Recommendations For A Gym Surveillance System

The SD card option is great but you need a very high quality SD card to record to. The recommendation is to use the one Axis specs. Trust me we tried this with what we thought would work early on and ended up having to replace the cards in 6 months. That option is great as a backup or when not a lot of recording going on. If you go the Amazon or big box route then go with HD over coax. The images from those cameras are every bit as good as a 1080p IP camera but without the IP camera headaches.

I'm sure you will get lots of great recommendations from integrator members...

questions:

Doesn't 20 cams seem like a lot for a 5000 sq ft joint - especially if it's largely a giant box with equipment spaced throughout?

Why do you need 4K resolution?  I can see having a few maybe, but in that small of a space, 20 cams all with 4K seems like overkill... you aren't producing movies for Netflix, you just need evidence-quality video of any incident that might occur.

5000 square feet is not particularly large so the quantity of cameras and resolution seems to be overkill, not having seen the layout.  Depending upon the complexity of the environment and what you need for evidentiary purposes you may be able to get away with a half dozen 12/9MP panoramic fisheye cameras inside or so and save some cost.  Since that keeps the camera count/cost reasonable I would recommend a solid entry-level VMS such as Milestone Xprotect Express, Hanwha Wave, DW Spectrum, etc.  There are many to pick from and that list is far from all-inclusive.

With a VMS you'll be significantly less locked into a specific vendor product.  I personally would recommend not using Lorex or similiar low end consumer products... I do not like fixing things repeatedly.  At least with a VMS you could test the waters and start to replace key locations with Axis or similar, as you had mentioned, without the need to start from scratch.  Your experience may vary.

If you have a floor plan of the gym, that would help and you could import into the Calculator for a design.

If it's like the gym my kids went to then a bunch of 360's would make sense.  If it's a gym like 24HR fitness, then it's probably a different story.

I like the first scenario that you proposed (although I do not think the 4k premium would be a best use of the budget) local storage with motion detection turned on to utilize SD card storage efficiently. You have an area of 5000 sq ft and proposing 20 cameras both inside and outside I would deploy 3MP cameras on the inside and 5MP on the outside. You can always add a NVR later if you wish and the cameras will not have to be changed.

You could also deploy a cloud based recording solution like EagleEye and skip the local NVR and only pay for the storage you want and you have no head end burden to maintain.

There are as many DVR/NVR options as there are opinions on which to use it really comes down to performance expectations.

The third option is a complete waste of money as it will under perform and you will ultimately scrap all of it and the value of the investment will be lost.

I am of the opinion that you design the system you need and then that will define the budget required and then deploy a scale-able solution that meets today's budget and will integrate with tomorrows expansion so that in the end you get exactly what you want even if you cannot afford it all at once.

If 10k gets the job done the first round then great, but if not the initial investment is not lost.

This is all good advice.

Budget is everything in this situation -- the entire facility is being built on a shoestring and a dream, so the numbers are pretty tight.  A cloud VMS is an ongoing cost so definitely out of the question.

I did like the idea of skipping an NVR (one more thing to maintain) and just using SD cards but I'm guessing long term they will add up in cost/maintenance as they need to be replaced.

Oh man, so whoops.... the building is actually 12500 square feet.  Way more than 5000.  :P

You can always use the IPVM calculator, upload a floor plan and pick what cameras you like, to see their Field of View, PPF, etc...

A 4K camera 13 feet away from a door covering a FoV of 17.8 feet is overkill. If you can afford it great, but if you need to save money a 1080p will still work fine at those distances and FoV.

With the 4K you are getting 216.3 PPF.  For identification of someone you can go down to 80-100 or so and still have a very good picture. 

If there is going to be light coming in through that door whatever you choose make sure is has true WDR.

A 1080P camera at the same distance and FoV will still get you a very good image and the camera should be less expensive.

You might want to play around with other cameras other than the 360s. Those lose the PPF very fast the further away from the camera you are.  If you go with the 360s make sure whatever platform you use allows for de-warping of the views.

Everything on these is variable and in the end you know the location better, any obstructions, etc.

Is there a good out of the box NVR that would work (~$2K range) or am I better off specing a server and then getting VMS licenses separately?

When I asked if there was a detail of the inside I didn’t have much time to detail other concerns. 

Usually “gymnastics” type gyms, move stuff around a lot and once they have an image of a person for identification, that gets solved and most of the people are known.

You know, someone is supposed to have a spotter but takes on Olympic Weight Lifting as a passion and dies kind of stuff  

The normal concern is “what happened and who was around” when a claim of inappropriate touching, injury, damage occurs.  A decent general overview can provide that and the 360’s at 20’ can still help if there are high training items.  The whole Ninja Course comes to mind as a friend is an American Ninja.

I didn’t discuss outside windows that can be common for some types of gyms and possibly many, many mirrors. 

Having someone come in and rob the place isn’t always the concern.  Although a guy entering with a hoodie wouldn’t be unusual so that camera should be mounted kinda low at the entrance.

This arm chair design stuff can be fun!

Generally, a gym will use the video system for after it happens occurrences, unless it is a franchise.  Low price NVR solutions like Hikvision/Dahua have decent GUI and user interfaces at the NVR, but not so much can be said about the client software.  The mobile apps are okay for occasion inspection of the system.  I do not see much difference between the functions of the higher end and lower end mobile applications.

I am not a fan of fisheye or 4K because of the bandwidth/storage needs, especially in a gym where there are many apparatus obstructions, so more with multiple video vantage points rather than less and high resolution would be the key.  Since this is 70 x 70 (assumed estimate), and I assume suspended ceiling, deploying 12 cameras plus the bathrooms, day care room??, front lobby and parking would be about 15 cameras.  From an integrator point of view, this, with the NVR based option would be in the 10-12K range. 

Do not over engineer this since the final layout and deployment of equipment will not be what you start with.  $2000 for the cameras, $1000 for outside cameras with the pendant hardware, plus $1500 for the 16 port NVR, UPS, and monitor.  $1000 for cabling, patch panels, keystones, patch cables, and j-hooks above the ceiling and ceiling brackets for the cameras.  If you can do this before equipment is deployed and scissors lift is not needed, should be at 60 hours of labor. 

It is my experience that with this type of customer, there will not be much future sales and service potential, so get it done and get out of dodge.

We have done a few gym installations. The typical setup we go with is H265 Cameras with DW Spectrum set at 1080p 10-15fps. H265 will save on storage costs and bring the TCO down.

I have to ask why so much on the outside?  If it’s for asset and liability the concerns would be more to the inside.

I'm getting close.  A little over budget but that is okay.

https://ipvm.com/calculator/B0YbTQ  (all the interior 360 cams will really be P3703-PEs)

I'm at 13 devices, 40 software licenses.

Recommendations on 16 port POE switch to power everything? 

I just need to get my NVR and then DW Spectrum and then done!