again. We're going to start off first with Gil Illescas.
Gil Illescas:
Hey, everyone.
Ben Larue:
Awesome. He's the director of installation services. We've also got Micah Shearer.
Micah Shearer:
Hello.
Ben Larue:
She is our COO, CFO, and a million other hats. And then we've, last but certainly not least, got Cal Brewer.
Calver Brewer:
Hello.
Ben Larue:
He's our national installation project manager. Super excited to dive into this one. I'm not really too sure where we should start because I've got so many questions and I'm sure so does everyone else tuning in. I think first I want to start by asking the panel a more broad question, more specifically regarding to what are some of the things that you should be considering or we should consider when we have a multi-story building and we're talking about cable? What are some initial thoughts that pass through y'all's heads? Don't all jump in at once either.
Micah Shearer:
Pathways, network, IDFs. Those are the first big buckets where my brain goes. And I'm sure Cal and Gil can speak to those.
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, absolutely. Definitely want to talk about switch locations. That's probably the most important thing that you can take into consideration. Keep your cable lengths down and make it a little bit easier to establish your pathways.
Micah Shearer:
Cal, do you want to talk about the interplay between conserving cable length and also the network itself? Because you end up with this dynamic of, well do I keep my runs shorter and daisy chain? And then how does that affect your network traffic?
Calver Brewer:
Well, we've definitely learned this over time as we've just tried to daisy-chain switches in big properties and multi-story sites, and that definitely creates a network bottleneck that we've learned through trial and error. I think it's probably a little bit more important, first think about your switch locations and then think about how you're going to get cable from each switch back to your recorder or back to your MDF.
Micah Shearer:
So to elaborate on that a little bit, let's say you've got a five-story building, and for the sake of easy numbers, you've got 20 cameras in each story. If you take your top floor and you've got 20 cameras going to a switch, and then you run that switch to your next floor and you've got 20 cameras running to that switch, but you also have the first switch running to that second switch, now you have 40 cameras going through that switch. And then you've got 60 and then you've got 80. And a 24-port switch is not really equipped to run 80 cameras through it.
Calver Brewer:
Right. Yeah. Usually we want to try to think about where each switch is going to be placed on the floor based on your riser rooms or how utilities are moved from floor to floor. You're going to want to try to follow the electricity from floor to floor. Usually there's a riser room where you have wires going from the top floor all the way to the bottom floor. So you're going to want to mimic that pathway with your switches and try to think about the easiest place, A, to bring all your cameras in from each floor to that switch, and then how easy it's going to be to get cabling from each switch down to the bottom floor. So usually you're going to try to locate a riser room and either, A, create your own pathway by core drilling from floor to floor, or B, just follow any existing cabling that's there, not existing electrical but existing data that's already in place.
Ben Larue:
Makes a lot of sense. We used some terminology that I just want to clear up. You said daisy chain, so you're meaning plugging one switch into another switch?
Micah Shearer:
Yeah, exactly. Usually on a bigger switch you have an input output so you can plug one switch in and then run another cable out to the next point. And there are times where that's appropriate, but if you do it a lot, you run into these bottleneck issues.
Ben Larue:
Gotcha. So it's best to home run from switch to back to -
Micah Shearer:
Switch all the way back to your MDF, all the way back to ... You're probably at that point, and Cal, Gil, you can jump in here, at that point you probably have a switch in your IDF that you're running everything too, but you're picking a very specific switch with very specific bandwidth that accounts for everything going into it.
Gil Illescas:
This is where we're going to jump into the life safety portion of this exercise. Because the horizontal run for each floor has to be different than the riser run. Life safety requirements state that the riser run is riser rated cable and that is cable that doesn't allow the fire to track up the cable toward other floors. Once you get to those other floors, the horizontal run, depending on if it's being ran in the plenum area, will require a plenum rated cable if that's the case. And that's typically a cable that's jacketed with something that doesn't give off a type of smoke that people can inhalate and get sick from if there is a fire.
Those two things are separate things in a cable run between the initial device back to the switch, which is usually back to a patch panel first, then to the switch and then down through the different floors to the main floor where the possible recorder is or the gathering of all your devices are. So something to consider because a horizontal cable run is going to be typical in multi-floor installations and it has to be considered for any type of new installation where the fire marshal authority having jurisdictions going to probably check it out. It's something to keep in mind.
