CCTV Camera Maintenance
How regularly you check and perform maintenance on your CCTV system is up to you, though it’s advisable to check it on a regular basis and if you notice any disturbance or problems you should address CCTV camera installer immediately.
Some CCTV Camera systems are more complex than other systems, though there are usually three parts to a CCTV system – the camera and DVR/NVR (the control equipment) and the cables and wiring. Some important points of CCTV camera maintenance guide:-
DVR/NVR and CCTV Camera
- Ensure that camera focus and iris are adjusted properly or not
- Clean the camera, lens and Rack Panel housing to remove dust
- Ensure that focus is adjusted to field view of cctv camera also with any recent layout changes
- If PTZ camera, Use the control to check pan tilt and zoom focus
Control Equipment
- Check Control Panels, Monitors and other equipment like power supply also remove dust
- Ensure LED TV/Monitor Brightness and Contrast is all ok or not
- Most important part of the system to Ensure that system is taking recording correctly as per the time zone
- Check the recorded footage for distortion and other problems
- Ensure the CCTV recorded footage is stored correctly in Hard Disk
- Check the hard Disk status is it normal or abnormal
- Check for loose connections of CCTV camera cables and power supply, etc.
Cables and Wiring
- Check CCTV camera cables and wiring for loose connections
- Ensure cables and wiring aren’t affected by the power cables or any other elements
- Ensure that insulation/protection is ok in cables
- Check for wear and tear around the CCTV Camera system
As mentioned above, how regularly you choose to check and clean your CCTV equipment is up to you, though to be on the safe side, the more frequently is like check once in a week.
Storing CCTV Footage
You’ve most likely seen films in which the police go to a place of where any incident happen before to check the CCTV footage and more often than not they’ve been deleted and rerecorded or something along those lines.
Moreover, the days of VCR recordings are well and truly behind us and with Digital video recordings of your business are presented with much number of options to record consider with the footage recording of CCTV camera security systems, including the following three options to consider for your workplace.
- Surveillance Hard Drive
This is the most common way of storing the footage your CCTV camera system records and for most businesses this is fine. There’s a notable drawback to storing CCTV camera footage on your hard drive which is that it’s easy to tamper with.
You can also increase the Hard Drive with 2TB, 3TB, 4TB etc. to store the more CCTV camera footage inside the Digital Video Recorder (DVR) itself and easily manage the footage by the DVR.
If you going with this option then ensure that your DVR and Monitor setup is kept out of the sight to the theft or vandalism.
- Cloud Storage
This involves taking the CCTV Camera footage you’ve recorded and uploading it to a Cloud Storage platform or Google Drive.
The standard resolution for CCTV camera systems is 1024×768 image resolution which is one frame every ten seconds. Over the course of One week this adds up to roughly 3 ½ GB – 12 KB x 86400/2 x 7 = 3.5 GB – which is easy to store if you use data compression methods. There are many different software to upload the CCTV Camera footage under the motion detection equipment.
- Offsite Storage
This is the best secure method to store the recorded CCTV Camera footage because its offline and therefore it can’t be tampered but it is very much difficult and expensive due to complexity.
Your CCTV system is an important tool for a number of reasons – crime prevention, insurance purposes, etc. – and must be maintained regularly and the footage it records stored securely.