In The Trenches Video Series

A PTZ with a built in fixed lens camera!

In this episode we'll cover the Watchkeeper Dual Vision PTZ. This unique PTZ features a commercial grade, long range PTZ and a fixed lens camera in one! The PTZ allows long range operations to give detail, while the fixed lens provides context to a scene. This combination fixes one of the most common issues with PTZs, "It was pointed in the wrong area".

Our speakers today are:

• > Matthew Nederlanden
• > Ben LaRue
• > James Campbell
• > Michael Bell

Matthew Nederlanden:

I think what James is really pointing out here is, does anybody remember the first Mission Impossible movie where they're trying to break into somewhere and they've got that camera that's doing this going back and forward and they figure out how to run through the building where the camera never sees them because when they're running over here, when it's over there and then they're running over here when it's over there and they're just evading all of the footage, this will never happen with this sort of camera. This absolutely prevents this sort of problem.

Ben LaRue:

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of In The Trenches Round Table. Today's a product focused episode. Excited to jump in. This one, we're going to be covering the watchkeeper dual vision, so of course we have our awesome panel of experts with us again today.

James Campbell:

How are you?

Matthew Nederlanden:

Hello. Hey, everybody.

Ben LaRue:

Excited for them to be joining us and we're going to break down the video like this. We're first going to cover what even is a dual vision, then going to talk about who should be interested in this type of a product. Then we'll cover some placement in use cases because it's a little bit unique and then we will get our panel's. Final thoughts on this camera specific product? Let's jump in. So section one, what is a Watchkeeper dual vision? Who wants to take it?

James Campbell:

Yeah, I can take that one. So if you're not familiar with our already very popular watchkeeper, PTZ. It's kind of a medium sized commercial grade PTZ. It's got long range lenses, long range ir, and it's an awesome camera and basically we made it better. We added a fixed lens camera right on the top of it there, which comes in handy for a lot of situations we're going to talk about, but it allows you to capture both a wider image and use the PTZ to get details and we'll cover more in terms of how that all works, but that's kind of the gist of it.

Ben LaRue:

Gotcha. So if I'm understanding, you're saying it's fixed lens in combination with the PTZ, are these two different cameras or what?

James Campbell:

It's like we duct tape the fixed lens camera on top of it. It's not duct taped, but yeah, it's one camera and yeah, it's even one cable.

Ben LaRue:

Interesting.

Matthew Nederlanden:

One device with two lenses.

Ben LaRue:

Makes

Michael Bell:

Sense. Yeah, I like that. That's a better way of saying it.

James Campbell:

Better than duct tape. Yeah.

Ben LaRue:

I'm following, I think I'm following duct tape or not, but why a fixed lens? Why are we adding on a fixed lens to the PTZ?

Michael Bell:

Well, it's a wide angle fixed lens, so it's the one camera that is not going to move. It's going to be looking over the area and then if you need more detail or if you want to get closer in on something, you can use the PTZ for that portion of it.

Matthew Nederlanden:

So basically what you're saying is sort of the construction of the device. The PTZ still moves, but the fixed lens camera is going to stay pointing exactly where you mounted the camera, and so you've got a sort of stable view and then you can zoom around, but you're no longer worried that when I zoom in and go look at that license plate over here, I somehow missed what's happening around me.

Ben LaRue:

Gotcha. So yeah, this really solves one of the biggest pains it sounds like about PTCs.

Michael Bell:

Oh yeah, whatever the PTC is not looking at, you have no idea what's

Matthew Nederlanden:

Going on, you're not recording it, it's optical zoom. So when you zoom in and instead of seeing this big screen of us and you only see this little tiny section over here, you're not recording any of this stuff that's happening out of the frame. So it solves that particular problem.

Ben LaRue:

Yep. Gotcha. I'm following, but James, you mentioned something a minute ago. I want to circle back to you. You said, I think you said it only takes one camera or one cable?

