An interesting story from the BBC regarding several neighbourhoods in London adding speakers to the existing CCTV systems already in place on public streets. The speakers will apparently play prerecorded messages when people are observed littering as well as allow for staff in the central monitoring facilities to speak directly to people being watched on camera.
We have used similar technology with several of our clients in underground parkades. The way that the system works is that if an installed camera in a parkade detects motion during a specific time-frame, we will receive an ‘alarm’ signal that provides one of our Operations Centre team with a live video feed. We can then pick up the phone and talk directly through a speaker installed at the site to suggest that the person snooping around the parked vehicles might want to consider leaving before actually breaking into a car.
Along the same lines, another variation that we setup for a client who was having a problem with homeless people climbing over his fence to sleep in his backyard (downtown), was to connect the alarm output from the camera system that we installed to the existing lawn sprinkler system. Between midnight and 5:00am, every time that the camera detected motion inside of the yard, the sprinkler system would turn on for two minutes.
Before connecting the sprinkler, we were responding in person at least a couple times a night to rouse the ‘visitors’. Once the water was introduced, the problem went away almost immediately.
Similar to the pre-recorded message tactic in London, but a little more direct.