Budapest adopts wireless IP video surveillance

Budapest has adopted IndigoVision's complete end-to-end IP Video solution to provide citywide CCTV surveillance.  The new system is helping the Budapest authorities increase public safety with remote monitoring of public places, tourist spots and car parks.

The system was installed by IndigoVision's local partner Erando Ltd, and consists of 68 dome cameras monitoring the 14^th District around central Budapest.  At the heart of the system is ‘Control Center', IndigoVision's enterprise video and alarm management software, installed in the central control room situated at the district police station.  Five operators each use a ‘Control Center' PC workstation, four monitoring live video feeds and one analysing recorded video.  The recording of all the camera video is achieved using IndigoVision's Networked Video Recorder (NVR) software.  ‘Control Center', which was fully translated into Hungarian, enables the operators to view live or recorded video from any camera or NVR, anywhere on the IP network.

"This application is one of many city-wide monitoring systems that IndigoVision has recently installed," said Dr Oliver Vellacott, IndigoVision's CEO.  "Traditional analogue CCTV technology is not suited to the large distances involved in wide-area surveillance such as city centres, road and rail networks, ports and airports.  IP-based systems are also well suited for extending existing CCTV installations and creating a hybrid solution that utilises existing investment and creates a foundation for migration to full IP Video in the future."

Erando installed a wireless network around the central district that accommodates the current system and has additional capacity and range for expansion in the future.  Each dome camera is connected to an IndigoVision 8000 transmitter/receiver unit which converts the analogue feed to DVD quality full-frame rate digital video for transmission over the wireless network.  IndigoVision's advanced compression technology minimises bandwidth requirements and ensures that the operators at the police station view video that is indistinguishable from analogue.