James Campbell:

Yeah, so even though it's got essentially two cameras on it, it's got the PTZ and then the fixed lens, it actually only uses one cable, which is another really great feature of this because a lot of people try to replicate something like this already, and that's kind of something we've been preaching for a while. If you've got a PT Z, you sort of need an overlook camera to not just covering the area that the ptz is not looking at at the time. We've been kind of talking about that for quite a while, and that requires running two cables or anything like that. But this camera, you only got one cable, which is going to reduce your labor and installation time quite a bit. So it's another advantage of this model

Ben LaRue:

For sure. So two lenses, one cable, but how many channels does it take up on the NVR?

Michael Bell:

It'll take up two. Yeah, each camera will be its own channel on the recorder.

Matthew Nederlanden:

Yeah, you still have different video feeds. You've got two video feeds coming out. They're being recorded on different channels. You're going to search in one of them and display one of 'em and then pull footage from one of 'em or both of 'em if you wanted to. But

Ben LaRue:

Are there any other differences between this watchkeeper, the dual vision one and the normal watchkeeper that we should know about besides course the dual cleanses?

James Campbell:

Yeah, I think the first one comes to mind is our regular watchkeeper all infrared night vision, which means you sort of get a black and white image on this because we've got two separate cameras essentially into one package. We've got white light built into the fix lens cameras, gives about a hundred feet of white light around the area, so even at night you should be getting a color image out of that fixed lens. And then the PTZ still has that long range 300 feet of infrared coverage. So that's definitely a unique feature on that one too, in terms of if you need to see things at color at night, this is a really great option.

Ben LaRue:

That's good to know. Alright, great. Then we'll move on to section two, which will cover who should be interested in this camera or product. Anybody want to start off by taking that?

Michael Bell:

I want one.

Ben LaRue:

Yeah, thanks. Start

Matthew Nederlanden:

Off

Ben LaRue:

Division, you get a watchkeeper dual vision, you get one.

Matthew Nederlanden:

Anybody with? I think a parking lot would be the one that sort of jumps out to me anytime you have a parking lot, so what's one of the biggest uses for APTZ? I want to zoom in on a license plate and let's take a use case. Somebody has stolen something and they're in your parking lot and they're going to their car and you're trying to zoom in on the license plate. You want to be able to identify who this is so you can make a police report, but now you're not watching what they're doing while they're going to their car. Or in another case, let's say they get in the car and they start driving away, you're trying to zoom in on the license plate. What if they're doing some other crime damaging additional vehicles on the way out or getting into a fight with somebody?

There's this potential to sort of miss the greater context when you zoom in on a detail, and that's most common I think in a parking lot where you want to zoom in on that PTC, get a really great shot or zoom in on that license plate, get a really great shot of the license plate. But it is true in any instance where you're going to zoom in to that degree. So you get a big indoor space colleges, universities, stadiums, you want to zoom in on a person who is causing a problem. Well what are you seeing around them? Not as much anymore. So you've got this need to still be able to follow what's happening around you and not lose your situational awareness while also zooming in on detail.

James Campbell:

Yeah, I think I can break that down. Almost like the fixed lens provides contact contact, so that's going to be sort the entire scene. PTZ can provide detail. I think another one very similar to parking lots in a lot of ways is a car dealership. This has been a very popular camera for our car dealership customers because they can have the wider look at their parking lot and then use the PTZ to look at entranceways or hotspot areas where they know they've had issues or even places where maybe they're more valuable cars are and get both. Again that context, the scene from start to finish usually and then details. So car dealerships are definitely probably one of our most popular ones so far for this model for that reason.

Michael Bell:

And schools too, especially those dropoff areas, you're getting a wide view of where everybody's going into a vehicle or out of a vehicle, but then if you need to, you can also get up close on a license plate if need be and stuff like that.

