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| Petro Canada, an integrated energy company based in Ontario, was in the market for a CCTV system |
Petro Canada (now Suncor), an integrated energy company based in Ontario, was in the market for a CCTV system. They needed a surveillance system to monitor their valves which open and close gas flow (EH&S) as well as for general fence line and gate security for a site in Ontario, Canada.
A significant challenge was that the site spans 380 acres with piping and buildings that can block line-of-sight transmission. A dock at the water front approximately two miles away also required monitoring from their control centre. In addition, the site has rail lines that need to be monitored while filling the tanker rail cars. Cabling the site for camera transmission would have been cost prohibitive.
Solution:
Given the characteristics of the site, a Fluidmesh wireless network was deployed. Electrical trenching got underway to get the power to poles and other strategic camera locations.
Project description at a glance:
The integrator on the project, KM Enterprise Solutions (KMES), which is part of the Chubb Security Systems family, installed the system. A total of 32 cameras and 50 Fluidmesh 2200 dual-radio nodes were deployed. The wireless network runs on the 5.1-5.8 GHz range using patch antennas to provide better range and reduce interferences. The network is a combination of mesh and point to multipoint architecture, depending on line-of-sight and camera locations.
KMES turned to Fluidmesh technology because of the products' flexibility to transmit multiple camera streams across long distances and because of the reliability of their optimized transmission system. A Fluidmesh network was also deployed to send multiple camera signals from the dock area over a VPN to the south end of the site.
Pat Jeffrey, Sales Consultant for KMES, points out that Fluidmesh was a natural choice for this installation. "Fluidmesh allows for redundancy throughout the network and can easily handle transmission of multiple cameras. Although KMES had never worked with Fluidmesh before, the technicians were able to easily get up to speed after attending the online training," he says. "Our technicians also received ongoing telephone support during the configuration and deployment of the system."
"The client has found the system to be very reliable and is serving their needs exactly as they had hoped for," Jeffrey adds.
Cosimo Malesci, VP of Marketing at Fluidmesh, adds: "Industrial sites present numerous challenges from a data infrastructure point of view. Trenching and running cables is extremely hard and expensive. In addition, most of these sites cannot afford to be shut down during the installation phase due to the operations of the site. A Fluidmesh wireless network is a great way to go because it allows the customer to deploy an infrastructure at a fraction of the cost and in a much shorter time span compared to running cables or fibre. In addition, the network can be easily expanded or modified, in case the needs of the plant change over time. Once a Fluidmesh network is in place, most industrial sites end up using it for other communication needs as well such, as VoIP, emergency phones, and SCADA. Given the bandwidth the system can provide, these services can easily coexist with the video surveillance system, leading to a higher ROI for the customer. We are glad to have assisted Chubb and KM Enterprises Solutions to add another satisfied customer to the list of success stories. We like to provide solutions that exceed our customers' expectations. At the end, that's why we call it the Wireless Revolution, right?!"