Ben Larue:
Okay. Gotcha. That makes sense. And what if ... The distance still matters here from connecting a switch to another switch or switch to main data frame?
Gil Illescas:
Absolutely. Yeah. So standard network distances apply for most devices 325 feet or 100 meters and that includes patch cables and everything. So that's the total run. We do have devices that we're capable of using and that we use quite often that have switches that can extend the POE data transmission for our cameras and for other devices. And so that does help in the run. But with that said, there are reasons to keep within distance requirements and that's obviously for data flow.
Ben Larue:
That makes sense. So that's really something to consider is the data, the amount of data where it's flowing to and how it's flowing. That makes sense. Now Cal you earlier said something you mentioned like a riser room and we also were referencing IDFs, that stands for initial data frame? Internal data frame?
Micah Shearer:
Intermediary.
Calver Brewer:
Intermediate.
Ben Larue:
Gotcha. So practically speaking, what does this look like? This could be a server room or an engineering room or a mechanical room maybe
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, usually you want to try to keep all your switches located, usually stacked upon each other. Usually electrical rooms or something like that. I've definitely seen them in storage closets or broom closets and all that stuff too. But for best practice you want to try to keep all your utilities together.
Ben Larue:
Gotcha, gotcha. And a lot of this stuff would probably be established or should be if it's an existing building?
Calver Brewer:
Absolutely.
Ben Larue:
Gotcha.
Gil Illescas:
Yeah. A lot of buildings these days are getting built with network rooms that are separate from electrical rooms. You also have, I wouldn't say I'd call them plumbing rooms, but they're fire rooms where you can see a fire sprinkler system, pipe go up and down the floors. A lot of people track cable with those and Cal mentioned coring, they'll core right next to those and what you have there is nothing's going to get in the way. Nothing can really mess with the big giant fire pipe so to speak. So we know there's nothing that's going to stand in the way if we want to core floors and drop cables through next to it. Something a lot of people look for when you're looking through these buildings,
Calver Brewer:
Right. Like when these buildings are getting built, obviously the fire pipe that that Gil was talking about first, those are, or they take into consideration that first when they're putting the plans together. It's always sprinkler pipes first and then electrical second and then data third. So we usually just follow along with those.
Ben Larue:
Gotcha. Gotcha. That makes 10 cents. And when we are designing a camera system for a multi-story building how much does planning out switch location, how data will flow, how much does that play into designing the system itself? Are we going to limit the number of cameras we have per floor maybe or where they're placed or can you guys talk to that some?
Micah Shearer:
I don't know that you're gonna, it's not like there's a hard limit on the number of cameras or really even the placement. I mean it's all a function of budget because you can buy the appropriate switches to channel a very large amount of data. You just aren't going to end up needing to invest in more infrastructure and appropriate infrastructure for that number of cameras. That's what initially comes to mind for me. Cal, Gil?
Gil Illescas:
Yeah, for sure. I mean you have to actually understand your throughput. You have to actually understand how much data you're adding with every device and you really do the math and eventually you get to the point where, okay, the math is exceeding the output of this switchboard. Do I need multiple switchboards? Do I need gigabit, do I need 10 gig, do I need fiber? These are all transmission medias that will allow us to bring more data through the pipe. The pipe being the actual cable that we choose, whether it's copper or fiber. So I agree with Micah is you know can really, there's no limit to it as long as you don't limit your amount of throughput that you're going to add to the riser. That's going down to the main distribution frame, the MDF.
Micah Shearer:
Yeah. And those choices also all have budgetary impacts. So if you end up putting so many cameras on your fifth, six, seventh floor that you need fiber in between your floors, that's obviously an additional cost. It's not that you can't do it, it's that you're going to have to pay for the infrastructure.
Calver Brewer:
You're going to want to take into consideration the switch at the bottom that's taking all that traffic from each floor. The more traffic we're bringing down towards the MDF, the more robust switch that we're going to want to have in place.
Ben Larue:
Makes total sense. Absolutely.
Gil Illescas:
Yeah. I mean we're in crazy days now where we have single mode fiber that can transmit humongous amounts of data. We have 10 gig copper, was never a thing when I was first coming up in this industry. That's a lot of data transmission for copper. So the pipe is there these days. It's just making sure that we do what's right as far as our calculations and we're not overcharging the customer for what's not needed.
