Plan Your CCTV Strategy: Map Out Your Floor Plan, Use and Budget
If you determine that you need to invest in some CCTV (closed-circuit television) technology for your home or business, you will need to do a lot more than heading to the store and simply buying a box of equipment. As a matter of fact, this is the number one mistake novices to the world of CCTV technology make once they decided that it is time to purchase a system – they fail to plan their CCTV strategy. You may now wonder what all is involved in planning your CCTV strategy – map out your floor plan, use and budget before heading to the store! Here are the top five tips on how to plan your CCTV strategy correctly.
1. Consider your purposes.
Are you trying to deter crime, or do you want to record it in action? Perhaps you want to do a little bit of both? If so you will need to consider wired as well as wireless cameras. The former are obvious and serve as a great deterrent, while the latter are much more covert and therefore work best for those situations when you want surveillance to be discrete.
2. Consider any legal issues.
Once you have decided on the purposes for your CCTV system, consult an attorney of private investigator on any legal issues involving digital video recording devices and their storage. If you live or do business in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, South Dakota, or Utah, you are expressly forbidden from installing hidden cameras in any area that a reasonable person could consider a private area, such as restrooms, toilets, changing rooms, locker rooms, showers, or bedrooms. Furthermore, employees – especially union workers – have the right to privacy in areas they frequent on their off hours, such as lunch rooms, break rooms, smoking lounges, and anywhere else where you permit your employees to remain when their await their shift to begin.
3. Consider your floor plan.
Once you have the usage squared away and the legalities taken care of, now is the time to find the floor plan for your home or business. If you do not have the original one, simply go ahead and create a new one. The goal of mapping out your floor plan is to find areas that may need special treatment – perhaps they represent special security risks – such as blind corners, dark alleyways, or any other outside feature that may attract vandals or thieves. Similarly, you will also want to map out the inside to see where your areas of security concern should be. For example, when you operate a store, you will almost always have an area in your venue where theft is more likely to occur – perhaps it is because of the way the shelves are organized, or simply because the corner appears “safe” for would be shoplifters. By mapping out the venue you will be able to install cameras in such strategic places to discourage shrinkage. Of course, there is another reason for mapping out your place: you will want to be able take a look at the lighting conditions before you purchase any hardware. After all, some cameras have different lighting needs, and if one corner is especially dark, you will want to make sure that you have a camera that can handle it!
4. Consider your budget.
Now that you know why you want your CCTV system and also which components you would ideally like to include, you will need to come to terms with your available budget. If the sky is the limit, it will serve you well to purchase the latest technology. If you do have a budget to which you will have to adhere, it is important that you buy the best technology that you need, not necessarily everything that you want. To this end it was very beneficial to separate your needs from your wants early on in the planning process!
5. Consider where to buy.
When you decide on the actual brand name, try to stay local. In other words, if you need customer service or technical support, you want to have a company that is local and where a representative will be able to come out and help you on short notice. Even if another competitor’s product is less expensive – if you cannot get local technical support, the money you saved when purchasing the equipment will do nothing when compared to the money you will spend on long distance calls and on the independent technicians you may need to hire to get your system up and running.
