Not “smart” systems, but smart systems.
Not “smart” systems, but smart systems.
Published in the author's edition (End. Beginning — No. 5-2008)
I burst in with boxes that couldn’t be hauled in one go — they said hello and began to carry all our presentation belongings along with the driver. This was my first face-to-face meeting with Fedor Mikhailovich, and from his reaction I realized that he immediately liked this marketing decision of ours, so to speak. Then we turned on our equipment live, allowing the customer to see with his own eyes what we were going to use to build his system, while simultaneously answering all the questions of those present.
Then we asked Fedor Mikhailovich himself to present his view on the tasks of the potential system. Simply put, what and how I would like to see. No abstruseness or technical sophistication — just common sense.
And the task was really set as simply and logically as possible — the system should allow the security guard on duty not to wander around the facility once again: he should see all possible approaches from the outside (i.e. the entire perimeter, or more simply a fence), places of possible penetration into warehouses and the parking area freight transport. In general, Fyodor Mikhailovich was distinguished by his thoughtful common sense; he spoke exclusively in a universal language, no special terms. But judging by how coherent, thoughtful and logical the concept of facility security was built from his reasoning, it became clear that you were dealing with a very high-level professional.
No registration was required. The system did not hide any secrets for any of the base employees, the security personnel enjoyed complete trust, and regarding the prevention of possible threats to the facility, it had its own arsenal of measures, based not at all on the illusions of searching through video recordings. Although, despite the relative high cost of special recording equipment for that time, the budget of this company would not even notice such a purchase.
But the competitor has already outlined his system project, without even asking what the customer wants. Here I have already won much more seriously than by simply bringing boxes of equipment with me. Here I won in essence, and not just technically.
Well, then they offered to go directly to the object in order to discuss together what and how from what they had just seen could and should be arranged as efficiently as possible around the object in accordance with their just stated desires. And the whole delegation we went to the site. Our competitor also came with us.
We arrive at the farthest end of the territory, in a completely blind corner formed by the warehouse wall and a fence, the entire area of which is about 8 x 5 m, but the farthest from the security post, and before that the deputy head of the Security Service, who had only listened to my proposals, invites the competitor’s representative to explain their proposals for protecting this dead corner. And he receives in response — a video camera on a rotating device, with a zoom lens, with a rotation angle of 360 degrees in the horizontal plane, controlled from a remote control in the security post. Probably, the desire to get extra money by selling expensive equipment, albeit absolutely unnecessary in this case, took precedence over common sense; my arguments in favor of a simple all-weather stationary camera installed on the roof of a warehouse turned out to be more than convincing. In general, I realized that the battle had already been won, because no one asked anything else from the representative of the competing company.
The finale was already back in the security room. Together we corrected the installation locations on the plan I had, I gave a ready-made technical proposal for general review, which later, after all the corrections, practically turned into a technical specification, and gave what was still a preliminary calculation for review. There were many questions on a number of points, but I had the opportunity to answer everything completely honestly. Our competitors' calculations looked much less attractive in terms of their validity. Realizing that his company had finally lost this most open tender in the world, our opponent decided to leave his competitor loudly slamming the door, publicly assuring that from now on there would be no more relations between our companies. To the credit of the company itself, on the same day its manager called and apologized for the unsportsmanlike behavior of his employee, saying that they had made a mistake by underestimating us. Fyodor Mikhailovich, with his characteristic calm and smile, stated that we won this order honestly, that this is a market, and such situations are completely normal for the market, that this should not be a reason to become enemies. And he shook my hand. The deputy for technical equipment also congratulated me. When I brought the contract to the director of the base for signature, he separately congratulated me, saying that he was very happy for us, who came up with such an idea with this open tender.
This is what winning a tender was like in our experience!
And once again I ask myself: why has such a tender happened only once in our entire history on the market? Maybe because there were not so many of those top officials of the state whose security chiefs took the place of chiefs of security services of companies? There are not many such high-level professionals on the market as Fedor Mikhailovich was? Maybe the safe city would be different if the tenders were different?