James Campbell:

I think with the PTV too, sorry, one thing with the ptz I would say too, you don't necessarily have to zoom it in 300 feet away or anything like that. Sometimes just the object might be 50 to a hundred feet away and you just need more detail. I mean, one that they have issues with dumpsters and the dumpster is 7,500 feet away, but they really want good detail when somebody's near that dumpster and so they're not necessarily needing to focus on the most tiny detail there. They're just using that additional PTZ as almost like a very flexible zoom lens in a lot of ways. You might not even be using the PTZ functions in some cases of it. They kind of stick it and forget it and then it is just a flexible zoom lens option. Of course, they can decide to move it whenever they want to, but that's another thing to consider with any industry.

Ben LaRue:

I was just going to say that we were working with the scrap yard a couple months ago and they have a building and then a very big scrapyard, but they wanted a camera to zoom in on their scales and the place that they were going to mount the camera to zoom in on the scales was a place that already a camera was to cover the side of the building and they didn't want to have too many cameras hanging off that same corner of the building for structural reasons. And so they were actually able to replace the one fixed lens with this dual vision and were able to get both jobs done with just a second camera. So a good example of that being a use case there, right?

Matthew Nederlanden:

Yeah, I would bring up another use case as well. Anytime where you have more than one operator that is potentially using the PTZ, you can have sort of conflicts. Let's say that Ben and I are both security operators for a big manufacturer and we're having a security threat. There's the potential that we both try to control the PTZ at the same time and don't get what we want. There's the potential that Ben was controlling the PTZ and pointed it to follow somebody to the left and now somebody's going to the right, and in fact, two people. There's a bunch of scenarios like that where having multiple operators can be great in a security environment but can also have some challenges and this solves one of those challenges in the same way that it solves that sort of challenge. If there's two assailants and you didn't know about the second one yet, that greater context is really helpful in these sort of scenarios.

Ben LaRue:

So I think this is actually a pretty good segue into section three, which is placement and use cases of this type of camera. And we've covered a few, but did anyone want to cover any other specific use cases?

James Campbell:

Yeah, I can even talk about how we use it here at SW at our headquarters. So we've got the watchkeeper dual vision that's sort of looking over our greater area of our parking lot. The fixed lens is seeing the parking lot area, and then usually we have our PTZ kind of focused down the entrance way, so in the exit way, so when vehicles come and go, we can tell who's coming, who's going and even get license plates off of them as they exit for us too. So that allows us to both get the greater context of our parking lot in case anybody goes and tries to break into a car or something like that, or anything that potentially happen with the cars as they're kind of parked. And then the PTZ allows us to get identifiable details. So that's just one that comes to mind my mind straight up.

Ben LaRue:

Definitely. Definitely. And have no fear too. You don't have to be a rocket science or network specialist to be able to configure this stuff. Michael and his team are more than happy to help any step along the way.

Michael Bell:

Absolutely.

James Campbell:

I think you can give us a call. This is a unique camera, so this is kind of a new concept within the industry. I think this will be maybe five years. All PTCs will sort of have something like this maybe, or at least most of 'em I think. But I think this is a new concept. So if you're kind of planning out your, what's the best way of securing my facility with these? Talk to us. We'll walk you through where you'd place it, you'd kind of set that up. What's realistic, what's not realistic for that too. Now, you don't want to bite off too much with one camera still, but this obviously gives you more flexibility potentially than any PTZ we've ever sold before.

Michael Bell:

And there is a little bit of manual setup with it being two channels out of one cable. So support is always here to help get that set up for those who don't necessarily understand what that means or if they just need help to get in the right direction. We're here to help out with that.

Ben LaRue:

Definitely. Was there anything else that we wanted to cover during this section here in placement in use cases of the camera?

