Building in Security

Innovative technology comes to the rescue in Orange County

• By Ralph C. Jensen
• Jun 01, 2017

A family-oriented municipality with a thriving business environment, the city of Cypress is home to 48,000 residents in North Orange County, Calif. In partnership with the community, Cypress strives to sustain and enhance a safe, attractive and quality environment for people to live, work and play. Among the public facilities that help support these initiatives are the Cypress Senior Citizens Center and Community Center.

The Cypress Senior Citizens Center is housed in a 17,600 square foot structure that offers special interest clubs, enrichment classes, meals, transportation and advocacy programs, serving as a welcoming and supportive hub for elderly residents.

Spanning more than 20,000 square feet, another grand structure is the Cypress Community Center. Available for public use, it houses kitchen facilities, classrooms, dance rooms, arts and crafts rooms, and an auditorium that supports youth, teen and adult programs. In addition, the facility serves as the administrative offices for the Cypress Recreation and Community Services department.

When seeking video surveillance solutions for both public buildings, city of Cypress Facility and Park Supervisor Larry Campos turned to Mario Benitez, an authorized Dahua dealer for Advanced Alarm in Santa Fe Springs, Calif.

“Their main concern was to secure the buildings’ perimeter and form a protection barrier to deter burglary and ensure the safety of the employees and visitors,” Benitez said. “For each project, I selected a combination of Dahua 4MP dome cameras and NVRs connected to a wireless router and access point.”

At the Cypress Senior Center, Benitez and his crew installed 4MP dome cameras at a 15-foot mounting height to protect the cameras from vandalism and to ensure the camera can capture faces. “Dahua cameras work great right out of the box. We get excellent imaging from the 4MP cameras with a crystal clear picture,” Benitez said.

On the inside of the Senior Center, Benitez was able to overcome structural obstacles to install the network infrastructure by maneuvering more than 2,000 feet of cabling and obscuring it through duct work, cat walks and soffits while avoiding kinks and bends to the preserve the building’s aesthetic.

Benitez confronted similar obstacles at the Community Center, where he encountered 10 by 18 inch concrete block walls through which he needed to run cabling.

“We faced a major dilemma routing wires because of the building structure and limited access between corridors, but were able to overcome it by using a rotary hammer to penetrate through the walls,” Benitez said. “The Advanced Alarm team was able to install the cameras under challenging structural situations and still maintain the design integrity of the buildings,” Campos said. “We had to take functionality and budget into consideration for this installation.”

At both facilities, Benitez installed Dahua 16-channel NVRs connected to a wireless router and access point to facilitate service and maintenance calls on a mobile phone through a secure private network.

“I like the step-by-step programming on the NVRs. Other recording devices typically have too many dropdown menus, so I prefer the simple format that is offered.” Benitez said. “It is user-friendly and an ideal way to archive video on local systems. I’m able to log into the NVR wirelessly and access the IP configurations. I can pull up each camera separately, which makes maintenance so much easier.”

This article originally appeared in the June 2017 issue of Security Today.