We here at Land Watch believe in implementing strategies that will solve problems for our clients for the long term. A quick fix often isn’t a permanent fix. Don’t get me wrong, we are all about using a bit of country ingenuity to solve a problem, when necessary, with the limited resources on hand.
Land Watch systems don’t fall into this category. Our solutions are tried and tested to provide the answer to the specific problem. Our focus during the quoting and planning process is choosing the appropriate camera for each location, the right tool for the job. To help us with this process we ask the following questions:
What are you keeping an eye one?
What you are looking at is the main driving factor in camera selection. For our clients the 4 main areas they are watching are waters, entries, yards and sheds. For each different area of your property there are different camera types that will suit best.
Waters – troughs, dams, tanks and bores are the life source on your property so it’s vital to keep an eye on them as often as possible. However, it is usually not a priority to view these at night or to have recorded footage which can save costs on equipment. We do recommend you consider having night time recording on the main source of water to allow any time checking and for water security. You may also want to control the water while you are looking at it through the camera such as turn off the pump which will play a part in camera selection.
Entries – knowing who is coming and going from the property, at what time and in what vehicle is a main concern that we hear often. Most often this is solved with a fixed camera watching the grid or gate with built in SMD – that’s Smart Motion Detection, so that you can receive an alert when a vehicle enters and not when a pig runs past. Nobody likes the camera that cried WOLF!
We can take it one step further with an ANPR camera. That stands for Automatic Number-Plate Recognition. Now you won’t just know that someone has driven across the grid, but you will have a record of their number plate and not just an album of photos but a list of the numbers and letters of every plate!
Yards – Keeping an eye on the yards is often two-fold, security and animal welfare. When the stock are locked in you need to know how they are doing. We know often the yards are just down from the house but then again sometimes they are a couple kms away or on another property all together. We usually like to use a PTZ (pan, tilt and zoom) camera than can pan around the full yard area and zoom in on an animal of interest as required. If a weaner is down, you want to be able to zoom in and check that it’s having a nap and hasn’t been trampled.
For those yards that are removed from the house area, security may be important. For these areas we will again use a camera with the SMD technology. This is so that we can set ‘trip lines’ that will detect when there is movement where there shouldn’t be and again distinguish between humans and animals. Once the truck arrives for pick up, having a camera watching over the loading ramp can give you peace of mind that he did load up 100 and not 99!
Sheds – Now this is a broad term and on some of the properties we visit it is a term that’s used very loosely to describe a usually iron clad structure. Sometimes it is a timber frame machinery shed that appears to be held up more by a family of termites holding hands than actual timber. Or maybe it’s a shed the size of 100 townhouses from North Brisbane and with a couple of machines inside worth more than the best vehicles Mercedes has to offer, either way we know that the contents are worth keeping an eye on so we use cameras that will suit. If we are inside then we want to see a wider angle but usually not as far, whereas exterior cameras usually aim to see further. Again, smart motion detection is used here, but being able to pan around may not be necessary.
How far away is it?
When it comes to distance we divide it into 3 main categories. Less than 30m, 30-100m and over 100m. Perhaps it is a tank level float at 20m, or the front grid and the camera can be positioned within 10m of it. These situations call for our standard grade optic camera units. Enough image quality to see detail but without a built in zoom feature.
A loading ramp at 60m from the camera or a gate at 80m will ideally suit an upgrade to a zoom camera. This allows a zoomed in view of the focus area which is done during install.
Anything above 100m and we bring out the big guns. Just like your favourite rifle scope, this one can zoom in on its target whilst maintaining clarity. Objects up to 400m such as a trough or a tank are no problem with cars and structures visible well beyond. With such a big zoom it is important for this camera to be able to adjust its angle which is why we use a PTZ. Now you aren’t just seeing 400m away, but also you can rotate 360 degrees.
How often does it need to be seen?
A trough or tank may only be checked once a day and there really isn’t any need for the camera to be recording or even powered on for the rest of the day. Or the other end of the scale would be a main entry where we need 24/7, 365 day recording day and night, during storms, power outages and the apocalypse, it needs to be working. This is where we go for the best of the best plus a couple back-ups and fail-safes.
The main consideration is really regarding night vision. Whilst the day time viewing distance of 80m is suitable for one type of camera once we know that night time vision is a priority we know that we need to recommend upgrading to a camera with superior infra-red night vision.
A bit of a lesson on infra-red night vision, for those that haven’t heard about it before – this is the technology that allows the camera to see during the dark of night. It works best when there are structures/objects in the field of view rather than an open paddock. There are also options for infra-red boosting if seeing further in the dark is a key requirement.