Dome breaks new ground

Visitors to IFSEC are used to hearing manufacturers making claims about their products as "revolutionary", "groundbreaking" "totally new technology" etc etc… Security Installer magazine, like professional installers themselves, has heard these superlatives used in relation to many security products.

But we feel Philips CSI was justified in making the claim that their new camera was a "dramatic breakthrough" in technology when they launched the E-Dome.

Philips say the E-Dome is the "most advanced camera on the market and the first major advance in technology for many years". Having watched a demonstration of the camera, we are convinced that Philips has considered camera surveillance from an entirely different perspective.

The E-Dome literally captures everything in its entire 360-degree all round vision. It digitally records the entire scene, complete with pan tilt and zoom facilities on the recorded images.

Philips describes it as "just like going back in time and being able to change the view at will."

Mounted on a ceiling or wall, it de-warps the picture in real time to provide normal views of any area or multiple areas on a single or quad screen. The user can also zoom, pan and tilt over any area backwards or forwards in time … with no moving parts. It can also be recess mounted so that only a 2 ½ inch bubble is visible.

Because the camera captures and digitally records the entire 360 deg scene on a hard disk, users can go back and observe anything in the room in real time or slow motion.

In its demonstration Philips took as an example an incident where a suspect in a store deliberately creates a diversion to take the CCTV operator's attention away from an accomplice. In this situation the operator can replay the video with control over zoom and direction to see exactly what was happening in other parts of the area to identify the 'real' crime.

If a theft is discovered, the E-Dome makes it possible to go back and see exactly what was happening in that particular location. Because there are no moving parts such as motors or zoom lenses, the E-Dome is said to be completely silent, easy to install and requiring no maintenance. The 8x zoom and 360 PTZ are fully electronic. Users merely select the part of the video they wish to see on the PC monitor.

The system is comprised of one Megapixel camera with superwide angle lens to give a viewing angle of 164 deg, with 360 deg of view. (The total coverage depends on the installed height. Also blind spots may be due to physical obstructions such as columns or other objects in the view of the camera). This is directly connected to the dual processor CPUs PC via a computer cable. The PC has a hard disk capable of recording the video at 1 frame per second during normal recording up to 48 hours including 30 minutes of alarm recording) at 12 frames per second.

Philips CSI's Marketing Director Andy Bull, speaking after IFSEC, said the ability to playback everything in a 360 deg field is a tremendous advantage in many applications, especially retail where there is a need to cover a wide area discreetly without missing anything.

"We had lots of comments from individuals , many of whom had seen more cameras than hot dinners, that the E-Dome was not just revolutionary – it was the first real breakthrough in CCTV for years."

Banking on the E-Dome

Philips CSI illustrates the use of E-Dome in a banking hall application where, typically, there are many fixed cameras overlooking the transaction counters, entrances/exits etc with VCRs and monitors. In the case of a robbery not all the actions will be captured by the cameras due to blind spots, limited viewing angles and the switching equipment used for sending the video to the recorder. In a conventional installation the camera may capture only the picture of a teller being shot or of the robber who had fired the shot but not both (depending on the view of the fixed cameras). The robber may have fired more than one shot or other robbers may have fired shots.

With E-Dome it can play back everything that went on and piece it together. In the case of "Who shot the teller?" it could play in quad mode with three "cameo" pictures looking at three robbers and the fourth showing the teller at the time the shot hit her. This would give the answer.

If an "insider" was suspected of giving signals or gesturing the location of valuables this would show up on playback when everyone in the room at the time could be zoomed in on.