News

Are your retail CCTV systems being checked?

CCTV is an integral part of retail loss prevention, security, and health and safety, and modern CCTV systems are powerful devices which store many days, weeks, or months of unattended footage.

Fit and forget?

Digital CCTV systems are often seen as a ‘fit and forget’ solution, and in an ideal world they would be, but the fact that they operate with very little human intervention can also mean that it could be many days, weeks, or months before any problems are noticed, and often only after an incident has occurred.

There are plenty of things that can reduce the operational performance of a CCTV system at any time – such as cameras becoming faulty or being tampered with, the hard disk storage failing, alarm connections coming loose, and even the clock loosing accuracy.

Supplement your maintenance contract

Even in this digital era, when many CCTV systems are connected to networks, maintenance contracts are still based on one or two site visits a year from the installer to ensure that the systems are working effectively, but this can leave a large part of the year when your stores are vulnerable if there is a failure.

Manual checking can be a time consuming and mundane task, especially across multiple sites. This is where CheckMyCCTV can help by running multiple operation checks on all your CCTV systems every hour of every day, alerting you when any of issues are detected so they can be resolved quickly with reduced downtime and maintenance costs.

CheckMyCCTV is used to monitor thousands of retail stores to reduce the risk of faulty CCTV systems, contact us at sales@nullcheckmysystems.com for a FREE 14-day trial or to discuss how CheckMyCCTV can help you.

 

Dahua Technology Integration released to Beta

As part of CheckMyCCTV’s continual development, we are adding support for additional brands and products. The first of which is Dahua Technology, a leading manufacturer of security and surveillance equipment, which has now been released for Beta testing.

Dahua Technology provide OEM DVR/NVR solutions for Apollo, C2Max, DVR365, IntelliPix, Q-See, Watchman and others. If you use any of these brands and wish to participate in our Beta test programme, please contact us at support@nullcheckmysystems.com

Can you check your CCTV in under 20 seconds?

You can with CheckMyCCTV! The latest updates to the test engine now make it possible to comprehensively check your Dedicated Micros CCTV system and cameras in under 20 seconds*.

As an installer or RVRC, your customers may expect (or demand) that you regularly check their CCTV system. CheckMyCCTV is a simple and most cost effective way to ensure that your customers sites and your reputation remain in good health.

CheckMyCCTV automatically and autonomously checks many aspects of the CCTV system and gives you a status report in less than 20 seconds. If you had the time, patience, and persistence, you could (probably) manually perform all the tests that CheckMyCCTV does.

If you want to give it a try, here’s the tests you’d have to perform……on your marks….get set……GO!

  • Check that you can connect to the DVR.
  • Check that the time and date is correct.
  • Check that all the cameras are working.
  • Check that the unit is recording. (Are you sure it’s recording?)
  • Check that the hard disks are working.
  • Test the network bandwidth of the DVR. (Are you losing the will to live now?)
  • Take a daily configuration backup from the DVR.
  • Check that the DVR is actioning alarms. (Are we nearly there yet?)
  • Check that the DVR is connecting to a central station on alarm, etc etc.

I think you get the picture. In all there are up to 22 individual checks that CheckMyCCTV performs on every unit, every hour of every day.

So, do you really have time to check your CCTV systems manually? Find out how much time and resource CheckMyCCTV can save you, contact us today for a FREE 14-day trial.

 

* Tests conducted on a standard BT Broadband connection at 6Mb/s download and 330Kb/s upload using a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 PC.

New Feature: Interactive Map support

We’ve had a busy start to the year, so we’re happy to announce the launch of Interactive Maps for CheckMyCCTV, now it’s even easier to keep a track of the status of all your sites.

By utilising the interactive map function, users can display site locations and corresponding status on a map using colour coded markers. It is easy to locate sites geographically, rather than just from the site tree – useful if you have many sites around the country (or world for that matter), or the operators are unfamiliar with the site locations.

The maps are fully interactive, so by clicking on a marker on the map, CheckMyCCTV software will display the status of that unit. It is also possible to display units grouped by site, customer, or alert type. The map will automatically update and resize so you will always see your sites in the optimum display format.

In line with our policy of offering the latest core features to existing users. Click on Help > Check for updates within CheckMyCCTV and and following the instructions to download Interactive Maps for FREE.

If you would like to see how CheckMyCCTV can help you manage multiple CCTV sites and locations, contact us and we’ll arrange a 14-day FREE trial.

New Feature: Secondary Network Check

CheckMyCCTV checks that there is a network connection to the CCTV system and will report an alert if the connection fails.

Acting on customer feedback, CheckMySystems has introduced a secondary network check, which checks a secondary IP/Hostname address if the Primary IP address fails or does not respond.

The improved network check gives users a better indication as to whether it is the CCTV system which has an issue, or if there is an issue with the network or broadband connection that the CCTV system is connected to.

A typical Secondary IP address could be another device on the same network as the CCTV system, such as another DVR/NVR or the broadband router.

How does the enhanced network check work?

