Radius Security Solutions

"We know most of our 800 car dealership customers personally. As a result, we can offer them very individualized service, which distinguishes us from our larger competitors.” For Heinrich Krawietz, co-owner and managing director of Auto-Schöttle in Stuttgart-Botnang, consistent customer care is not just another slick marketing phrase. In his dealership, word is worth just as much as a signed contract. Hard work, cost savings, trust, honesty and openness are virtues that are lived on a daily basis and never go out of style. Together with his 15 employees, the master car mechanic is continuing a tradition that was founded more than 50 years ago.

A Story with Long Traditions

Matthäus Schöttle first opened an auto repair shop in Botnang on May 2, 1950. Just a few years later (1955), he added an Aral gas station and in 1956, the hard-working Swabian signed an agreement with the Daimler-Benz AG to act as an agent selling cars and trucks. At the beginning of the 1960s, Heinrich Krawietz joined the company and became the managing director in 1975. Over time, the company grew, making it necessary to build and rebuild. The gas station was completely modernized and a small convenience shop was added. The repair shop now has six work areas with four vehicle lifts and two working pits. And then, in 2004, DaimlerChrysler AG renewed the repair shop agreement and awarded the car dealership the title of “Authorized Service Partner for Mercedes Benz cars”.

A Sought-After Brand

Because Mercedes is a brand that arouses desires, and gas stations are considered as critical zones in terms of security, Heinrich Krawietz opted to install MOBOTIX network cameras to secure his business premises. He chose a surveillance system that leaves nothing more to be desired – and leaves no security gaps.

Danger Zone

Once quite common, the combination of a gas station with a car dealership is something you don’t see very often anymore. For Heinrich Krawietz, however, the gas station presents an opportunity to win customers for the dealership repair shop. Running a gas station, however, does involve certain security risks. After all, now that gas prices keep on climbing, gas theft has also been on the rise over the past few years. To try stop these so-called ‘gas-up-and-run’ customers, two small analog surveillance cameras, each with a miniature screen, had already been installed in 1993. “But these cameras did not have a recording function, which means we would have had to watch them all the time,” reported Heinrich Krawietz.

Senseless Break-Ins

Apparently, this type of surveillance just didn’t do the job. “Another problem we had was that old tires or used oil canisters were ‘disposed of’ on the gas station property in the middle of the night,” said the manager. “And we wanted to know just who was using the premises as a dump site.” Then, when the cashbox at the vacuum station was broken open for a mere EUR 35 in the summer of 2003, it was time to take action. The decision was made to purchase a new, more powerful camera system

Ideal Conditions

After receiving an advertising letter, Heinrich Krawietz contacted MOBOTIX. The company, based in Kaiserslautern, Germany, then asked its partner, IBC (www.housewebcam.de), to present potential solutions on site. IBC owner Norbert Raif presented the MOBOTIX technology, demonstrated the wide range of features and application possibilities and installed a temporary system for a trial period. It soon became evident that the network cameras offered ideal conditions for the daily operations at the gas station: “I had a very definite idea on the functions I wanted a camera system to perform in my business,” commented Heinrich Krawietz. “And the MOBOTIX solution fulfilled all my expectations.” The company manager was particularly impressed by the extensive recording functions, the precise event control and the convenient display of the camera images on the computer screen. The advantage of using event control is that sequences are not recorded unless there is movement in the previously defined areas, i.e. when something is actually happening. This saves storage space and reduces search time. These exemplary features finally prompted the company to order three cameras and to have them all installed at once.

No Tapes to Change

In addition to the recording function already integrated into the MOBOTIX cameras, IBC designed a closed network that uses a standard PC as the file server. The reason: “If a camera is stolen, the owner still has access to the images,” explained IBC owner Norbert Raif. “And it is now also possible to record events over a longer period of time.” Currently, the camera images are stored for five days at a time. After that, the system automatically overwrites the older sequences. “That is one reason why we didn’t opt for an analog camera that records onto tape,” emphasized Heinrich Krawietz. “Because in that case, we would have been had to change the tapes frequently."

