Just The Facts

Customer: Membership-only big-box warehouse club retail store

Location: Hayward, California

Challenge: Greater parking lot security.

Solution: Around-the-clock video surveillance and license plate recognition.

Results:  Modern security system helps warehouse club keep crime at bay in a busy parking lot. 

Customer Challenge

Crime is an unfortunate reality in many urban areas. The cities neighboring Oakland, California, are no exception. 

Hayward, with a population of 162,000, has increasingly felt the effects of crime spilling over from Oakland, which is just 15 miles away.

Area businesses, such as major retailers, have been hit hard. This warehouse club is located in a seemingly safe, industrial area bordered by a well-kept neighborhood, but reality painted a different picture. 

Brazen thefts from parked cars—both from employees and customers—had become a common occurrence, leaving the retailer grappling with a growing security challenge.

It’s not that this warehouse club had overlooked security, it puts a priority on protecting employees and their customers. The Hayward, CA store already had Avigilon cameras monitoring the store inside. However, Zachary Palmquist, project manager for Safe and Sound Security, shares little thought was put into perimeter protection.

To address the recurring break-ins, the warehouse club enlisted the original installer’s help to add security cameras in the parking lot. The installer mentioned said they could do it, but it would involve tearing up the parking lot to lay conduit cables.  

The warehouse club approached Safe and Sound Security for an alternative solution. Palmquist, a network engineer, confirmed the availability of one after examining the parking lot. 

“I’ve done a ton of wireless, point-to-point solutions and wireless point-to-multiple-point solutions for over a decade,” he explains. “This solution eliminates the need for cables out to parking lots.”

The warehouse club approved Safe and Sound Security’s system which employed:

• 22 Avigilon License Plate Capture (LPR) Cameras on nine light poles
• 9 Ubiquiti multi-point switches
• 9 Nanobeams
• 3 Rocket transceivers

A System of Security Cameras

“They do a nice job of lighting its parking lot at night,” Palmquist says.

The presence of hundreds of lighting poles would let them install cameras on the poles and wirelessly transmit camera signals back to the company’s Avigilon platform. However, the light poles were on a timer switch and did not have electrical running to them at all times.

With the help of the warehouse club’s electrician, this problem was resolved. He installed outdoor-rated, weather-proof NEMA enclosures housing electrical plugs for the Power over Ethernet (PoE) pass-through switches and Ubiquiti wireless point-to-multi-point devices, called Nanobeams, on nine light poles. 

Next, technicians installed three 90-degree sector antennas called Rockets, in separate locations on the building’s roof. The devices serve as hubs, collecting signals from the Nanobeams, and relaying them indoors.,

“Basically, what the system does is pull the camera signal into the PoE switch, then wirelessly transmit the signal out of the Nanobeam to the Rocket, which has been wired into the Intermediate Distribution Frame (IDF) cabinet in Costo’s network, which transmits the signals back to the Avigilon server,” he says. 

Installation Challenges

Palmquist says many security system installers are unable to transmit signals wirelessly from parking lots because they are not network engineers. 

“It’s a scary thing,” he says. “And you have to be pretty good at it.”

He explains Wi-Fi operates on multiple frequencies and can be found everywhere. That fact presents challenges when trying to operate a surveillance system wirelessly. 

“Though it’s an invisible thing, just floating through the air, these frequencies can collide and when they do, we call that saturation,” he says. “When that happens, the traffic doesn’t know where to go and becomes a jumbled mess in the air and anything you’re trying to send across cannot get through.”

Palmquist shares that when a network is saturated, it will drop packets (information being transmitted wirelessly), so signals do not reach their intended destination. 

To solve this problem, Palmquist scanned the site with a Wi-Fi analyzer app and recorded his findings. This analysis showed the frequencies and channels in use, so he could configure the system to operate on available channels and bandwidths.

“I had to shape the traffic and how I want it transmitted and received in the Wi-Fi area,” he explains. “I did this by taking all the data back to my computer and having it build out graphs that showed me what channels and frequencies were not in use in that area.”

On his first attempt, the warehouse club’s system was catching Wi-Fi from a nearby warehouse, which required him to configure the Nanobeams to a different frequency. Eventually he was able to shape the traffic to use a different spectrum and frequency altogether, so the system operated without interference.

The parking lot also has around 100 poles but only nine have cameras. Palmquist selected poles without obstructions that would prevent signals from getting through. He explains direct line of sight is needed to transmit wireless signals. 

He also notes that the facility size also complicated the installation. The main server resides in an administrative area at the store’s front, and that, he says, “was too long of a run for a cable.” 

Somehow, Safe and Sound Security technicians needed to run cable from the roof to the main server, he adds. 

“But the warehouse club, like many companies, will not give outside vendors remote access to their network,” he says. “But we had to split the Rockets between three IDFs and needed access to their network somehow.”

Palmquist and the warehouse club’s IT director collaborated to segregate camera traffic from the retailer’s internal network by utilizing unused fiber optic pairs in their server cabinet. “This enabled me to get switches inside their IDFs to move system traffic to their Main Distribution Frame (MDF) room,” he says.

Once traffic reached the MDF, the IT director programmed an internal switch to complete the connection. This effort allows site managers in the admin room to watch video footage, either on a large screen television or on their personal computers.

Reap the Rewards

The Avigilon LPR cameras catch every vehicle license plate entering and leaving the facility, according to Palmquist.

LPR information gives police a means of tracking thieves. All too security cameras only capture the people breaking into the vehicles, leaving police with little to go on other than someone in a gray hoodie who broke into a black SUV and fled in a red, four-door sedan, for example.

“Now they capture the vehicle’s license plate,” he says. “If a break-in occurs, they can find the right footage, download it and give it to the police.”

Servicing the System

Employing managed PoE switches made system maintenance easier, according to Palmquist.

He explains the Avigilon cameras sit at the top of remarkably high light poles. If technicians had to fix a camera at the top of a pole, they would need a lift. 

“Renting a lift can cost $1,500 or more,” he says. “I wanted to reduce the need for that. By putting managed switches into the NEMA enclosures, we can access switches from a laptop. This lets us power cycle and update cameras from the ground.” 

The successful project in Hayward has led the warehouse club to tap Safe and Sound Security for parking lot security in every store along the West Coast. 

“It has spread like wildfire,” he says. “We’re in communication with their regional managers across the West Coast. Parking lot break-ins have become an enormous problem at all of their stores.”

The new projects will probably use a different Avigilon camera, he adds. “When we did the original site, we used four independent cameras on the pole,” he says. “Now we can use a multi-lens camera that captures a 360-degree panoramic view.” 

These cameras have four lenses built into them that can move around and zoom in and out. “They are like having four pan-tilt-zoom cameras built into one system,” he says. “This will let them see the views they want and if they see something, follow that person or vehicles around as they move through the parking lot.” 

The other advantage is there will be less cost and less maintenance. “It’s one device doing it all,” he says. “It’s cheaper than purchasing four independent cameras and four independent licenses. It’s also fewer cameras to maintain.”

Safe and Sound Security
2201 Broadway 4th Floor, Oakland, CA 94612, United States
+1 510-640-8720
https://getsafeandsound.com/locations/oakland
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