Live video monitoring
for commercial sites.

“Why wouldn't I just hire a guard?”

Sometimes you should, and we'll say so. If your site needs someone to physically open a gate, check paperwork, escort drivers, or put hands on a problem, no camera does that. What a guard can't do is be at six positions at once, stay alert through a ninth straight night shift, or take a break without leaving a gap — and the fully-loaded cost of covering a site properly with people is far above what monitoring the same site costs monthly. The arrangement we most often recommend for larger sites isn't one or the other: monitoring covering everything, with a guard or mobile patrol dispatched only when operators see something real.

“What will your operator actually do at 3am?”

Exactly what your written protocol says, which is why we make you help write it. The usual sequence: the operator sees movement in a zone that should be empty, watches long enough to judge whether it's a person and what they're doing, and challenges over the speaker — naming the location, describing the person, and stating that police are being called. Most events end right there, because being addressed by name and description is a very different experience from a camera on a pole. If it continues, the operator dispatches police and works your call list in the order you set. By morning you have a written report with timestamps and clips. What the operator will not do is unlock a gate, guess at whether an unfamiliar vehicle belongs to you, or stand down a response on the word of whoever answers the phone unless that person is on your authorised list.

“Can you use the cameras I already have, or is this a whole new system?”

In a lot of cases we use what you have. Commercial IP cameras with reliable remote access and enough resolution to make a person identifiable at the distance they're mounted usually come onto monitoring without replacement. What doesn't work is a view nobody can act on — too dark, too wide, too far, or facing a light source. We assess before quoting and give you a camera-by-camera verdict, and if the answer is that four positions need fixing and the rest are fine, that's what the quote says. We won't take a monthly fee to watch views we know are useless.

“What happens if the internet or power at my site drops?”

The centre sees the feeds stop, and how that's handled is part of your protocol — for most sites, a loss of signal outside business hours is itself treated as an event worth a phone call, because it's also what a cut line looks like. The box on site keeps recording through the outage, so the footage from that window is still there afterwards. What we won't pretend is that live watching continues while a site's connection is down. That's a real limitation, and it's why we push a backup connection on higher-risk sites, put the recorder and network gear on a UPS, and pair monitoring with a dual-path monitored alarm on the buildings themselves so there's a second, independent way for a signal to leave the property.

“How long am I locked in, and who owns the equipment?”

Any hardware you buy — cameras, speakers, recorder, network gear — is bought outright and is yours, not rented back to you inside the monthly. The monitoring service is a term agreement because the centre commits staffing to your site, and we'll put the length, the notice period, and what happens at renewal in front of you before you sign rather than in a schedule at the back. Many sites start seasonally or on a short term specifically to see whether it earns its place, and we'd rather you do that than commit to a long term on a promise.

“Isn't this just going to mean constant false alarms and phone calls?”

It would be, untuned — headlights, rain, wildlife, a flag, a tree, and your own night shift will all generate events on day one. That's why the first week is supervised and why we review every event from it with you, including the nothings. Analytics filter the obvious, but the real reduction comes from setting detection zones and time windows to match how your site is genuinely used, and from your protocol distinguishing what's worth a call from what's worth a line in the morning report. If your phone is still ringing for nothing after the first couple of weeks, the tuning isn't finished and that's our problem to fix, not a cost of the service.