Digital Is Optimal

Other advantages compared to analog technology: since only actual events are recorded, there are no “empty spaces”, thus saving storage capacity. And when needed, the images can quickly be found using date and time and forwarded directly to the police by e-mail in high quality. MOBOTIX cameras can be connected directly to the Internet and controlled via the browser. It would also be possible to dial up to the network via an ISDN router. Then, in the event of an alarm outside of business hours, it would be possible to simply connect to the Internet at home to get a first impression of what is happening on location.

Complete Surveillance

All it takes is three cameras to monitor the entire gas station area: one camera records the gas pumps, a second one is aimed at the vacuum station and a third camera keeps an eye on what is going on inside the shop. Thanks to event control, the cameras begin recording only when there is some kind of movement detected in the pre-defined areas. And that saves storage space. “This arrangement is an advantage for us because it means that the shop does not have to be staffed all the time," explained Heinrich Krawietz. “One of the office workers can take care of the cash register because she always has a direct view into the shop on the monitor at her regular workplace.”

Highly Recommended

There have not been any unpleasant events since the cameras were installed, a clear indication that the solution also has a preventative effect. And there has already been some thought given to installing a fourth camera in the dealership. Heinrich Krawietz commented: “Lots of customer cars are parked behind the building in front of the repair shop, it would be good to give them some added protection against theft and vandalism. The most effective and economical way to do this would be to add another camera.” By the way, the German Southwest Broadcasting Company has recommended the exemplary MOBOTIX solution as ideal for other companies as well: in a regional TV program in Baden-Württemberg, an extensive report on the surveillance concept at Auto-Schöttle was aired in December 2003.

Hardware Used

Cameras: 2 M10D-IT cameras with standard wide-angle and telephoto lenses (12 MB memory), 1 M10Mi-Secure with a standard wide-angle lens for the interior area (32 MB memory)
File server: Fujitsu-Siemens Scenic P300 Microtower P4 (2.4 GhZ), 256 MB DDR
Power supply: Via a 3COM hub with one MOBOTIX network power adapter and one power supply unit each

Köln/Bonn are just GBP 15,99 (less than 25 €) away. To visit the leaning tower of Pisa or the Rialto bridge in Venice will also cost the same. As the first low-cost airport in the UK, Coventry Airport is offering flights to many distances for low cost. Since 31st March 2004, the TUI subsidiary Thomson-fly.com is utilizing the Coventry Airport located in the heart of the English midlands as the ideal centre for low-cost flights to 17 European cities. In November 2004, the Coventry Airport will also become a destination for the German low-cost airline Hapag-Lloyd Express. In only less than six months since opening for business, more than 380.000 travellers have started their vacations from Coventry Airport. Within the first 12 months, altogether 500.000 passengers are expected.

Low Costs

The secret to success? In the face of fierce competition, Coventry Airport pursues to keep the running airport costs so low that airlines can offer their flights at competitive low-cost terms. This means that the infrastructure at Coventry Airport is not as luxurious as at other major airports. However, the passengers are glad to give up some of this luxury in order to save some money.

High Security

With all cost savings, security at the Coventry Airport does not fall short. Especially with the threat of international terrorism, security at Coventry Airport has the highest priority. To meet the request for high security, Coventry Airport selected MOBOTIX IP-cameras for their video surveillance system. This system is not only praised by the Ministry of Transport, but it also serves as a model for other airports.

Conditions and Regulations

Since 11th September 2001 additional security measures have been put in place by the Department of Transport, relating to airport security. "At Coventry Airport we have further improved our security measures with the installation of CCTV," explains the Director of Customer Service, Mike Morton. "To be sure, we keep an eye on our passengers from the check-in to boarding and also upon arrival - the entire time they are on the airport premises."

Ideal Solution

But how to implement such tight surveillance? The original video system (six analog cameras with six recorders) proved to be unsuitable to fulfill the task. "The analog video technology is too expensive and awkward – and the image quality is not sufficient. This was enough reason for us to look for a better alternative", explains Mike Morton. All research lead to MOBOTIX, and soon it was clear that the digital network cameras from the German manufacturer were the ideal solution for Coventry Airport. "The cameras include internal memory and can temporarily store the video sequences in the case of server failure", commented Security Administrator Dilip Mistry. "When there is disturbance on the network, it is no problem to access the camera storage. When the server is again available, it is automatically updated". The cabling was also simpler to implement with MOBOTIX cameras that need no extra power lines, but can use the power from the data cables. "Also the data communication is exemplary", describes the Administrator. "This way we can theoretically connect from anywhere over VPN to the sub network, with necessary authorization, to see the requested images. In addition, the MOBOTIX cameras are stable and robust as well as easy to install and upgrade."