Ben Larue:
Could you speak to, if a building is trying to retrofit and they've got existing pathways and cable networked floors, are we able to tie in to some of the switches that are already in place there? Or should we keep things separate still and just run a new trunk down? What are your guys' thoughts on that?
Calver Brewer:
I think the best practice is to create an isolated camera network. That's something that we strive for every time that we design a system is to make a fully autonomous isolated camera network. So it's good to use their pathways and try to mimic their pathways alongside of it, but use a different color cable or something like that to delineate cameras from data.
Micah Shearer:
You're going to run into limitations. If you're putting two cameras on each floor, maybe you'll get away with it, but it gets trickier because then there's a million questions about, well what switches do you have in place and what else are they being used for? And what other traffic is running through those? And who's managing those IP addresses? And who's managing configuring all of that? And you quickly get to a point where you really are better off establishing an independent network for your cameras.
Ben Larue:
And that's something we would always usually recommend, like Cal said, right? We try to at least all things considered.
Micah Shearer:
For sure.
Gil Illescas:
We can keep it secure better that way as far as keeping it separate and having our own security protocols and good password, strong passwords and stuff. The funny thing is though, we all know we've ran into this where it's completely opposite. We have a company out there that we work with closely that said 'No, we want the reverse, we want you completely on our network' because they want the control. And you know what? To be honest with you, I love it if they've got the throughput because that's always going to be better that they control their own network and devices and if they've got the throughput to handle all the data from the video, they will definitely have a better knowledge of their network and be able to take care of that.
Micah Shearer:
And that group has a very robust IT department -
Gil Illescas:
That's something you need.
Micah Shearer:
Who manages that and takes full ownership of that. Not every entity has that.
Gil Illescas:
Most don't.
Ben Larue:
And if you don't, would they lean on someone like us to do that work for them or somebody else?
Micah Shearer:
That's where you simplify your complexities by doing your dedicated camera network because then we know what's on it, we know what's all of the elements of it and then our support team can be that IT group to a large extent.
Ben Larue:
Cool.
Gil Illescas:
I mean we recommend sometimes those companies that do have maybe a tougher network to work with that they understand that they're not really clear on their network topology and how it all kind of interconnects. Sometimes getting a consultant involved or an IT company involved is very helpful. And then we work with that group and I think that meeting of the minds typically can work situations out pretty well.
Calver Brewer:
And then on down the line, speaking of the actual physical cabling and cameras, it just makes it so much easier to troubleshoot. It's just the cost of ownership goes down because you don't have to roll trucks and have people out there fishing on which patch panel the camera goes to and this, that and the other. If you have a fully isolated camera network, the troubleshooting time goes way down and it's easier to find issues and keep everything working the way it should.
Ben Larue:
That's a really good point. Really, really good point. Especially troubleshooting, figuring out what cameras what and on what floor and all that jazz. So definitely.
In regards to cameras and specific placements, again, I want to circle back because multi-floor buildings, you have to, there's a way to get to that floor usually stairs and usually an elevator of some sort. Do you have thoughts or opinions on where to place cameras in and around these areas? In stairwells do we place them on the landings or just at the entryway on each floor? Maybe we can start with stairwells and then we'll tackle elevators.
Micah Shearer:
We don't have opinions here.
Gil Illescas:
Yeah, take stairwells Cal. Yeah I'll take elevators.
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, stairwells, I mean definitely going to want to have cameras that catch your points of egress from floor to floor. So you're going to want to have a camera on, say you have your building and you have stairwells on either side. You're going to want to have a camera catching who's coming in either side and who's going out either side. So usually you want to have a camera in the stairwell to catch whatever's going on in the stairwell and you want to have a camera in your hallways to catch who's going in and out of the stairwells.
Ben Larue:
Makes sense. Cool. And the inside, the stairwell, those cameras, are they going to run back to the floor that they would attribute to or are they running back to a switch of their own?
Calver Brewer:
No, you can penetrate and go back from the stairwells into the hallways, back to those switches per floors. You're just going to want to make sure that every cable that's in a stairwell is in conduit and you use fire stop to get back into the hallway to contain, like Gil was saying earlier, plenum spaces versus riser spaces.
Ben Larue:
That's a good point. Good consideration. Gotcha. So stairwells, egress, egress on landings and such can run back to the same floor. That's awesome. Gil, you said you'll take elevators.
Gil Illescas:
Elevators are fun mostly because you don't have to do much.
