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AUBURN HILLS, MI – The Palace of Auburn Hills Michigan, home to the 2003 NBA Champion Detroit Pistons is renowned for superb acoustics and excellent unobstructed viewing. It is a “world class” sports and entertainment venue. Built in August 1988 by the current owner, Bill Davidson, The Palace is winner of numerous “Arena of the Year” awards. CCTV System Upgrade Tom Meier, Security Director for The Palace, has the responsibility of providing for the safety and protection of all personnel and patrons of this 20,000 seat venue. Closed circuit video (CCTV) plays a major role in security at The Palace. Tom, who regularly monitors technological advances in the area of CCTV, recently decided to investigate upgrading The Palace's system. He called upon the expertise of local security equipment experts to accomplish this task and ultimately awarded the contract for upgrading the CCTV system to Guardian Alarm of Southfield, Michigan an established, diversified, full line security company. From Analog to Digital Video Recording One of the primary objectives of the CCTV system upgrade was to convert from an analog recording system to digital. In The Palace facility, the advantages would be far-reaching. Changing over to digital recording however, proved more difficult than anticipated. The analog recorders were more tolerant of low video signal levels. The replacement digital video recorders, on the other hand, proved to be much more selective than the analog units. Input signals attenuated due to long coax runs, resulted in diminished video, faded or lost color signals and video sync problems. Guardian Alarm was not the installer of the original CCTV system and documentation relating to cable routing details was either missing or non-existent. As a result Jim Sandberg, Project Manager for Guardian Alarm was having difficulty identifying and following cable runs for 168 cameras. In addition, coax trays were full with no room to add more runs, making cable tracing difficult to impossible.
From Coax to UTP Jim Sandberg weighed the alternatives and decided his best solution was to convert video transmission from coax cable to unshielded twisted pair (UTP). From his experience, Jim was convinced that this would correct the video quality problems, simplify the system and drastically reduce the amount of cable in the trays, freeing up sufficient space for future system expansion. Jim contacted Nitek. NITEK for UTP Transmission To solve the problem of tracing the coax cables from each of the cameras through eight IDF closets and back to the head-end, Jim designed a hybrid system combining the existing coax and a UTP solution from Nitek. The coax was left in place from the cameras to the IDF closets. From there, using Nitek short and long range transmitter and receiver hubs, he transitioned to 25 and 50 pair UTP cables, which were routed to the Equipment Room at the Head-end. He wasn’t sure what UTP transmission equipment he would require for the various cable runs, so he called NITEK and discussed the project with their engineers. Jim requested on-location assistance to verify the UTP design and to determine the correct equipment for UTP transmission at each of the IDF closets and at the Head-end. Carl Palash, Regional Sales Manager for NITEK, flew to Auburn Hills and met with Jim Sandberg at the Palace. They walked the facility and Carl assisted with the selection of the best and most cost-effective NITEK solution for the project.
The NITEK Equipment Solution Cable runs covered a range from short lengths up to several thousand feet. It was decided that 4 channel UTP mini-hub passive transmitters were the best choice for the IDF closets. They operate with any of the Nitek UTP receiver products for cable lengths up to 3,000 feet (914 meters) and provide easy mounting and connection. Cameras were powered over 16 gauge wires from the IDF, using conventional multi-channel 24V power supplies. At the headend; Nitek 32 channel UTP active and passive receivers were used, depending upon the cable length. Model VH3251 active hub receivers were used for the majority of runs, which were 750 to 1,500 feet (228 to 457 meters). The model VH3200 rack chassis, which accepts up to 4 of the 8 channel cards, was configured with 2 passive 750 foot (228 meters) (VB41x8) card, 1 active 1,500 foot (457 meters) (TR515x8) card and 1 active 3,000 foot (914 meters) (TR560x8) card to cover short, medium and long range runs. Video outputs from the NITEK receivers were connected via coax directly into the DVR inputs. This combination of equipment proved effective not only from a cost standpoint, but most importantly from an operational standpoint. The problems with diminished quality video displays, faded or lost color and video sync problems were eliminated. A Successful Installation Jim Sandberg says “since we were uncertain of the cable distance from camera to IDF, the Nitek DIP switch technology afforded us the flexibility to compensate for the total unknown distance of coax plus UTP to the headend”. Tom Meier now has an upgraded CCTV system for The Palace with better video quality, detail and color from all cameras, future expansion capability, improved serviceability and a well documented cable infrastructure. Video Hubs with DAT Technology
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The ease of installation and set-up for The Palace project was made possible by the unique Digital Adjustment Technology (DAT) design of the Nitek active receivers. This technology is utilized in all of Nitek’s active receivers. This circuitry, unique to Nitek receivers, provides selectable dip switches for each video channel which amplify and equalize the video loss based upon the length of cable used and guarantees 1 Volt P/P video. This is especially important when the receiver outputs are connected to Digital Video recorders, as they were in the Palace project. For more information on the advantages of DAT technology, or for technical support in a design requirement, call Nitek. For complete product information and equipment specifications visit the links below.