MOBOTIX Cameras Protect

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC is the absolute "must see" place for fans of Rock Music. Located in Soho, just a few blocks from Little Italy and Chinatown, the museum is becoming the newest attraction for music fans from New York, and of course visiting tourists. “It’s easy to get lost in the music as you journey through galleries filled with the personal mementos of Rock legends like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen. From guitar heroes like Jimi Hendrix to song poets like Bob Dylan” That is the slogan for this exhibition. It is hard to imagine how much enthusiasm and love of details it takes to start a project like this. It takes a lot of onnections to talk artists like Madonna or the Rolling Stones into loaning their history making assets to a museum. David Waggett and his team bring all this in. Some of the exhibits have been donated; some of them are loaned from the artists. They all have one thing in common: They are irreplaceable pieces of history, some of them insured with seven figures.

The Rock Annex Experience

The journey begins in the Hall of Fame Gallery, which pays tribute to each and every artist inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Plaques featuring artist signatures line the walls and light up as visitors listen to a soundtrack of Rock's greatest hits. Feeling the rush of the live concert experience, visitors watch never-before-seen footage of Rock’s most electrifying performances in an immersive theater. Witnessing inductees at pivotal moments in their careers – from The Beatles at Shea Stadium to Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, plus many other ground breaking performances. Following the film, visitors will be given a set of Sennheiser stereo headphones that use wireless technology to transmit audio content as they journey through the remaining galleries.

The "Roots and Influences" section is a gallery of high definition screens, mapping the roots and influences of today’s most popular musicians, followed by "Moments to Movements", which isolates five critical turning points on the timeline of Rock & Roll that sparked major movements within the music industry. As the exhibition takes place in New York, a special section is dedicated to the city: "New York Rocks". As an epicenter of art and culture, New York City has played an integral role in the history of Rock & Roll. The New York Rocks gallery centers around an interactive map of Manhattan that highlights sites around the city significant to the history of Rock & Roll, from The Chelsea Hotel to the recently closed CBGB club. This gallery also features personal items from the private collections of some of New York’s most notable Rock artists, including John Lennon and Billy Joel.

Security Challenge

With the experience from previous exhibitions, the challenge for a video surveillance system was obvious for the RockAnnex team and integrator ADT. The design of the exhibition, with black ceilings, low light overall, illuminated exhibits and pulsing lights was a "NO GO" for traditional CCTV systems. "Additionally, we needed a system that can be easily modified if we change the exhibition layout" says David Wagett, General Manager of the RockAnnex. "And of course, with the value of our assets, we needed high resolution footage, leaving no doubts about the identity of a potential suspect". But obviously, the safety for the thousands of visitors every month was at least as big of an issue. How would it be possible to achieve that, considering that the budget was limited? "We can make it happen, and it will be even more cost effective than any other analog or ip-based camera system" A brave statement from ADT New York… With that said, ADT invited David Waggett and his team to visit the show room of MOBOTIX in Manhattan. "I had never seen anything like this before, the clarity of the images, even under low light conditions was stunning" stats David Waggett," if you are used to see the poor image quality of a DVR in 2CIF and somebody confronts you with 15 times more resolution, that sticks in your head for a while". But there was more to discover. "Everybody is talking about MPEG4 and H264, but both technologies are a dead end for surveillance systems” says Wolfgang Ritter, Director of Sales USA for MOBOTIX. "In a critical situation you need the ability to go back frame by frame in the recorded footage, MPEG4 and H264 will not allow you to do that". Well, back to MJEG? "Of course not" says Wolfgang Ritter" MJEG is not efficient for recording either, the amount of read/write/cycles is killing the performance of your recording device". In 2001 MOBOTIX developed a high tech codec called "MxPEG". Based on the fact that MOBOTIX uses strictly digital CMOS technology the limitations of CCD converted analog signals did not apply. "Image generation and image processing are done in camera, this is where all that performance and the low bandwidth requirements come from "states Bernd Wilhelm, Director of Software Development for MOBOTIX. "The processor load on your recording device gets cut down by 80%, the performance of your hard discs boosts by about 200%". "I was impressed by the fact that the recording was not compressed, high quality and still used less bandwidth than MPEG" recalled David Waggett. "That allowed us to run 50 cameras in high resolution on our network, without performance issues".

Was there a downside? What about costs?

"The MOBOTIX D12, with two 3 Megapixel sensors can easily replace up to 6 analog cameras with one unit, and the MOBOTIX Q22 hemispheric camera covers a whole room of 40x40 feet" said John Peponias, Manager of Commercial Security Solutions at ADT Security NYC, "We knew exactly what we had discovered with the MOBOTIX solution. Our Project Team had a huge grin on their face" John recalls, "MOBOTIX was an obvious choice for this high-profile application, and we were all very excited thinking about the opportunity this product represented for us in the market. Technicians are typically so used to traditional CCTV, it was hard for them to imagine that all they had to do was run a CAT5 cable from the server room to the cameras, plug it into the POE switch and connect the switch with the Overland NAS system."

Software costs? None. MOBOTIX provides MxControlcenter, a fully functional and unlimited Video Management System, free as a download from the MOBOTIX homepage. The decision for the MOBOTIX system was made quickly. The double lens D12 cameras cover every inch of the exhibition with 1536 TV lines per sensor, the Q22 hemispheric cameras provide overview images of the complete cinema area, the lobby, VIP Lounge and box office, also in MegaPixel. "The tweaking of the cameras with variable exposure fields was a big plus" said Serge Gelin, System Installation Team Manager at ADT. "We were able to compensate for any challenges the exhibition lighting posed, eliminating even the smallest distortion from the show lights".

MOBOTIX technology partner Overland Storage provided the 40TB NAS system that keeps track of all cameras for at least 45 days. MOBOTIX cameras do not require DVR’s or NVR’s. A cost effective, high performance NAS is the perfect solution. "Again, if you work with the installation of CCTV systems on a daily basis, it becomes almost ironic to see how easy the setup for the recording of 50 MOBOTIX cameras was" said Serge Gelin. "The cameras administrate the recording individually, the NAS was easy to setup and provides Raid5 security". The security office in the RockAnnex can pull in the audio from each of the camera’s microphones in case of an event. Digital pan/tilt/zoom functions allow analysis of every movement in post processing, meaning on the recorded footage. "I can zoom into every corner of the exhibition, even a month later" states Heather McLaren, Operations Manager in the Rock’n Roll Hall of Fame. In November 2008 the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC opened to the public. The MOBOTIX system is up and running, and even when David Waggett is traveling, he can remotely logon trough the VPN network and see what’s going on.