New York Town Upgrades Video Surveillance With Wireless Mesh

  • Dec 22, 2008

When the City of Corning, N.Y. and its Business Improvement District decided to upgrade its current video monitoring system, Requests for Proposals were reviewed and CPE Interlink of Elmira was chosen as the integrator for the project.

“Our goal was to link five existing cameras in the Visitors Center to the police department located four blocks away,” said Corning Chief of Police Salvatore Trentanelli. “CPE introduced us to Fluidmesh Networks, and after a demonstration of their capabilities their system was selected to begin our network.”

Based in Boston, Fluidmesh develops wireless products for video surveillance applications. Fluidmesh was a strong candidate for the police’s needs because the department could place cameras at key locations throughout the city without incurring the cost of hard wiring the system. The wireless mesh solution also reduced the installation time without sacrificing video quality or reliability.

Neither CPE Interlink or the Corning P.D. had worked previously with wireless mesh, but the technical support they could count on from Fluidmesh gave them the confidence they needed to proceed.

“I cannot say enough about the technical support provided by Fluidmesh,” said Chuck Cordes of CPE Interlink. “Impressive would be the best description.”

Fluidmesh furnished CPE Interlink with a list of peripheral equipment required for connectivity, including routers, switches, and IP addresses for all equipment in the network.

“The information provided by Fluidmesh made for a seamless install of all equipment required for the project,” Cordes said.

After advising Fluidmesh of where the cameras were to be placed, Fluidmesh designed and engineered the system, provided the bandwidth recommendations, trained the CPE Interlink staff and provided tech support during installation.

According to Cosimo Malesci, vice president of sales Fluidmesh, wireless mesh was definitely correct choice for the installation because the cameras are located on different buildings across town and there was no way to wire or trench them back at the head end.

“Because the system is located in a downtown environment, line of sight was a challenge,” Malesci said. “The flexibility of the Fluidmesh solution allowed us to create a wireless infrastructure capable of connecting the cameras to the Police Monitoring Station.”

The Fluidmesh 2200 was used in the system, which was designed as a structured mesh network with patch antennas. The frequencies chosen were 2.4, and 5.1-5.8 GHz.

Without the wireless mesh technology provided by Fluidmesh,CPE Interlink believes this project might not have gotten off the ground.

“The Fluidmesh antennas install in a couple of hours, and we were able to install cameras without wiring,” Cordes said. “When you talk about spreading cameras around an entire city, that is a huge cost savings for the customer In addition, once a mesh network is in place, it can be used as a backbone for other applications such as VOIP or Wi-Fi coverage increasing the ROI of the system. The Corning Police Department is pleased with the results.”

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