Ben Larue:
They're definitely fun to ride.
Calver Brewer:
More fun to be on top of.
Gil Illescas:
Right. There's only so much we're allowed to do legally in elevators. Most elevators these days, depending on when they were built, they will have what they call traveler cable. Traveler cable is just a conglomerate of cables that really offers a solution for all kinds of different electronics and devices. Powers, low voltage, high voltage, it's all kind of built in there. Typically, there's network in there. In the old days it used to be coax for coaxial analog cameras, but now most of the time it does have a separate, a couple of separate things to use for network solutions, which is video surveillance, access control. Those are all tied into the traveler cable.
We tie our devices to that in the cart, the actual elevator cart. And then at the top, that's where everything kind of terminates, not allowed to go in those rooms. Typically, there's a D mark that you bring your cable to and the elevator will kind of take it from there, the elevator company. But that all gets worked out when you're working the job. But yeah, I mean cameras have been in elevators a long time now and it is a pretty normal thing and I'm still surprised when I go into elevators and I always look and see no cameras in an elevator shocks me these days because to me, it could be very, very standard. I think they all should have them.
Ben Larue:
I could definitely see why you would want them.
Gil Illescas:
For sure.
Ben Larue:
Totally makes sense. If I had a building and I wasn't sure if I had a travel cable or not, is there an easy way to find that out or?
Gil Illescas:
Yeah, if they have an elevator then they have to have an elevator maintenance company. It's the law. So the elevator maintenance company will have records of what they have in that traveler cable and they can also add and switch it out too. So if they don't have what they need, I'm not saying it's cheap, but it is something that they do if they have to do it.
Ben Larue:
Cool. So if they had some of the older analog set up and they maybe want to upgrade or change it to -
Gil Illescas:
Yeah, if they were out of cable or just didn't have one, then they would have to add it. But yeah, they do it all the time.
Ben Larue:
Awesome, awesome. So I mean, relatively straightforward.
Gil Illescas:
Yep. For us, it's not that bad. I don't know what it's like to run traveler cable. Doesn't sound fun in a 40-story building, but I'll let them have at it.
Ben Larue:
Right. No, that's great. Cool deal.
Micah Shearer:
Hey Gil and Kyle, something else that comes to mind with pathways and camera placements is that a lot of the multi-story buildings we're looking at are things like hotel rooms, apartment buildings or hotels, apartment buildings. And you have these challenges in your pathways because you can't run your pathways through individual apartments typically. How do you guys strategize in the face of that?
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, try to make sure that your main trunk line is going through the hallways. I guess when I'm speaking, I'm thinking of a hotel where you have your hallways and you have your rooms jutting out from the hallways. So you want to make sure that your main cable pathways are from the hallways and then jut out, make sure you have the doors and stuff covered. But usually on apartment buildings or stuff like that, they're not going to allow you to run cable through their rooms unless there's attic space or crawlspace above. Usually on the top floor you can do that, but any floor in between, you're not going to be able to run into apartments or anything like that.
Micah Shearer:
How do those considerations affect exterior cameras? Because I've seen some where we're sort of trying to strategize, we can go through the hallway and out here, but I want a camera all the way on the corner of the building and we end up using a lot of conduit. Are there other strategies that you guys have seen to work around that or is that pretty much the best solution most of the time?
Calver Brewer:
I think that's pretty much the best solution most of the time. Usually you're going to have a couple of limited areas where you can actually penetrate out and it usually ends up being a good bit of conduit on the outside of the building to get to the camera location you want to mount.
Gil Illescas:
They didn't build these buildings -
Micah Shearer:
With cameras in mind.
Gil Illescas:
The last 20 years with that in mind, they just didn't. Sometimes it's just cable wizardry, it's just trying to figure out best path.
Ben Larue:
And to that point -
Micah Shearer:
Can we get a definition for cable wizardry?
Gil Illescas:
Oh, I got to look one up now.
Calver Brewer:
It'll scroll across the bottom of the screen.
Ben Larue:
No kidding. To that point though, if a multi-story building has an analog based system, or all RJ 49 cable run, are you all able to reuse those pathways or is it something you don't really want to mess with?
Micah Shearer:
Define reuse the pathway. Maybe that is the place to start in answering that question.
Ben Larue:
Sure. Well can you reuse the cable?
