SWI Security Concepts - Blog

Beautiful Rushton Hall

swisecurityconcepts — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 14:34:30 +0000

Recently worked in Rushton Hall, near Kettering, Northants. Such a fantastic building, an amazing piece of British history with links to Charles Dickens and The Gunpowder Plot. It was a sunny day and, although I struggled to get cables around, it was always a pleasure to emerge from the basement, bleary-eyed, into the centre courtyard and take in the incredible view with all its stone and intricate architecture – and all this just to install a CCTV Camera in Reception. All in all, a great day’s work.

Technical Texecom

swisecurityconcepts — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:45:14 +0000

Have just installed a Texecom Premier 48 Intruder Alarm Panel for a client. Just how good is this panel? It’s a breeze to program with the USB lead and free software on my Laptop. The client keeps moving the goal posts and the panel (with a little jiggery-pokery in programming) seems to cope. Firstly, he wanted it split into two areas with a dozen prox-fobs – easy. Then, he wanted an iProx unit to control the roller shutter and turn off Area B. Then, Control timers added to prohibit key-fob use out of hours. Then, he wanted some remotes to arm Area B and take the roller up and down – admittedly, the receiver used was from Visonic but the Texecom panel coped with the output options easily. Then we added a second external siren & strobe, another two internal soundbombs and an extension speaker. The SD1 dialler was then added and the system is quiescent at 600mA. Even in alarm, it copes quite easily at 1.2A. Technical Help is only a phone call away and they are always helpful. Great panel.

Lethal Killercam

swisecurityconcepts — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 20:48:25 +0000

CCTV Killercam

Installed a Killercam from CCTV direct. A nice looking camera at an excellent price with excellent performance. Day/Night camera with 40m IR range outdoors. 6-50mm vari-focal lens with Wide Dynamic Range and Eclipse Function (highlight suppression) made it easy to see car number plates. Only problem was, it was sited 35m away from what we needed to see—this is right on its limit, max zoom. This would have been okay if we were only looking at a single lane but we stretched it to view two lanes. Couldn’t really get any nearer for this purpose. Would recommend the camera, but in future would be better sited no further away than 25-30m—and one lane only.

Blast from the past! Abacus 15

swisecurityconcepts — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 20:25:57 +0000

Today was interesting. Got to a site in Leicester to service the alarm system. Not only was it an Ababcus 15 but inside I found a zone list, written by my own hand around 15 years ago. The Ababcus 15 is still going strong as are most of the detectors. I didn’t know the Engineer code as some else had worked on it over the past few years (batteries had been changed) but it was such a simple process to reset the codes only, without having to crash the whole panel and start from scratch! Everything worked fine—client was as chuffed as I was. Bring back the Abacus—and simplicity.

CAME Frog Automatic Gate Installation

swisecurityconcepts — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 11:41:59 +0000

Last week, we finally fitted the CAME ZM3E Controller and the CAME Frog motors at a site in Leicestershire.

Having mainly worked on the older-style control panel like the ZA3, I was very impressed with its simplicity of programming—unless, of course, you accidentally press the language button and wind up trying to decipher Italian. For a 230v Automatic Gate installation, the LCD display made light work of it. Entering programming mode is simple by pressing a single button for a few seconds. Scrolling through was easy and self-explanatory—other than a couple of mis-interpreted words from Italian to English (i.e. Sensibility for Sensitivity!). This didn’t matter though as the site is not quite finished (groundwork still to do) and I couldn’t run the set-up for the encoders as there are no stops in the ground for the Automatic gate motor to run to. If this part is as easy as the rest of the installation, I should have no worries. As an installer, this is what we need to make our lives easier.

SWI Security Concepts would like to put a shout out to a great product from a great manufacturer – Well done CAME.

Business Owners 2-minute Security Assessment

swisecurityconcepts — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 11:24:08 +0000

If you are a Business Owner and have let your guard down during these tough times with the economy, take a quick break and assess your building and its people.

Keep them safe and brush up your security by reading this 2-minute assessment. Obviously there are products/services in there that you, as a company, mayhave to pay for (such as CCTV, Access Control Systems and Alarms), but there are also useful hints that wont cost you anything other than a couple of minutes reading—and possibly a bit of delegation.

Read it here: 2-minute Security Assessment.

Automatic Gate Kits & Parts – Spring Sale!

swisecurityconcepts — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:15:00 +0000

This month we started our Spring Sale at Automatic Gates Direct.

For 10% off everything including Above & Below Ground Automatic Gate motors/openers for Swing & Sliding gates & accessories – just enter the following code in the checkout process:

spring10

Happy shopping