Newest Smithsonian museum installs NVR from PI Vision

A digital recording system from PI Vision is part of a sophisticated security surveillance system installed at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. It is the latest addition to a long list of museums operated by the Smithsonian Institution, an agency of the US Federal Government, which is responsible for protecting the nation’s heritage.

The museum - which is a celebration of the cultures that pre-dated the arrival of Europeans in North America - was opened on September 21, 2004 in a gala ceremony involving representatives from the US Congress and Native American tribes across America. The museum is located in the heart of Washington, within sight of the nation’s Capitol.

PI Vision has over 15 years experience in digital video recording. The enterprise DVR/NVR solution supplied to the Smithsonian is to be installed in all 15 of the Smithsonian’s museums, with installations complete in about 12 sites to date. It was selected after months of extensive testing by the Technical Security Division (TSD) of the Office of Facilities Engineering and Operations.

David Sousa, Smithsonian’s supervisor of security administration, said those critical reasons for selecting PI Vision included:
• The ability to configure a wide range of recording modes, giving the end-user scope to fine-tune the performance of the system and achieve the optimum balance between quality and storage/bandwidth requirements.
• The multi-server, multi-user architecture of the DVR which enables secure access via network workstations to view live and recorded video remotely and to modify system configurations (protected by administrator level access) to meet customer specifications.
• Support for redundant disk storage such as RAID level 5, providing robust, expandable recording of mission critical data.
Another critical concern was the ability to integrate with the museum’s security system. David Sousa commented: “If the vendors could not utilise commands and protocols from either the C-Cure system or the MDI system, they simply didn’t get further consideration. All of the equipment needed to be fully integrated and able to talk to one another.”

The museum incorporates state-of-the-art technology with over 400 multiple communication system outlets wired into the building, run from a central network communications center.

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