Seeking Advice: Cannabis Shop Tips For CCTV And Alarm System

I’ve done quite a few marijuana dispensaries over the last few years and have learned a lot. I’ll respond in more detail later, but the first thing you need to do is go out and find out if there are any state requirements for security and than start designing your system around those requirements. I’d recommend calling the regulatory agencies involved and sitting down with them if possible. If you want to get into this market, it can be very profitable for you but require some attention to detail and spending time with the people who inspect the systems. 

We have bid on a couple of projects and like John said most states have very specific requirements for the system including; Retention times, image quality if back-up/archived video, the location of the archived video, integration of video/access/intrusion, battery backup of the whole system.   Check with your state to see what the specific requirements are before you do anything else. 

On the video side, most of the systems I was involved with in the past had the requirements spelled out fairly well, as others have indicated. It was more a matter of designing to spec than having to figure a lot of it out.

Much of the specs focused on retention times, often for continuous recording. Given the nature of the requirements, and how much of this has not been around long enough to have been tested in courts, I would look at video systems that offered some resiliency on the retention and backups vs. something like a basic NVR system with a bunch of disk that met the technical requirements only.

Thanks!  Already great information flowing and it is greatly appreciated.  This is the type of information I definitely need.

I just completed my first in Maryland. The two major factors that were considered during design was the power supply and cloud storage of cameras. 

I never realized how difficult battery backup for cctv was, after doing the calculations for three days of battery backup and the long term cost of replacing them, the owner opted for a generac system. It automatically switches on during power failure, and benefits the whole operation, not just the cameras. 

The cloud storage had some hiccups, we ended up working with Duranc Vision on this. I spoke with one of the other local companies and they opted to build their own servers and create their own cloud. 

The alarm system was pretty straight forward, nothing surprising to me. I covered everything and was good to go. Doors, windows, motions in every room including bathroom, vibration sensors added to vault and the closet where the alarm and video systems are held. Ethernet primary with cell backup