Critique This Museum's Camera Install?

Bad

Poor mounting location no solid foundation

When those pipes become active you're going to get movement

The I-beam above or the wall would have been a better locations and the wiring should have been better protected.

Rick

Just a through or two...

Am I seeing a zip-tye holding that camera to the strut?

Low bidder or self-integrator?

The incompetence in our industry never ceases to amaze me. "Hey, let's just tie wrap the camera up there on the hot water pipe tray...we'll only need one tie wrap...and just think, we can just tie wrap the extra wire around the pipes...after all, they're insulated...no problem!" On the bright side, they took the time to trim the tie wrap tail.

Is that a zip tie?

It's sloppy and messy and looks like junk, but it probably works to expectation.

Ziptie aside, I've seen worse out of 'professional' installers.

In formal (outside the security market) engineering positions I've held, installation effort/cost is estimated as a multiple or fraction of material cost.

For example, If a bridge uses $1 million in steel and concrete, then labor should be 75% of that, for a total price of $1.75 million.

So with that principle in mind, what is an appropriate install cost for this camera?

The installer should be ashamed. Is this located in a commercial building? A museum? The install seems more like it belongs in someone's garage.

He's probably coming back, look he left his ladder in the ceiling :)

Poor work, but... As a former museum guy, I can say this type of quick install would happen if a precious artifact was planned to be in the camera's view for a week or less. Very temporary.

I think its maybe part of the zip-tie velcro exhibit:

Sadly it is far from the worst I have seen. I do give the installer credit for matching the zip ties to the decor. ;o)

Horrible. Any other cameras in there? I am thinking maybe this was their "Hey lets put out an obvious camera so people know we are watching" camera. Maybe? Even if it was an intentional placement to draw attention to the camera they could have done a much better job mounting it.

I would LOVE to know how to make this worse?

You know what they say:

Fast, quality, or cheap: Pick two.

I'm guessing this customer picked fast and cheap. Doesn't necessarily reflect bad on the integrator if they delivered exactly what the customer was looking for and came in under budget.

Crappy install for a crappy camera....

if its stupid and it works, is it still stupid ?

not the first time I've seen something like this, and with prices racing to the bottom, it wont be the last...

My guess is internal IT staff. Has all the tell tale signs - no idea how to run or secure cable, doesnt own a drill to secure to anything so use white cable tie that comes with patch panel, and finally gave in to all the super circuits mailers he receives with his copy of pc magazine

The 'ceiling' environment is challenging and the treatment is 'industrial', so making the camera inconspicuous is almost impossible.

I would have at least used white cabling and painted the connectors to match.

Without knowing what the budget was, not sure if some fabricated enclosures (strictly for hiding the technology) would have been supported.

Not knowing the desired FOV for this camera, I would have considered hanging the camera upside down (and adjusted the rotation of the lens) from one of the I-beams.

Lazy, lazy, lazy.

Probably installed by a "self taught" company with no real training

"You get what you pay for"

This is obviously a bad scenario all around from the mount/platform to the tie wrap, to the likely out of code connection to piping.

Having designed a number of museum camera installations, this example makes me wonder if the museum asked the integrator to install something that they had sitting around. With often small budgets, museum security is not often "museum quality." I find it depends on the quality of the Security Director at the museum as well as the funds available.