Calver Brewer:
You can not reuse the cable but you can sort of use the cable as a pole string. So if you were to tape all the end of it with your new Cat 5 or Cat 6 or whatever you're using for your cameras, usually unless an area where you can't access it's zip tied or something like that, usually you can use it as upholstering to just rip and replace.
Micah Shearer:
I feel like we run into it being secured in a way that makes using it as a pole string difficult more frequently than we'd like.
Calver Brewer:
Absolutely.
Micah Shearer:
So I don't know that I would count on being able to do that just given code requires these things to be secured at intervals and so you're having to go through it through with a pair of scissors and what? Cut some zip ties every four to six feet.
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, I think that comes back to the cable wizardry thing though. I mean -
Micah Shearer:
There are ways around that.
Calver Brewer:
There are ways around it. It just depends. It differs from site to site, differs from floor to floor. It just depends on who ran that coax cable when the building was being built. Yeah, usually you're right Micah, they are secured every so often and you can't really use them as a pole string, but sometimes you can get away with doing it just depends on who ran the cable initially.
Micah Shearer:
Yeah, that's a good point. So basically if they didn't do it to code, you probably can.
Calver Brewer:
It's super easy.
Gil Illescas:
Oh, there's still a ton of cable out there not to code because it was installed way before there was code.
Micah Shearer:
That's a good point.
Gil Illescas:
So to Cal's point, there's a lot that's not tied down. There's a lot that's not in J Hooks, there's a lot just laying around out there. So that's the stuff we like. Because then we can just go yeah, we're good.
Ben Larue:
That's good stuff. But I'm also hearing definitely don't redo that cable. Let's get it replaced with some updated stuff.
Micah Shearer:
I mean there's some real janky stuff out there with falins and converters, but more often than not your cost of maintenance on that stuff is pretty high. Troubleshooting it is a complete pain and you end up spending all of this extra time, it's down again and I'm going to go jiggle it and mess with the connectors and it's really not worth it.
Ben Larue:
Good to know. I want to circle back to something we, especially Cal and Gil, you all mentioned earlier about core drilling. Please help me explain in English, because I'm just like oof. Way over my head.
Calver Brewer:
Core drilling, it's just making a penetration from floor to floor. It's just using a very large drill with a very large drill bit to be able to make a penetration that goes from floor to floor so you can run your cables downward.
Micah Shearer:
It's like making a corn hole board, but between floors.
Gil Illescas:
Yes. Nailed it.
Calver Brewer:
In the riser room.
Ben Larue:
That's great. Does it require any special permits or something to get done?
Gil Illescas:
It can.
Calver Brewer:
It can.
Gil Illescas:
Because sometimes you don't know what's in those floors. In between the floors.
Ben Larue:
Yeah, that was my worry.
Gil Illescas:
What did they put in the concrete? So there's companies that come out, that have these devices that can look if you're not sure. I mean it's one of the reasons why I mentioned in the beginning running it along some sprinkler piping and stuff because that that's going to be a pretty safe space. But if you're not around a spot where you already see cord floor, then you don't know. So they do have devices out there, companies that actually do this for a living where it's almost like an X-ray machine and they bring it out. They can look into the floor and kind of see if anything's in the way. Can't tell you what it is, but they can tell you something. Or if a buildings plans and inspects are done properly, sometimes that stuff's in the plans also.
Ben Larue:
Gotcha.
Gil Illescas:
But yeah, you can run into that, so something to be careful of.
Ben Larue:
Definitely. It's like call before your drill. Call before you dig almost.
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, exactly.
Ben Larue:
That's good stuff. And I'm assuming there's some type of sleeve or you'd probably want to put the cable and conduit or something in between the actual floor?
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, you're going to want to make sure that you're fire stops from floor to floor. So they make these special sleeves that you can put in the hole that you core drilled that actually have fire stop inside the sleeve. And so say they catch on fire, it automatically kind of chokes it off at the floor point. But most buildings, you're just going to see PVC from floor to floor and fire stop just to make sure.
Gil Illescas:
It's like play-doh.
Calver Brewer:
Yeah, just like play-doh.
Gil Illescas:
It's like red play-doh.
Ben Larue:
Oh nice.
Gil Illescas:
But it's fire rated. It works. You'll see if you go into these, you can go into these buildings probably now all around town and see any cabling going up through floors. You'll see exactly what Cal talked about. You'll see like 12 cables coming out with all this little in this little filled up hole of red caulking so to speak. And hey, works, got to keep people safe.