James Campbell:

Yeah, I think one I would bring up again too is our PT Zs can also be put on something called a patrol, which means that it can move across a facility and you could do it to where it's panning across the parking lot and maybe zooming in on different areas and it just is doing that all day. Now, one of the problems with doing that on a traditional PT Z is that if you're looking over here again and the incident happens over here and you just don't capture on the PTZ, you didn't capture it right? The advantage here is that again, you've got that fixed lens contact camera, so even if by chance it's going over here, you get their face on this one and then it goes over here and then they smash the car while it's pointing over here, just by chance you've already got the scene because you're going to see them smashing the car in the fixed lens one most likely, and then you've already got their face from the PT Z. So you can again, combine those two pieces of evidence and have a very good look at who did it, what they did, and from start to finish usually with the fixed lens and PTZ aspects. So being able to do that again makes patrols a lot more useful than they were before. I think for the most part, we put a lot of caveats on patrols for that very reason, but now that we have two cameras built into one, it's again a lot more feasible as a solution in some cases.

Matthew Nederlanden:

I think what James is really pointing out here is, does anybody remember the first Mission Impossible movie where they're trying to break into somewhere and they've got that camera that's doing this going back and forward and they figure out how to run through the building where the camera never sees them because when they're running over here, when it's over there and then they're running over here when it's over there and they're just evading all of the footage, this will never happen with this sort of camera. This absolutely prevents this sort of problem. And so when you have a patrol that's moving back and forward, it's never going to appear like nothing is happening because somebody timed their movements for the way that it's moving or anything even more accidental than that accidental stuff like that happens all the time. I mean, you have times where when you have multiple operators where one person points it at the left and looks at the stairway and totally forgets to move it back and you've got zoomed in on trashcan for three months, we've all seen that on somebody's surveillance system where they forgot to put it back in home position.

And so this is absolutely going to solve this sort of problem and it's a great camera for dealing with that sort of issue.

James Campbell:

I think one that just popped in my mind while you were mentioning that is one question we get, especially for huge, huge areas. I think one was like a solar farm we were working with and they didn't have the budget necessarily to put cameras at every single instance where they should have with the fencing area and everything like that, and patrols were sort of part of that conversation as a potential solution to get around that and kind of overlapping ptz. So when they were moving left and right, there was literally very few gaps in that coverage. This would take another level. You would have the longer range with the PT Zs covering that fence area, and then the fixed lenss pointed that way too could get them if they end up going over that fence too. So you have almost two layers of perimeter defense with a camera like this as well. That would be a really good solution for somebody like that these days,

Matthew Nederlanden:

And two layers of defense in one device and only one cable you've got to run. So this is a really economical solution for both of those layers of defense.

James Campbell:

That's kind of my last one I can think of at the moment, but I'm sure it's limitless. Let us know if you have ideas.

Ben LaRue:

Definitely. Definitely. Absolutely. So that'll push us right to the final section, which is our final thoughts. I dunno if there's a certain order you all want to go in, please jump all at once, but let's go through final thoughts on the dual vision.

Michael Bell:

Yeah, I'll go. I think it's a great solution for a lot of people. I've always thought to look at APTZ as an add-on to your system. So have your fixed lens cameras and just add APTZ into your fixed lens setup. This kind of takes care of both of that. So you got the fixed lens already there, you got the PTZ already there. It's done. Just remember it takes two channels. So

James Campbell:

Yeah. I'll add one last thing to it too, is that one cable, don't sleep on that part. We know if you're looking to either install it yourself or you're getting professional installation, labor prices are higher than they've ever been and sometimes even getting the help to get this is something we hear from our customers quite a bit. Even getting the help to run the cables is more difficult than it's ever been, and so this allows you to reduce the labor cost. You're only running one cable of course, but also it takes less time to get this installation up and running. You want your system up and running as soon as possible instead of having to run two cameras and set up two cameras and everything. You're setting up one. And so that's something I would definitely emphasize as well.

Ben LaRue:

Nice. An awesome, all purpose and specialized camera all in one, right? Yep. Love it. Heck yeah. And that'll wrap us up for the Dual Vision watchkeeper product focused episode, so this week's in the trenches. Thanks so much for joining. If you made it to this part in the video, thanks for sticking through us the entire way. Make sure to check out all the links to description below. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, make sure to reach out to us as well. All of our contact info will be done there. And until next time, thanks so much for tuning in again and we'll see you next week. Thanks guys.