In the last of our series of videos on the factors that you need to consider when planning a CCTV system. I want to talk about the coverage of the system, the design of the system itself, where you’re going to place the cameras. So you need to walk critically around your building, inside and out, and note down where it’s essential that you have cameras placed.

Where it would be nice to have cameras placed you need to think very carefully about privacy. You shouldn’t be recording areas that aren’t controlled by you you need to think carefully, very carefully before you put cameras, in places like toilet, facilities and then think also about where you might want to think about having cameras in the future.

What’s a really bad idea is saying, right, we’ll have four cameras right now and you get a system with a four channel recorder. And then you think, actually we need another camera put somewhere else because then you don’t have the capacity. So what I would always recommend if you’ve got a, ah, system which has maxed out the number of channels or you’re maybe one short.

So if you’ve got a three or a four camera requirement, I would normally recommend that you have an eight channel recorder, to plan for any expansions. Because the last thing you want is to pay for a four channel recorder. And then think we need a fifth channel.

Also, we need to replace the recorder as well. Very little point of that. So always build expandability into your system design.