Vegas In China

Dec 1, 2007 12:00 PM

Macao resort security includes biometrics, digital video and secure casino currency

The Venetian Macao Resort Hotel, a property of Las Vegas Sands Corp., is located on the Cotai Strip in Macau, China, a development of hotel and resort properties in Asia. It is currently the largest building in Asia at 10.5 million sq. ft., including 3,000 all-suite rooms, 1.2 million sq. ft. of meeting, convention and exhibition space, a 1,800-seat Cirque du Soleil theater, a 15,000-seat arena and 1 million sq. ft. of retail space. It opened to the public on Aug. 28, outfitted with security devices to cover the complex.

The 12,000 employees of the resort will be authenticated by Bioscrypt's VisionAccess 3D Face Readers, and Bioscrypt's V-Smart fingerprint readers will control access to restricted areas. Bioscrypt, an enterprise access control solution provider based in Sunnyvale, Calif., offers VisionAccess, a hands-free biometric solution that authenticates users in under a second by matching the structure of the person's face against their enrolled template. The VisionAccess readers function by shining an invisible near infrared light grid pattern on the user's face. A camera then takes a picture of the resulting distortions in the grid pattern and makes a match against a template. Turnstiles ensure that only one employee enters at a time, eliminating tailgating. The Venetian Macao has deployed 13 VisionAccess devices that are located at the front entrance for employees entering new shifts.

The V-Smart fingerprint readers are placed in secure areas of the casino. Fifty readers will read employee fingerprints, which are checked against a template stored on their smart card. The V-Smart readers use Bioscrypt's patented core pattern-matching algorithm. The algorithm uses a part of the whole fingerprint pattern and can make accurate matches even with worn or scratched fingerprints in under a second.

The products were integrated by Solution Expert Technology, Hong Kong, which develops access control software for both Chinese and English users. “The size of the Venetian Macao deployment demonstrates Bioscrypt's ability to scale up and accommodate a large number of users without creating bottlenecks,” says Robert M. Douglas, Bioscrypt's president and CEO.

Also a part of the Venetian's security setup are high security gaming chips from Gaming Partners International Corp. (GPI), Las Vegas. GPI, a provider of casino currency including low- and high-frequency RFID chips, is providing nearly two million chips for all 870 tables in the casino. The chips include security features such as individual high-security holograms, ultra-violet pigments, Laser Lock infrared pigments and see-through inserts.

“Our exclusive security features and high-quality standards combined with tightly controlled production facilities and procedures guarantee the best possible level of security and integrity when it comes to the supply of casino currency,” says Christophe Leparoux, GPI International sales and marketing manager.

Forming what one might call the biggest digital recorder in the casino world, Dallmeier Electronic, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., will provide the resort with a complete surveillance system consisting of more than 1,100 cameras (693 fixed and 422 dome cameras) to monitor the casino, restaurants and the hotel.

Las Vegas Sands Inc.'s video specialists decided against a centralized recording solution and chose to achieve data security and availability as well as cost-effectiveness with a decentralized system because it doesn't require peripherals and network components.

“Given the size and scope of the project, the Dallmeier casino team designed a fully digital matrix system that provides high-resolution real-time video combined with the best possible data security and decentralized recording,” says Andy Birchner, vice president of sales for Dallmeier USA.

In the system, recorded data is written to two hard disks by mirrored recording. The standard hard disk stores seven days of recording and a second hard disk stores a day's data and acts as an emergency backup so that the current day's data is available, even if a hard disk fails. The operating system is stored separately on a flash-ROM chip and runs independently of the hard disks. Even if both hard disks fail, the DIS-1S server is still able to stream video pictures to the 12 security workstations.

Camera management as well as picture transmission, picture recording and picture analysis are achieved using a digital virtual matrix. Each of the 12 workstations has three composite analog video monitors with a casino control graphical user interface including the Dallmeier's PView software, and an integral site plan offers a further graphical operating interface. Staff can also choose to use the keyboard with joystick and/or jog shuttle for camera management, camera switching and picture analysis. Special OPC servers (object-linking and embedding [OLE] for process control), which can be adapted to suit the customer's requirements, ensure that all separate components communicate and work easily with each other.

In all, 1,117 DIS-1S streaming servers and MPEG-2 recorders from Dallmeier will look after the encoding and the simultaneous local recording of picture data, causing no discernable difference between the quality of the live and recorded pictures. The DIS-1S has replay tools such as forward, backward and slow motion (with different speeds for both), or single shot replay forwards and backwards for exact analysis. It is vital in monitoring scenes with fast action — such as hand movements involved in positioning and counting on the casino gaming table — that details be reviewed precisely.

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