Reasons to use PTZ Cameras for large facility security surveillance

Large sites from shopping malls, stadiums, and critical infrastructures, to cities, have big open spaces, obstructions, and blind spots. They tend to have a high level of activity and traffic making things even more complicated. If you need real-time monitoring of your site or facility with open areas you need a surveillance solution with cameras for large facility security surveillance that will cover the whole space that is cost-effective yet sufficient enough to give you high-quality footage.  

Using fixed-lens cameras is not a feasible solution. You will require the use of a large number of long-distance security cameras and even in that case, you may have some important matters of interest you want to capture. You will need a surveillance solution that eliminates blind spots, works with poor lighting, gives alerts on activities of interest, and provides you with the visual information you need for further investigation of incidents.  

In this case, a combination of PTZ and panoramic cameras is the way to go. They are the resources ideal for security teams to cover a maximum area, monitor multiple activities, and add value.  Using PTZ and Panoramic cameras as key parts of your surveillance solution gives you special technology features that are reliable to monitor areas and provide details on incidents. 

Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) cameras are mostly used to provide security teams with real-time zoomed-in images. With pre-set tours on video analytics software, you automatically focus on certain areas and specific things or use an operator controller keyboard with a joystick for manual control. 

They provide detailed images allowing identification and classification of activities and objects, especially in high-risk facility areas. You can focus the camera on an area of interest to capture close-up and critical details of an activity of interest.

Panoramic cameras can be single-sensor, multisensor, and multidirectional-multisensor cameras. Their unique design advantage is that they can capture activities from a wide area without blind spots. With the multidirectional recording capability, you will have 360-degree real-time video footage of every corner from multiple angles and places in high-quality of your space from a single camera.

To get real value from a combination of PTZ and panoramic cameras you first need to understand the cameras, how they work, and their differences. Combining both cameras will give you maximum coverage and zooming capabilities in a single surveillance solution. 

To get a sense of how a combo can be of real value, let’s consider this scenario that may apply to a large shopping mall.  

Your security team is monitoring activities in a mall in real time. Inside the mall, there is an ATM cashpoint area you consider a high-risk area. A combination of a PTZ camera and a panoramic camera mounted on the ceiling is a good combination. You can capture all activities across the mall using the panoramic camera and while using the PTZ camera to patrol, point and zoom to closely monitor incidents next to the ATM area.

While modern PTZ and panoramic cameras may have different attributes, they are well equipped with smart features that can help satisfy various needs of your unique use cases and environment. 

Advanced PTZ cameras’ improved technology makes them effective at tracking objects of interest. You can configure your camera to auto-track smartly – humans, objects by size, and zones to help with tracking accuracy.

Because you have to consider nighttime surveillance, PTZ, and panoramic cameras have high-powered IR LEDs, with the dark-fighting capability to illuminate and capture objects in total darkness from a considerable distance.

Since your cameras will most likely be mounted high on top of buildings ceilings or poles to capture a wide area of interest, this feature stabilises PTZ and panoramic cameras to reduce visible vibration and blur.

When capturing surveillance video in areas with both bright light and dark shadows, HDR features in PTZ and panoramic cameras help in creating the best balance of lighting.

Multifocus panoramic cameras have evenly focused sensors to produce 360-degree panoramic video surveillance, no blind spot, covering the entire space to replace multiple conventional cameras. 

People and vehicles are the objects of interest in the majority of large facilities’ video surveillance. People and vehicle detection AI features can quickly be configured on installation. With smart detection, only people and vehicle activities will serve as event triggers, while swaying vegetation or animal activities in the scene will not trigger such events. This helps reduce both false alarms as well as the time and effort taken for camera configuration.

You can integrate and link both cameras to have a combined advantage of the PTZ camera and panoramic camera to capture the whole picture and details at the same time. With this feature, you can enable the PTZ channel to follow the panoramic channel pan. By linking them together you can locate and capture targets faster and more accurately.

With your VMS (video management software) you can use AI video analytics to extract object features accurately from the footage captured by your cameras. This is very useful for incidence analysis or when you want to get business intelligence (BI) of your facility operations from your surveillance system. 

Combining the two cameras’ different capabilities can go a long way to meeting and responding to your complex large facility security needs with a solid security solution while helping you reduce the total cost of ownership, and increase return on investment. 

When looking for video surveillance in Kenya you will most likely look for either Hikvision or Dahua security cameras. These two security systems powerhouses provide a wide range of PTZ solutions with features for any size of the project you have in mind. 

Both Hikvision and Dahua have entry-value cameras designed for cost-efficiency, mid-level cameras for small pro-projects, and high-end cameras suitable for large projects. 

According to Hikvision Kenya, their recently released TandemVu PTZ Cameras are equipped with Hikvision’s next-generation design that integrates multiple lenses in one security camera to provide users with the big picture and clear details in a single view. This way, users will be able to see everything in their facility and get situational awareness all the time.

If you are wondering where to start, our CCTV experts can help you to get equipped and implement the right combination of surveillance cameras and integration of technology to support your desired outcomes, regardless of your facility type. 

With the many different options for PTZ and panoramic cameras available, we have only touched on only a few camera features and types here. If you want to learn more about any of these features, or IP network cameras in general, you can contact us anytime for a chat with our experts.