Expressive Images

With so many advantages, it is no surprise that the relatively small Coventry Airport has at least 26 MOBOTIX IP-cameras in action that have focus on all areas possible. Seven of these cameras are mega-pixel cameras with zoom function, and they deliver expressive images also from far distances such as the parking area, the checkin and the departure hall. All the cameras are arranged so that the appropriate sequence of images is transferred from each important location that the passenger walks through: check-in, security check, passport control, departure hall, boarding gate. The checking in of the luggage is also kept under surveillance just like the arrival hall baggage claim is.

Everything at a Glance

MOBOTIX Multiview makes it all possible: all camera images are observed in a control room through a simple internet browser 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The Multiview function allows simultaneous viewing of all transferred images as well as an exact, closer look of each camera perspective.

All Essentials Recorded

The recording function of the MOBOTIX cameras is equally important since the right images of the extraordinary events must be readily available. According to the law, these video sequences must be stored for 30 days. However, it would be a waste of expensive hard drive space to have all data from all 26 cameras saved 30 days around the clock. For this reason, the MOBOTIX cameras record only when something in the clearly definable image zones moves.

This so-called event control is even managed to save storage space: the camera at the check-in counter for example, records an image only every 90 seconds. This is more than sufficient, since a passenger spends two minutes on the average at this counter. With this arrangement and control in mind, a surveillance system that doesn't miss anything, was put to work at the Coventry Airport. Each passenger, in the interest of flight security, will be registered at all important locations during the length of their stay at the airport.

A Model of Security

"Even the British Ministry of Transport is impressed by this solution", explains Mike Morton. The natural result: the camera surveillance system serves as a model for other security projects to come. "London-Heathrow airport is planning on a new terminal. Short while ago, a collegue from there came to visit us to see our IP camera solution", Mike Morton describes proudly. "The railway company Central Trains and the British Telecom are also interested in our surveillance system". The last question remains for Mike Morton and his collegues to answer whether they are satisfied with the MOBOTIX solution. "More than satisfied", stresses the Customer Service Director.

Hardware Used

Cameras: 7 M10, 6 M1D-IT (Dual Cameras), 13 M1M-SECURE (Single Cameras)
File-Server: MES P4 (2,8 GHz), 1 GB RAM, 200 GB HDD
Power Supply: MOBOTIX power adapter

Exotic Environment

The jungle path winds its way through the rainforest. Around 500 different types of plants and up to 14-m high, sometimes extremely old trees grow here. The path leads past a waterfall, and a narrow footbridge spans the mangrove swamp. It is warm – about 28 °C, with close to 60 % humidity. The air is full of the scent from the plants and a concert of birdsong. The forest opens up to a clearing and provides a breathtaking view of the lagoon: dark blue water, white sand beach…

A tropical paradise, you think – but it’s approximately 5,800 km north of the equator and about one hour’s drive away from Berlin. In the world’s largest freestanding hall, 66,000 m² and five million m³ of interior space, the Tropical Islands Resort Berlin-Brandenburg in Niederlausitz is an authentic man-made tropical landscape.

Bali Lagoon And Tropical Village

The huge hall is able to accommodate approximately 7,000 people at one time. The 10,000 m² of rainforest is a world of its own that can be explored on a one-kilometer-long jungle path. The pleasantly warm South Seas with its long stretch of beaches invites visitors to just relax or to swim in the Bali Lagoon with its grotto and waterfall, channel with current and water slide.

The tropical village, with buildings originating from Thailand, Borneo, Bali, Polynesia, the Amazon and Kenya, also features exotic food in the restaurant, and a colorful show is performed on Europe’s largest covered water stage each evening.

The whole idea of building this paradise originated with businessman Colin Au, who comes from Malaysia. He envisioned bringing the tropics with its beautiful, warm weather to cold, gray Germany, a vision that has also created jobs. The Tropical Islands Resort employs more than 500 people to take care of their guests while 13 MOBOTIX cameras ensure that the visitors can just relax and put their feet up, with no worries about security.

