“The major drawback of the original analogue/DVR surveillance system and one of the main drivers for replacing it was the loss of video frames, making dispute resolution unreliable and costly,” said Scott Jensen, Director of Surveillance at the Casino. “One of the reasons for choosing Indigovision was their unique guarantee of no lost frames under any circumstance. This combined with excellent image quality has enabled us to transform our surveillance operation.”

Indigovision’s ‘Control Center’ Security Management Software is used by the surveillance team to view live video and review recorded footage following an incident or dispute. “The usability of the software is very important for the Casino”, explains Jensen, “using the advanced motion search tools has helped us to reduce our review time by over 50%. This means less downtime on the gaming tables, which is good for business. Speedy resolution of disputes is good for the Casino and our customers.”

The new IP video technology has allowed the Casino to gain other benefits for its business. The overall equipment footprint has been reduced by nearly 70%, with the number of equipment racks down from 14 to 4, saving space and energy consumption. The more efficient operator environment afforded by the ‘Control Center’ software has also enabled the Casino to reduce the size of its surveillance team. Unlike the original system, Indigovision’s distributed architecture allows remote viewing from a workstation connected to any point on the network. In addition to 8 workstations in the surveillance control room, the president and CFO can both access the system from PC’s at their desks.

“The Caribbean doesn’t have a local gaming board that dictates our surveillance requirements”, added Jensen. “This has given us the flexibility to design a system that not only exceeds industry norms for surveillance, but also allows us to be a smarter and more efficient business. Installation of the new system only took a few months and in that time we suffered no downtime, testament to Indigovision’s technology and to the team at Southwest Surveillance.”

Indigovision’s IP video has extensive integration capability allowing third-party security systems to be tightly integrated with the surveillance system and the alarm management facilities within ‘Control Center’. The Casino has used this capability to interface to a series of panic alarms, which are located in the cash cages and around the gaming floor. When a panic button is pressed the nearest camera feed is automatically displayed in the control room and an alarm is raised. This enables the operators to instantly analyze the situation and respond quickly to any incident.

To further reduce any potential downtime, the casino opted for a redundant recording solution. A total of 4 IndigoVision Network Video Recorder (NVR) servers with 80TB of attached storage have been installed, with one of the NVRs dedicated as a fail over. In the event of an NVR failure or during routine maintenance the backup NVR automatically starts recording, ensuring no interruption.