CheckMyCCTV repeatedly checks network connectivity to the CCTV system, and reports any issues, here are the available combinations with the enhanced network check:

  1. The Primary address passes – No alert indication.
  2. The Primary address fails, and the Secondary address passes – Possible issue with the CCTV System.
  3. The Primary address fails, and the Secondary address fails – Possible issue with the network connection to the site.

Typical issues if both the Primary and Secondary addresses fail could be:

  • Loss of broadband/network connection.
  • A change to the router/firewall configuration.
  • Loss of power on the site.
  • A problem with the network connection on the site.

The Enhanced Network Check function is available to all CheckMyCCTV users, click on Help > Check for updates to upgrade.

New Release: CheckMyCCTV version 1.1.0

CheckMySystems is happy to announce the release of version 1.1 of CheckMyCCTV software. This version fixes a few bugs and adds some new features based on customer feedback. Current users can update their software by clicking Help > Check for updates and follow on-screen instructions.

New Features include:

  • Event Log – shows issue alerts for each Unit, Site, Customer.
  • Alarm Set/Unset indication – allows quick verification that a unit is armed or disarmed.
  • Ignore function – allows users to manually ignore issues for a preset time or until the issue clears.
  • User editable notes – allows free text notes to be added to each Unit, Site, or Customer.
  • Alarm Activations – warns if alarms have not activated over a preset time period.
  • Remote Alarm Connection:
    • Checks that the remote alarm reporting is enabled.
    • Checks that the IP address/Hostname of the RVRC is correct.
    • Checks that the unit has reported alarms to the RVRC over a preset time period.
  • Added Maintenance Tools tab (Not in the Trial version) – allows remote reboots, Network Time Protocols, and network settings to be configured.

CheckMySystems are always grateful to receive feedback, whether it is positive and negative. If you have any issues with CheckMyCCTV or have any feature requests or suggestions please send them to feedback@nullcheckmysystems.com and we will respond to every email.

Is your CCTV faulty?

Are your CCTV systems working right now? It’s a pretty simple question but in reality a difficult one to answer. There’s often no quick way of knowing if remote CCTV systems are operating as expected, which is where CheckMyCCTV can help.

In many cases faults are often only discovered when an incident occurs that has not been recorded, and by then it is too late.

We wanted to discover how many sites had typical faults or issues which were undetected. So with the help of our customers, we gathered statistics from a sample of 300 sites and included only the initial test result to represent of the state of the CCTV system prior to using CheckMyCCTV.

The results were surprising, 75% of all units tested had at least one issue which affected operational performance requirements as highlighted in the UK POLICE REQUIREMENTS FOR DIGITAL CCTV SYSTEMS document.

45% of units were recording for less than 31 days.
31% of units had the time set more than 1 hour fast/slow.
24% of units had the incorrect Timezone/Daylight Savings time configured.
16% of units had one or more failed cameras.
6% of units had problems with Alarms not activating.
2% of units were not recording at all.

Fortunately, CheckMyCCTV identified these issues and they were rectified by the installer. However, without using CheckMyCCTV it may have been several months before the issues were noticed, leaving a critical security gap in the users CCTV coverage.

It seems that there are plenty of documented cases where CCTV systems have been installed and are assumed to be working, but were not. I quickly found a number of examples by entering ‘faulty CCTV’ into Google search:

CCTV cameras weren’t working during Digbeth club shooting

Blackburn town centre CCTV cameras ‘faulty’

Quarter of council’s CCTV cameras not working

There were many more listed in the search results, and along with the Van Gogh painting which was stolen from Cairo Museum which I wrote about in a previous blog, it seems that faulty or incorrectly configured CCTV systems may not be as uncommon as first thought.

Want to find out if your CCTV systems are operating correcting? CheckMyCCTV automatically performs a number of checks on all your CCTV installations every day to ensure you systems are operating as expected. Contact us today at sales@nullcheckmysystems.com to trial CheckMyCCTV FREE for 14-days.

 

Try CheckMyCCTV free for 14 days

Contact us for a FREE 14-day, no obligation trial today, and find out what CheckMyCCTV can do for your business.

Typical users of CheckMyCCTV are:

Installers wanting to offer a higher level of support to their customers and still reduce support costs,
End-users who want to ensure their CCTV estate is operating correctly, and
RVRCs wanting to increase revenue streams by providing a CheckMyCCTV service to their customers.

CheckMyCCTV is compatible with Dedicated Micros, Vista (SmartDisc, SmartTel, SmartMobile, and Navigator), HeiTel, Dahua Technology,DVR365, Adata, and WatchMan DVR products. More brands are coming soon, if your CCTV system is not listed, request it today.

Register to download the CheckMyCCTV FREE 14-day Trial here

Welcome to our Blog

Hello, and welcome to our blog. Here we will be keeping you up to date with what is happening at CheckMySystems, along with hints and tips, product enhancements, and any other news.

Please feel free to leave comments, suggestions, or feedback, we’ll try to respond to all that we can.

Thanks for reading.

Darren Rewston
CheckMySystems Ltd.