Visual Aid

R.S. Davis Recycling Inc. has been processing scrap metal in the Portland, Ore., area since the mid-1960s, when its founder, Richard Davis, began hauling recyclables throughout Oregon and Washington.

Today, the company’s busy headquarters in Clackamas, Ore., serves the metal recycling needs of the Portland area as well as those of western Oregon and Washington, while a second location in Hermiston, Ore., serves eastern Oregon and Washington. A third location in Gresham, Ore., provides metal recycling services and sells auto parts.

R.S. Davis recently constructed a new facility at its Clackamas headquarters, where it installed a Toshiba IP video system from Irvine, Calif.-based Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., Imaging Systems division, to provide premise security and to monitor truck traffic.

Construction began on the company’s 15,000-square-foot facility in March 2011. The new building contains two floors of administrative offices on one half, whereas the other side is a single floor of warehouse-style space used by employees to sort recycled metals.

On the outside of the new building and at an existing small remote building are two scale areas for weighing trucks hauling metals. Other on-site equipment includes an overhead magnetic crane to carry heavy metal parts, a shear/baler and a hydraulic impact car crusher.

The Right Solution
Prior to breaking ground on the new facility, R.S. Davis management consulted with its telecommunications provider and with Toshiba Telephone Systems division dealer Reliance Connects and its sister company Day Wireless of Portland to discuss options in video surveillance.

“R.S. Davis needed technology to remotely view video of the trucks and money transactions,” says Chuck Meservy, telecommunications account manager for Reliance Connects. “They also wanted the cameras to act as a deterrent to theft.”

An analog CCTV (closed-circuit television) system represented the lowest cost solution for R.S. Davis yet couldn’t provide remote video access capabilities. In fact, the original R.S. Davis building in Clackamas had operated an analog system that was shown to have had serious limitations.

Yet another option for R.S. Davis was a very high-priced IP (Internet protocol) camera system from a well-known manufacturer, but it didn’t offer value when its cost was considered.

Both the low-end and high-end options were rejected by the company’s contractor. Instead, Reliance Connects recommended the middle ground: an IP network video system from Toshiba that would make use of new CAT5e (category 5 enhanced) cabling from the company. Reliance Connects installed all the network and voice cabling for the new facility along with a new Toshiba telephone system for the facility’s administration and operations.

The Installation Process
To start, a 32-channel Toshiba NVS network video recorder with eight terabytes of storage and a directly connected 19-inch LCD monitor were networked to a conference room PC that runs Toshiba SCS (Surveillix Central Station) software using a projection monitor.

R.S. Davis also is taking advantage of Toshiba’s remote monitoring capability, which enables the company’s managers to monitor operations on their laptops, tablets and smartphones over the Internet.

Thirty-two Toshiba IP cameras were installed at the yard. Seven Toshiba

IK-WD12A two-megapixel mini-dome cameras inside the building monitor the transaction area, hallways and entrances. Four Toshiba IK-WB21A PTZ cameras monitor priority locations, such as the transaction and interior processing areas and the exterior processing and sorting operations. The IK-WB21A PTZ camera features a 22-time optical-zoom lens, which Toshiba says captures all transaction details.

The Challenge Encountered
Mounting the cameras at the remote scale building proved to be more challenging.

R.S. Davis asked that five cameras be installed on and around the scale office building, which is the equivalent of 600 cabling feet away from the main facility. However, CAT5e cable has a maximum transmission distance of 280 feet. Therefore, CAT5e cable was not an option, because, even with a repeater, it would not be able to connect the cameras from the remote scale building back to the Toshiba NVS in the main building.

Instead, Reliance Connects ran multimode fiber-optic cable terminated with a power over Ethernet- (PoE-) equipped 24-port fiber switch on both ends to convert the fiber to Ethernet. The 850-nanometer multimode fiber that Reliance Connects installed has a maximum transmission distance of up to two miles without relying upon a repeater. This solved the problem of connecting the camera at the remote scale house with the main building’s video recorder.

“In addition to the fiber cabling, we mounted power bricks to provide separate electricity to the outdoor cameras’ heater/blower enclosures,” Meservy says. “The cameras are powered using the built-in PoE, which was a real time saver.”

Twenty-one Toshiba IK-WB30A two-megapixel cameras were strategically placed throughout the property with a heavy concentration focusing on the yard’s scale operations. Several of these cameras are positioned to keep an eye on truck traffic at the remote scale building, while others are positioned around the perimeter of the main building. Another camera is mounted on top of the hydraulic shear cab.

All of the operation’s outdoor cameras are housed inside Toshiba JK-ACH13HBN environmental housings. The thermostatically controlled heater/blower on these housings protects the IK-WB30A cameras from Portland’s rainy weather.

“After coming in well under budget, the system is now up and running flawlessly,” Meservy says.

This article was submitted on behalf of Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., Imaging Systems division, Irvine, Calif. More information is available at www.toshibasecurity.com.