Long Story

MOBOTIX’ presence in the hall, which is 360 m long, 210 m wide and 107 m high, began long before the tropical paradise was built. At that time, the facility was used by Cargolifter AG. In this most adventurous project in aviation history, a gigantic airship was built to fly loads of up to 160 tons from one continent to another. First-generation MOBOTIX cameras were already used in the very generously dimensioned hangar in 2001. “At that time, we wanted to record everything that was happening around the Cargolifter in the hangar,” remembers Christian Heinrich, who worked as a system administrator for Cargolifter AG at that time.

Unfortunately, the ambitious Cargolifter project was destined to fail; the Tropical Islands Resort moved in in 2004 and the MOBOTIX cameras stayed, along with Christian Heinrich, who switched employers, but basically kept the same job. “When we first became interested in web cams, we checked a competitor’s product and found that it wasn’t nearly as flexible, but much more expensive. At that point, we realized that MOBOTIX is exactly what we needed to meet our needs. And we’ve remained loyal customers ever since.”

Better Delivery

The cameras are still mounted on different arches throughout the hall and provide a fantastic view of the South Seas or the tropical village. Meanwhile, the camera system has to do much more than just watch what happens in the hall. A number of different public authorities and the company guidelines require that the facility is monitored at critical points. In the area where guests spend the night in small, rented igloo tents, for example. The security staff also uses the MOBOTIX cameras to keep a close eye on all the places where money transactions take place: at the check-out and in merchandising, at the cash counters and in the safes.

Needless to say, access control also plays an important role: the staff entrance, the delivery gate and the server rooms are also monitored by MOBOTIX technology as are all the other access routes to the facility. In every location, each camera has to perform two tasks at once: to monitor what vehicles enter the facility and to record statistical data with the help of license-plate recognition. This makes it possible to identify which regions the guests come from.

Passwords Regulate Access

Complex Network

The entire system is based on a complex network with different WLANs. “Each camera in our system has its own DHCP address, which is managed by the network,” explains Christian Heinrich. “As a result, we can easily change the location of the individual cameras because the system is able to identify them directly and to connect them automatically.”

Needless to say, the wide range of recording opportunities provided by MOBOTIX is also a great advantage. “We need these features in order to be able to clear up any irregularities after the fact,” Christian Heinrich says. “We use the memory already integrated in the cameras as well as two redundant file servers, each of which has a capacity of 500 GB.” With the help of a ring buffer, the camera images are stored on the servers for 28 days. Some of the cameras are event-controlled so that only the images triggered by an event are recorded. That saves a lot of valuable hard-disk capacity.

Amazing Opportunities

Hardware Used

Cameras: 2 x MOBOTIX D10-Dome Dual Secure WW, 4 x MOBOTIX M10 Mono Secure WW, 4 x MOBOTIX M10 Dual Secure WW + Tele, 1 x MOBOTIX M10, 2 x MOBOTIX M1
Switches: 18 x Cisco Catalyst 3750
Servers: 2 x HP Compaq ProLiant DL 380
Storage: 2 x LACIE 500 GB NAS Server
Power Supply: 13 x MOBOTIX power supply units with Power-over-LAN adapters

Friends and Enemies

Plants, insects, and the variety of ways in which they communicate chemically are the primary focus of the research work conducted by the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena. This includes the chemical defense strategies plants use to protect themselves against enemies like caterpillars, from whom they cannot run or hide. Instead, they simply poison the greedy foes, mobilize winged assistants with scented signals, or inform neighboring plants that might also be in danger. The constant struggle between plants and their natural enemies continues to produce new defense mechanisms. These chemical processes are particularly interesting for the field of ecological research and offer the potential for new and promising scientific developments. All this was reason enough for the non-profit Max Planck Society to found the Institute for Chemical Ecology with five departments in 1996 as an additional facility for basic scientific research.

A New Basis

Since 2001 the institute is residing in a new, modern building on the Beutenberg campus in Jena. With 7,400 square meters of primary floorspace, some 1,500 square meters of greenhouse capacity and an annual budget of around EUR 10 million, the institute’s 270 research scientists and employees from 19 different countries have plenty of opportunities to study this exceptionally complex area of ecology – and to create a new basis for sustainable, environmentally friendly agriculture.

