The City of Colorado Springs opened a new park, John Venezia Park, located in the neighborhood of Briargate in July 2017. Even before the opening, the park had been hit by vandals with spray paint, theft and damage to contractor equipment, and the theft of copper cabling. In response to the vandalism, the city requested an emergency fund of $450,000 to add security surveillance cameras to protect the $13M investment in the park and catch the people responsible for the vandalism. A public bid was issued to security vendors to propose a camera solution to help protect park construction assets. All proposals the city received required both boring and trenching for new data and power lines to each camera pole location with only one exception, a bid from NetUnwired. Since John Venezia Park was already open, any type of major construction such as boring and trenching would disrupt access to both the park and parking lots. Digging up recently completed park amenities and resources would only add to the cost and be counter to the protection initiative. The Park and Recreation managers were concerned about the amount of construction required to deploy the video surveillance system.

NetUnwired proposed a creative and cost effective solution using wireless technology from Proxim Wireless. Proxim Tsunami® broadband wireless radio systems would be used to transmit the streaming video from cameras mounted on light poles back to park buildings. The park buildings were connected to the city network allowing the police to use the live cameras to view, capture, and record vandalism at the park. Tsunami® MP-820 Series devices, are secure and robust, operate on low power and blend into street furniture, making them an ideal solution for video surveillance applications.

The surveillance cameras were mounted on light poles which powered on and operated the lights at night. Instead of boring for new mounting assets and trenching for new power cables, the solution was to use battery power. The batteries charged at night while the light poles supplied power to the light, radio, camera, and battery. The charged battery would then power the radios and cameras during the day. The idea is similar to how a solar powered battery site would work but instead of a solar panel recharging the batteries, the night time electricity flow to the light pole charged them. The cost of the NetUnwired solution was less than $100,000 saving the City an estimated $350,000.

About NetUnwired

NetUnwired provides solutions for the most challenging broadband system environments. From initial design and planning through to the final optimization of the network, NetUnwired delivers the highest system performance at down to Earth prices. Whether it’s a wireless video system or a data network for Internet access we have both the practical experience and the engineering background to deliver the solution. Our experience includes oil field operations, police surveillance systems, point-to-point communications, data telemetry, video cameras, smart grid applications, solar power systems, and Internet voice and data communications.