But the system was not so complicated by today's standards.
At the very first stage, only eight cameras were installed, which, in fact, were enough to cover the entire perimeter of the site in front of the entrance and the most critical places inside the territory. Perimeter security cameras were installed along the fences. The distance between the cameras was about 100 m. The focal lengths were, if I’m not mistaken, 12 mm. At the same time, the camera saw the next camera. The viewing angle with these parameters is, of course, small, but since the cameras were installed along a fairly high fence, it would have been impossible to climb over it quickly without the guards noticing. Naturally, if the operator was looking at the screen. But all the security understood that the alternative to the video monitoring system was to walk around the territory yourself in the rain and in the cold. I immediately appreciated the comfort of the service and carried it regularly in front of the monitors. In any case, always when we were at the site, one of the two guards on duty was always looking at the screens without stopping. I think that the main reason for this attitude towards their duties is the contingent of the guards themselves. Probably, Fyodor Mikhailovich in the selection of personnel was guided by the principle of recruiting KGB personnel — initially higher education. True, this was only possible at that time. Today, fortunately, these former security guards can afford to do exclusively their main job in their specialty, without feeling the need for extra work.
And then we only had time to deliver imported equipment to the facility (for example, quadrators), for which there were not even instructions in Russian, and the next day we received these instructions from the security guards — in order not to get bored at night, we translated it ourselves , studied the equipment and trained us at the same time.
By the way, quadrators are a different story. The system provided two quadrators to switch 8 video signals to 2 monitors. And quadrators at that time were very expensive equipment. The one that we included in the calculation, being one of the cheapest on the market at that time, in absolute terms cost about 430–450 dollars. So we motivated their proposal that, they say, the thing is good, useful in your system, not like a switch, which will not allow you to see everything at once, but not cheap. But we still offer the cheapest of the decent options — Taiwanese. And our customer asks: “Which ones are the most expensive and most branded?” That’s when we realized that all the calculation questions and price comparisons with competitors’ offers were just a test of our honesty. And when such a check took place, the price itself ceased to matter in principle to the customer. And instead of our Taiwanese simple quadrator for $450, we chose a “two-page” Sanyo quadrator for, as I remember now, $980. And there are two of them. Although one such quadruple allowed us to connect all 8 of our cameras at once, to view the second four we would have to specifically press a button or watch continuous scrolling on the screen. So, in order not to press this button again, but to see everything at once, without touching the control buttons, it was decided to pay another $980 for the second one. This quad also had a built-in motion detector for each channel. This was proudly stated in the technical manual.
Today I present the reaction of our specialists to the term “motion detector” and its embodiment in this product — a small single stroke on the image, which represented the controlled area. Now, if anything in the image changes against the background of this stroke, the quadrator will beep, and the inscription ALARM will appear on the image. Nevertheless, this detector subsequently actually worked usefully. As I already noted, the system was completely open to all base employees. And, in particular, the first to appreciate all the delights of this detector were the drivers of those very long-range trucks on the roofs of which our installers were fleeing from the local dogs. The truck arrived at the base from a flight and was not always immediately unloaded. And there were considerable valuables in that truck. Then the driver turned the car with the body door in the direction of the video camera’s view, went to the security room and asked to install a motion detector zone directly on the door wing. Very simple, but very smart.
In principle, for the price of these two quadrators, at that time it was possible to purchase a very good 16-channel multiplexer. The same Robot MV-16, also branded — made in the USA. Of course, the main function of the multiplexer is to work with a VCR, but it allowed you to simultaneously receive a picture on one monitor from 16 cameras (so to speak, for the growth of the system), and from 9 (for this system). Nevertheless, the customer, represented by the head of the Security Service, initially understood that looking at 4 images on two monitors is much more efficient than looking at 8 on one, not to mention 16. And most importantly, it is much more efficient to switch the entire system through one single central device to one monitor riskier than through two switching devices on two monitors. In the first option, in the event of a failure of this central device, all that can be quickly restored is to provide an image from any one camera to this single monitor. In the second option, almost the entire switching system was duplicated — the quadrator failed, all 8 signals can be switched to the second quadrator. You will have to switch manually or automatically sequentially the image from the first four cameras to the second four. But the whole system is working. If any of the monitors fails, follow the same steps.