Safeguarding Research

To protect the modern building and the institute's valuable equipment, a surveillance system was installed in July 2004, in which 32 MOBOTIX IP cameras play an integral role.

Valuable Equipment

For Johan Brandenburg, technical director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, protecting the building has exceptionally high priority: "A tour research center , we have a lot of expensive equipment, some of which cost as much as EUR 2 million, which we completely rely on for the purposes of our work. In addition, the building is quite remote and accessible from all sides - making it a potential target for vandals and burglars." For a period of almost three years, a security company was responsible for protecting the building. "However, we were unable to achieve a satisfactory solution for round-the-clock surveillance. Security guards simply can't be at every single vulnerable point at the same time," explains Johan Brandenburg. "It became clear to us that we could only achieve the degree of protection we wanted with the aid of a powerful camera system."

Day and Night

The institute looked into a number of different solutions, compared their performances and assessed their features. During this process, Telegant (www.telegant.de), a service company specializing in communication, network, and security solutions, suggested using the MOBOTIX M10-DN, a day and night network camera capable of delivering high-resolution images in daylight and in the dark. The M10-DN is equipped with two image sensors and two lenses. Depending on the prevailing light conditions, the camera automatically selects either the color sensor with the daylight lens or the black-and-white sensor with an infrared lens to record the pictures. Thanks to the megapixel sensor (1280 x 960pixels), the M10-DN consistently delivers images in excellent color quality, has a much greater light sensitivity than conventional camera models and offers a convenient digital zoom function. “The MOBOTIX system provided exactly the features we needed for continuous monitoring of our building,” recalls Johan Brandenburg. “Having said that, there were still a number of issues that needed to be resolved.”

Additional Difficulties

The cameras were to serve two purposes: to act as a deterrent preventing crime, and in the event of an incident, to provide usable images fast for successful tracking down of the perpetrators. “The trouble is, if cameras are continuously recording, they consume a large amount of storage space, and you can end up spending hours looking for a crucial event,” explains the technical director. “Another issue was that the cameras were not to point directly at the employees’ working are as because we didn’t want them to feel that they were being spied on."

The Solution

"For MOBOTIX cameras, these requirements presented no problems,” reports Michael Hellmich, technical supervisor at Telegant’s Network Systems unit.“ After all, the cameras are equipped with LEDs that switch on whenever motion of any kind is detected in their exposure zones, thus providing somewhat of a deterrent. Thanks to the event-controlled image recording, the cameras only begin recording if they register movement anywhere in a pre-defined field. This makes finding events very fastand can help to save storage capacity. ”However, for security reasons it was unavoidable that a number of cameras were pointed at windows where institute employees were working. “But we managed to find a solution to this problem, too,” explains Michael Hellmich. “With the MOBOTIX cameras, you can mask off certain areas of the image or render them unidentifiable without impairing security. That way, employees need not feel as if they are being watched."

Autonomous Network

To provide the extensive building with comprehensive protection, 32 MOBOTIX M10-DN cameras were installed on four local area networks. These LANs are connected by a fiber optic backbone. The images are recorded on a server as well as on the built-in ring buffers. To ensure security as well as privacy, the camera network was designed to be completely autonomous and is not connected with the institute’s computer network,” explains Johan Brandenburg. “For the same reasons, the concept does not include live monitoring, only recording of any unusual incidents, which are then automatically stored by the camera's integrated software on a standard Linux file server."

Optimum System

How satisfied is the institute with its surveillance solution today? “The IP cameras have only been in active service for six weeks now and are currently still in the trial phase,” answers Johan Brandenburg. “But I’m convinced that we have found the optimum solution with MOBOTIX.”

Hardware Used

Cameras: 32 M10D-Night cameras
Network: Autonomous network (for security and the protection of privacy), divided into four sub-networks. Each sub-network is equipped with a central power supply (MOBOTIX 8x or 20x power modules) and a switch with an LWL uplink. The sub-networks are connected via an LWL backbone.
File server: FSC TX 150 P4 2.8 GHz, 1024 MB RAM, 160 GB S-ATA Raid 1 Array