No Hiding On This Island Hideaway

Mar 1, 2007 12:00 PM

When Henry Morrison Flagler came to Palm Beach in the late 1800s, he discovered an idyllic, sun-drenched paradise replete with lush palm trees, sandy beaches and balmy ocean breezes. The wealthy railroad magnate envisioned the island as a private playground for affluent Northerners seeking respite from the harsh winter weather. The thought of a security and surveillance system then consisted primarily of the eyes of security guards.

Flagler's vision was realized in Palm Beach at what today is known as The Breakers Hotel and the 2 North Breakers Row Condominium. Now, visitors from around the world escape to this stunning island hideaway and frequent the members-only clubs, restaurants and designer fashion boutiques the town has to offer.

2 North Breakers Row residents have plenty to protect — they chose a Toshiba security system with the help of integrator CSI: Palm Beach.

Aging coax cabling, time-lapse VCRs and monochrome CCTV cameras and monitors installed 20 years ago have been replaced with a hybrid digital system, combining analog and IP technologies made up 40,000 feet of newly installed Cat-5e wiring, 42 Toshiba IK-65WDA color cameras, two Toshiba IK-DP30A PTZ domes, and four Toshiba Surveillix HVR 16-channel digital video recorders. The HVRs serve as the backbone of the video surveillance system.

“Breakers Row management realized that the CCTV system did not match the rest of the property, so they made the decision to upgrade,” says Rick Seymour, CEO of CSI: Palm Beach.

CSI: Palm Beach's team, led by Kurt Freedman and Chris Pickering, first removed the old coax from its conduit and fished through new Cat-5e cabling inside and outside the building, including new runs into the pool area, the guardhouse and the two parking lots. An IR motion detection system integrated into the Toshiba HVRs was also installed to protect the perimeter of the community from intruders.

The HVR simultaneously integrates IP and analog cameras. It records analog inputs at speeds up to 30 pps with resolutions as high as 720×480 using a proprietary MJPEG compression method that minimizes file size without compromising image quality. As a result, the Breaker's analog cameras can be remotely viewed on a LAN and recorded digitally.

“Because the Breakers is not a spread-out community, we only had to use the two PTZ cameras,” Seymour says.

The two Toshiba IK-DP30A domes that CSI: Palm Beach installed feature PTZ, IR imaging and 216X zoom, along with a “snap in” design that makes mounting and connecting faster. Each of the 16-channel HVRs has a 500GB hard drive for recording 3-4 weeks of video. Sixteen cameras populate three of the units while the last has only five, giving it room for expansion. Toshiba software, included with the HVR, allows the Breakers security staff access for camera configuration, viewing, incident searching and file exporting, along with remote upgrades and alarm monitoring. The HVR is also linked to the 14 IR zones around the Breakers perimeter. If a zone is activated, local cameras go to the site instantly and are recorded at their highest resolution and frame rate.

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© 2012 Penton Media Inc.

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