3xLOGIC Inc. announced that Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (NC) have standardized on 3xLOGIC hybrid NVRs across their expansive school district.

“This school district has always been ahead of the times; they’ve had video surveillance and access control in place for 15 years,” explained Chuck Harrelson, president, Sonitrol of the Triangle, the integrator and consultant for the district. “School Resource Officers (SROs) consistently rely on the video feeds and controlled access to help them effectively execute their duties.”

The district has 23 education and administration buildings, all equipped with a mix of analog and IP cameras. At upwards of 90 to 100 cameras at some locations, Chapel Hill-Carrboro has video from several hundreds of cameras system-wide. “The 3xLOGIC hybrid NVRs are great,,” Harrelson said. “Upon installation we didn’t have to take out any legacy analog cameras. Now, when an analog camera fails, we install a 3xLOGIC IP camera. That is so much better than asking the district to write a huge check when we upgraded the system.”

About a year ago, Sonitrol of the Triangle convinced the district to start using 3xLOGIC’s VIGIL Central Management (VCM). “Health monitoring has been a big help,” Harrelson said. “So many times the SRO or administration person wouldn’t notice that a camera or NVR was down, or they would know but neglect to tell us. Then, there would be an incident, and invariably we would not know equipment had been malfunctioning. Now, we often roll a truck and fix the problem before they know they have a problem. This takes the responsibility off the schools and shows us to be proactive problem solvers.”

After network health monitoring, Harrelson and his team worked to get the district to move toward installing video verification capabilities. “We donated 3xLOGIC multi-sensor devices to each school and integrated them with state-mandated panic buttons that are monitored by our Sonitrol central station.

“Our goal was to provide live video verification in the event a panic button is pushed. Such verification can be invaluable information to responding authorities. Also, we’re going to be adding more multi-sensors to solve the issues of false alarms caused by the challenges of a large facility with so many people coming and going. For example, when a coach comes back with the team late at night and forgets to properly disarm the system, the multi-sensor provides live video to our monitoring center to let them know what is causing the alarm. By partnering in this way, we’re trying to put the district in the very best position to succeed with their security program and technology.”

William J. Mullin, executive director of school facilities, Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, added, “On our campuses, video surveillance is a vital part of our overall security strategy, and the ability to have video verification of alarms is an enormous improvement. In addition, with 3xLOGIC and Sonitrol Triangle ‘health monitoring’ of our network, we have high confidence we’ll know immediately when any equipment isn’t fully functioning. The fact that both video verification and health monitoring integrate with our overall security system is a huge plus.”