One piece of good news for our industry is that our manufacturers are responding to the real needs of installation companies and their technicians. For example, many IP camera vendors have greatly simplified the programming necessary to get the camera or encoder up on the client’s LAN and achieving Internet connectivity with smartphone viewing. The latest Axis Communications IP cameras can use their free Axis Camera Companion software to quickly make IP cameras functional by defaulting many of the common selections such as full-time and motion recording times; if selected, these cameras can also be rapidly connected to the Internet using Axis’ free Remote Access cloud-based technology. Other vendors are starting to get it, with regard to making IP device programming easier to the benefit of our industry, as quicker programming reduces installation time and potential programming errors — the fewer selections, the less that can go wrong.
In my 40 years in this industry, I have come to the conclusion that many system problems and technician frustrations come from the installation and testing of network cabling jacks and plugs. Whereas in the old days we just had to get the right wire under the correct screw and torque it down, now technicians working on IP devices must properly terminate all eight conductors in a Cat5e or 6 cable, while making sure that only a minimum distance of the paired conductors are untwisted so as to minimize the potential for EMI/RFI and crosstalk between the pairs.