MOBOTIX IP surveillance solution deployed by Lexington School District One

Lexington One choses MOBOTIX IP solution to provide highest level of safety and security for students and staff

MOBOTIX Corp., a leading provider of high-resolution, network-based security solutions, recently announced that Lexington School District One has deployed a comprehensive MOBOTIX IP surveillance solution across 32 school and administration buildings. Lexington One, a 360-square-mile district in Lexington, S.C., chose the MOBOTIX solution to unify video surveillance capabilities to provide the highest level of safety and security for students, administrators and staff.

Lexington One serves more than 24,000 students from pre-kindergarten to grade 12 with more than 3,550 employees. It occupies 48 percent of the county’s 750 square miles and is one of the county’s major employers. During the past 10 years, Lexington One grew by an average of 513 new students per year, and the district remains one of the fastest-growing school districts in the state. To keep up with growth, Lexington One has built 10 new schools since 2003.

Lexington One prides itself on its innovative use of technology and has built a substantial network back-end support infrastructure for student use. The school district has nearly 16,000 iPads, and every student in grades 6 through 12 carry iPads. The devices give students access to the most current information available through the Internet and to the district’s Learning Management System 24 hours per day, seven days a week.

“Our district benefits from a visionary superintendent who sees technology as key to student learning,” said Allen Ray, Network Services Coordinator, Lexington One. “And that vision goes far beyond learning and into the very core of our IT department and our security program.”

Lexington One, working with systems integrator CMI Networks, needed to upgrade to higher resolution cameras and move away from legacy technology that was reaching end-of-life. After closely evaluating the district’s requirements and infrastructure, CMI Networks introduced the school system to MOBOTIX technologies.

“We sought a surveillance solution that could take advantage of our current infrastructure while increasing camera coverage by 40 to 50 percent,” said Ray. “Integration with audio was also essential. We found surveillance to be a significant deterrent when combined with audio recording. With the MOBOTOX solution, we are able to gather details relating to incidents with high-resolution video and crisp audio, and determine the outcome quickly.”

Following the successful evaluation of MOBOTIX solutions, Lexington One has deployed a variety of MOBOTIX IP surveillance cameras, including the Q25, D15, D25 and M25. CMI Networks leveraged cameras from MOBOTIX with built-in hemispheric 360° allround view and dual-lens technology to drastically reduce the required number of cameras. MOBOTIX MxControlCenter is the district-wide video management system, while QNAP NAS servers provide 12-48 terabytes of storage per school.

As the innovative school system is focused on maintaining a high level of safety while maximising budget, the scalability of the system allowed Lexington One to start the project at select schools and expand their surveillance system over time.

The open platform of the MOBOTIX solution ensures that the performance and capacity of the system can handle the demands of the school system’s 1,200 cameras and protect the investment over time as the deployment grows. The MOBOTIX system is built around a decentralised approach, which allows all processing to occur at the camera to reduce bandwidth requirements. Recording taking place internally on an SD card, externally on a USB stick, or via the IP network on NAS hard drives.

Administrators and school resource officers at Lexington One are trained to use the surveillance system and to export video evidence if needed. “With MOBOTIX, configuration is everything and the vendor support from MOBOTIX and CMI has been critical to the success of the installation,” Ray commented.

“We are proud to assist Lexington One with this robust surveillance project,” said Jason Walker, Business Development Manager, CMI Networks. “The school system was able to realise significant security benefits and cost savings by choosing the MOBOTIX solution — delivered by reducing the camera count while providing access to remarkable video images to maintain the highest level of safety.”