Complete Environment Monitoring
Filed under: Intelligent Sensors, SensorProbes, airflow monitoring, environmental monitoring, motion detector, water leak monitoring
A soup to nuts environmental monitoring solution includes more than just temperature readings, humidity monitoring and smoke detection. If electronic equipment is in the area, it is often a good idea to monitor for other environmental conditions:
- Monitoring for water leaks
- Voltage monitoring for electrical brownouts or complete electrical loss
- Motion detection and automated photo delivery
- Airflow monitoring
Ravica SecurityProbe Picture Log
Filed under: Intelligent Sensors, Security Monitoring, SensorProbes, motion detector
Today, I started working with a software company who wanted to keep track of their employees that work very early or very late hours. In
general, it wasn’t a bad thing. They just wanted to make sure that the people coming into the building to work, were the people that should be. This company had already purchased monitoring and security equipment from us in the past.
This company just added a new international sales department. The work hours for the new employee were going to be 4:00am to 1:00pm. They wanted to know if they could utilize the picture log to record when people go in and out of the front door. They also wanted to limit the time frame for these pictures.
I did a bit of research and found out the answer was yes! You can set a time frame on the camera motion sensor and you can have the picture emailed or stored on the FTP server. Now, they would get an alert and a picture when someone came through the door.
At this point, they could figure out who came through the door. They then wanted to know if too many people were going through the door during the early morning hours. To do this, we used a Syslog/Eventlog application that allows you to set a threshold. Each time an image was taken with the camera, an alert would be sent to the Syslog/Eventlog manager. If a threshold was met, let say five, then an email would be sent to the security office.
The customer was excited and wanted to implement this in the coming weeks. I can’t wait to see how it comes out.
-Jimmy D
Camera’s lend environmental reassurance
Filed under: Security Monitoring, airflow monitoring, environmental monitoring, humidity monitoring, motion detector, temperature monitoring
When it comes to monitoring the data center environmental conditions, we receive questions which pretty much cover the gamut. From staples, such as monitoring temperature or humidity, to measuring more difficult ambient conditions, such as airflow.
We also receive calls about security. This is something we can cover in a few different ways:
- Using a contact security sensor on all doors or windows.
- Motion detectors have been the topic of a few blogs.
- We can install strobe lights that can indicate security breaches.
- We can also install security cameras, which take pictures based on movement.
Help desk: How sensitive is your motion detector sensor?
Recently, I blogged about using the motion detector sensor to increase the security presence of your data center. Well, expanding on the topic, I thought I would answer one of those frequently asked questions I get from customers using the motion detector to beef up security. “How do I keep the motion sensor from being set off by very small movements?” The answer – you can adjust the sensitivity of the motion detector using the sensor status filter.
The sensor status filter allows you to enter a time delay that must occur before the sensor changes status, thus filtering out noise in the signal. This avoids unnecessary sending of notifications, as fluctuations can occur during normal working conditions.
To find this setting, go to the Motion Sensor Settings page of the web interface, and click on the sensor status filters button. Change the “Continuous time (secs) sensor is to report” field to some value other than zero. 1 second is a good place to start, but it all depends on your specific working conditions.
At any rate, increasing the continuous time to report field a bit can help keep you from getting false positives and give a little extra room for normal environmental shifts.
Stay tuned to the Ravica blog for more helpful environmental monitoring tips.
~ Jon Mills
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Motion detector sensors add security to your data center
Filed under: Security Monitoring, environmental monitoring, motion detector
While working on a project recently, I was taught the importance of the motion detector sensor in the security monitoring toolset. The SecurityProbe is the first place to look for monitoring the temperature, humidity and other environmental variables of your server room, while at the same time adding a security presence with the pan-tilt dome camera support. However, for some customers with smaller or unconventional data centers, the budget for security and environmental monitoring can be in the hundreds of dollars, not thousands.
That’s where the motion detector comes in. It works not only with the SecurityProbe line, but with the BitSight2 and BitSight8 as well. The beauty of the motion detector sensor is that you can daisy chain up to 10 sensors to work off a single intelligent sensor port. And at just $125 per sensor, users can easily cover a good sized data room with motion detection and still have an extra intelligent sensor port on even a BitSight2 for monitoring temperature and humidity.
So keep the motion detector sensor in mind when speccing out a new data room or when adding security monitoring measures to an existing one. It is a very affordable alternative, when it is simply not possible to have eyes and ears on your secure locations.
For more information about our security monitoring solutions, call us at 207-324-8173.
~ Jon Mills
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