VIH Access Control System

SSL produced the Access Control System (ACS) for the Video Information Highway (VIH) trial which is is currently taking place in the Avon & Somerset Control Office. The role of the ACS is to prevent some highway images from being displayed to the general public. It also allows the cameras to be automatically reset to safe presets when the cameras are not being used by the police. The ACS achieves this by communicating with the control office CCTV system - controlling and monitoring the zoom level and usage of cameras.

The ACS allows the VIH to present live Motorway CCTV to third parties such as broadcast organisations and freeze frame images via a public web site.

The ACS comprises of the following system interfaces:

• TCP/IP LAN to CCTV Instation using the NMCS2 LAN protocol.
• CORBA Interface to the Digital Video Server.
• Radio clock providing an accurate time reference for all connected systems
• Engineer user interface

Other capabilities of the ACS include:

• Zoom thresholds are configured for each camera - once the Police zoom beyond this point, the CCTV image is blanked by the ACS to ensure privacy.
• Police operator has the ability to manually blank a camera irrespective of its zoom position.
• ACS provides feedback to the CCTV Instation when a camera is blanked so that the Police are aware that CCTV output to the public has been lost.
• Automatic return to preset - should the Police Operator leave a camera zoomed beyond an allowed threshold but not in use, it is then automatically returned by the ACS to a default zoom and preset after a short timeout