Modesto deploys Wi4Net surveillance system
Wi4Net, a division of CelPlan Technologies, today announced the implementation of a wireless video-surveillance network for the downtown section of the city of Modesto, Calif., and a monitoring center at the city’s police department.
Completed a couple of months ago, the surveillance network includes 10 wireless cameras — each featuring 35X optical zoom and multistream MPEG-4 encoding — typically mounted on light poles and traffic lights, said Jasper Bruinzeel, Wi4Net’s vice president of marketing and sales. The cameras are connected wirelessly to the Modesto city hall via Wi4Net’s FlexiRadio wireless-communication system, which uses a multiradio Wi-Fi architecture operating on 4.9 GHz spectrum to deliver 30-frames-per-second video streams.
While Wi4Net has deployed larger, expanded systems with large fiber networks in cities like Milwaukee, the Modesto system is relatively straightforward, Bruinzeel said.
“In this case, it is a much more contained, centralized network,” Bruinzeel said. “Everything is wireless, it aggregates back to the city hall, and then there is a fiber connection from the city hall to the police department for viewing.”
Modesto’s initial system offers only fixed networking video-surveillance, but the Wi4Net multiradio architecture can be expanded and enhanced in the future, Bruinzeel said.
“I think one of our differentiators was the fact that is a mulitradio [solution] and you could do a mobile overlay down the road,” he said.
In a prepared statement, Modesto Police Department Lt. Ron Cloward described the video-surveillance system as a “tool to further spur economic development and improve security in this part of our city,” noting that Wi4Net provided Modesto “with clear benefits in areas of experience, technical specifications and cost.”