Calver Brewer:
Gil, tell me how many pairs of pants that you have that are covered with just [inaudible 00:29:02] I've got plenty.
Ben Larue:
That's great. And if you were trying to look for this material, you could buy it at an electrical supply store?
Calver Brewer:
Yeah. Home Depot anywhere.
Gil Illescas:
Yeah.
Ben Larue:
Same thing with that special cable that you needed, you can get that at the same place. Right? Because we need a different cable to go in between floors?
Micah Shearer:
Riser rated, yeah.
Ben Larue:
Gotcha.
Gil Illescas:
To be honest with you. Typically riser rated cables used for most applications that don't require PLIN, most applications just use riser rated and it works fine.
Ben Larue:
Gotcha.
Calver Brewer:
PLINs a little bit more expensive, obviously, but I guess the best way that I've always been told is riser, when it catches on fire, it burns. Plenum, when it catches on fire, it melts. That's what I've always been told. So yeah, it won't burn and pick carry in between floors. It'll just melt and drip. Kind of like can of wax.
Ben Larue:
Right. Wow. That's a good way to put it. Well that's awesome. Good way to end things. And that's a wrap.
Micah Shearer:
With your building -
Ben Larue:
I'm just kidding.
Micah Shearer:
Burning down.
Ben Larue:
Yeah, burning down and melting. No, that's really great info. What are we missing? What are we not thinking about? I feel like we've covered quite a bit.
Gil Illescas:
Yeah.
Micah Shearer:
Yeah. I'm drawing a blank.
Ben Larue:
Do as much planning as you can ahead of time.
Micah Shearer:
Yep.
Gil Illescas:
Yeah, that's a big one. Planning, planning, planning on several levels.
Micah Shearer:
Your infrastructure is more complex because of the, you having to think very, very carefully about multiple IDFs. I mean, in a typical installation you're looking at an MDF and one or two IDFs Max. When you're dealing with a monthly start building you're going to have as many as you have floors so that infrastructure conversation becomes a bigger piece.
Gil Illescas:
Yep. Agreed.
Ben Larue:
That makes sense. Makes sense.
Micah Shearer:
From there you just slap some cameras on the wall. You're good to go.
Calver Brewer:
Good to go.
Ben Larue:
And it's pretty straightforward from there, right? Oh, one thing I just thought of. So if we can envision a multi-story motel for a moment, sometimes they do or don't have a vending or ice machine in the middle of the building, which I could see as acting potentially as a IDF between floors, but say there isn't, and the multi-story motel, right so exterior faced rooms, would we be putting this equipment on the outside of the building in weatherproof enclosures, or how would that exactly work? I guess we might not need cameras on every floor?
Calver Brewer:
Definitely. I mean, it's a possibility I guess if you have literally no locked spaces per floor, but you're definitely going to want to try to bring your cable and keep your IDF in locations that can be locked and not tampered with. But very rarely do you ever find utilities on the outside of the building, then going in for your camera locations, especially at a motel.
Micah Shearer:
That's not a motel that still has utility rooms in fixed locations, so I would imagine you probably would not have to resort to a [inaudible 00:32:15] on the exterior of a building. Though that's always an option.
Ben Larue:
Sure. Okay.
Calver Brewer:
Usually those utility rooms are stacked.
Micah Shearer:
I mean this is probably a whole other series. But the other thing I see coming up a lot with hotels is the viewing considerations. You have a lot of cameras, viewing is complex. You have multiple different stakeholders who want to interact with the systems in different ways for different purposes and you end up having to work through a lot of variables there. But that's probably its own video.
Gil Illescas:
In the trenches, number eight.
Ben Larue:
That's right. Yeah, that's right.
Micah Shearer:
Yeah.
Ben Larue:
Absolutely. Good stuff. Awesome. Well I think that's it. I think we've covered all of our bases here on multi-story buildings. There's a lot of considerations, but the most important one is plan. Plan to the best of your ability, all the things you should be considering. Some of the top ones would definitely be data throughput, IDF, MDF locations, how things are connected, what the pathway is of data flow. So.
Gil Illescas:
Perfect.
Ben Larue:
Gil, Micah, Cal. Really appreciate all the links to some of the documents that we've created down in the description below. Thanks for tuning in today's episode and we'll catch you next week.
Gil Illescas:
See ya.