And how, over the past 13 years, the market has come to the point where it proudly displays support for images from 64 cameras simultaneously on one monitor, is it unclear? Where has common sense gone?
But the companies still let us down. After turning on all the cameras, it suddenly became clear that all the images were shaking. The reason for this interference was again found by the guards themselves — candidates of technical sciences. It turned out that it was not the images that were shaking, but the titles and the grid generated by the character generator of the quadrator itself. And the eye intuitively becomes attached to them as fixed landmarks. As a result, the image itself appears to be shaking. I had to select the mode with captions and grid disabled as the main operating mode. I know that the supplier company from which the quadrator was purchased repeatedly addressed this question in writing to the manufacturer, but no response was received. We assumed that this was due to the network frequency in Japan being 60 Hz, but this remained an assumption.
Well, just about the price level of that time:
All-weather video camera with climatic operating conditions from -40 to +40 0С, with power supply and mounting bracket. Black and white, 380 TVL. 0.3 lux. And even with an M12 lens – $280. Monitor b/w, 12-inch – 215.
The routes, by our current standards, were far from large — the length of the cable from the post to the farthest camera (that bearish corner where the competitor proposed installing a turn signal) was about 400 m. But we only had “coaxials” at our disposal. Of course, there were some problems, but they were all resolved in the end. Well, since we were satisfied with each other with the customer, we worked with him both on this site and on others for many more years.
And finally, about the general concept of security, which, in my opinion, is very appropriate for our video monitoring system.
I have always been interested in the security system of any facility, not from the point of view of its technical equipment, but, so to speak, from the final position — how it will all work as a single complex when a real danger arises, how all this can stop the danger (and not just watch it or her fix). And in this case, my very good friend was also at the very forefront of the fight against this danger. Therefore, this interest was heightened. And of the security weapons I saw, there was only one rubber baton hanging on the wall. And I asked Fyodor Mikhailovich:
Well, God forbid, something happens (and nearby and shortly before all these events, outright bandits also descended on the base at night, the guards were locked in a container and non-ferrous metals were loaded onto a truck all night with a truck crane — those were still the days), suddenly the villains will come at you, is it that my friend, a candidate of technical sciences, should grab this single rubber baton and rush alone towards the enemy? An expression of obvious bewilderment appeared on Fyodor Mikhailovich’s face — they say, how could I even think of such nonsense?
What are you doing?! – he was actually sincerely surprised. “That’s precisely why they installed the video system, so that he wouldn’t have to wander between the hangars again, risking getting hit on the head.” Let him sit here, accompanied by this Bucks (Bucks was a huge Rottweiler, who, unlike dogs in enclosures, was usually guarded), looking at the monitors. I saw that the children threw the ball over the fence and climbed after it, let them climb it for themselves. You don’t even have to go outside – our children have absolutely no use for our goods. Well, if, God forbid, something is really serious, then all your friend’s actions are to open the enclosures, press the panic button and run away from the base towards the nearest special object (he called this object by its proper name, but I won’t name ) – there are people with machine guns, they will help.
That's the concept. There is nowhere more reliable and nowhere simpler. Because it is thought out to the smallest detail.
During the entire time of our relationship with this company, according to the security guards themselves, there was only one attempt to enter the warehouse from the outside by opening the wall. The matter did not have time to go further than intentions — everything was noticed in time and prevented. Well, such information is a balm for our souls!
And at what point did our TSB market suddenly turn from such simple and well-thought-out solutions that worked and continue to work reliably to this day, to far-fetched, technically sophisticated, but at the same time in no way related to safety systems, to a safe city in I can't imagine its current incarnation. So I want to somehow direct everything in the direction of at least just common sense.