This article is reproduced from The Sydney Morning Herald - Read the full article here.
The Verkada Environmental Sensor can be used to detect vaping, and send an alert to teacher's mobile phones instantly via SMS, then access the Verkada Camera instantly to see who went in or exited the toilet around the time of the alert.
It's the only solution that lets you narrow down the exact students of interest easily and quickly, you don't need to run to the bathroom to catch them in the act like you do with other vaping sensor solutions.
By Caitlin Fitzsimmons
March 3, 2022
Schools across NSW are locking toilets outside break times to clamp down on students vaping e-cigarettes, but families say restrictions are causing health and hygiene problems for students.
The Herald has heard from dozens of families with children at public, Catholic and independent schools about newly imposed toilet restrictions to deal mostly with vaping, but also vandalism.
It comes as NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell told budget estimates the use of e-cigarettes among young people was a growing concern, and she was working with NSW Health and other agencies on a whole-of-government response.
Ms Mitchell told the Herald this could include advertising, additional resources in schools and curated information for parents.
“What’s needed is a broad community response to vaping, just like what we saw with smoking,” Ms Mitchell said.
A five-year-old boy in Victoria landed in hospital this week after vaping at school and consuming high doses of nicotine and other chemicals.
Vaping devices, which are widely available in tobacconists and often illegally sold to minors, appear designed to appeal to young people with bright colours, sweet flavours and shapes that disguise them as pens or USB sticks.
Nicotine juices for vape devices are legally sold in Australia only with a prescription to help people quit smoking, but can be legally imported from online retailers. Some products reportedly contain nicotine even when labelled otherwise.
Vaping is a growing issue in schools, as reported by the Herald, but not everyone agrees locking toilets is a suitable response. It not only prevents students going during class time but also in the transitions between classes.
A spokesperson for NSW Education told the Herald there was no department policy about locking toilets, but there would always be a toilet available.
“Schools may restrict access during class time to stop students congregating in toilets and engaging in anti-social behaviour, however students can still use the toilet facilities,” the spokesperson said.
We are often asked how Verkada differs from the Halo sensor that is used for detecting vaping in schools - here is a quick overview.
1) One advantage of the Verkada system over the Halo, and/or the Flysense product is that Verkada offers a fully integrated Sensor and CCTV solution, where one of Verkada's cameras is paired with a sensor in their Command dashboard.
2) With Verkada, when Vaping is detected, a user can click on the Alert and be taken immediately to the CCTV footage of the camera on the entry of that particular bathroom to see who entered / exited quickly and easily with no delay or swapping between systems.
3) In comparison to the silent alerts to the user's device that Verkada provides, Halo has a loud audible alert in the bathroom from the device itself - the students hear this and run! They also try and set off the audible alert by slamming the bathroom doors as a game - triggering false alerts that need to be investigated.
4) Verkada Warranty = 10 years, Halo = 1 Year. Ask yourself whether it is reasonable to expect to have to replace a failed device out of warranty at some point within 10 years? With Verkada, you never have to worry about replacing it at your cost.
5) Verkada allows for remote access and data is encrypted by default, meaning its secure from the outside world. Halo is unencrypted by default (it uses port 80 on your LAN), requires a local server to configure it, and a VPN for remote access.
6) Verkada is provisioned and firmware is automatically updated via the Cloud instantly whilst Halo requires configuration and updating on a per device bases (which means a lot more administration).
7) Verkada provides 24/7 support @ no cost, with a team based in Sydney - call, email and live chat through their dashboard. With Halo, you would need to call a partner for support that will charge you for their time. Verkada is simple to set up and deploy yourself if you are IT savvy.
8) Verkada is ready to go out of the box and takes minutes to set up whereas Halo setup requires that you: Download and update to the newest firmware, Set up notifications (SMTP Settings), Sync your HALO to a NTP server, wait 24 hours for the sensors to self-calibrate. Halo must be configured via a Windows PC (no MAC Support).
9) Verkada allows you to see past readings on 1 page, via a slick easy to navigate interface. With Halo, viewing historical readings is impossible. You are limited to viewing past events / alerts only. The live view graph page looks like an Excel document that you have to scrub through.
10) Verkada alerts & notifications are very easy to set up - it takes just a few moments - and you can tie the sensor directly to one of their cameras to obtain an instant link to video evidence when the sensor activates. In order to receive email alerts from Halo, you need to manually connect Halo Sensor to your on-premise server or a hosted solution like Google, and then configure it to use a third party camera system. Uggh!
11) Yes, with Verkada, you do pay for a license to use the device - but this incorporates instantaneous 24/7 support direct from Verkada, a 10 year hardware warranty, hosting of the Cloud dashboard, Cloud storage for archiving video and data, and perpetual automatic feature upgrades and firmware updates so you get the most value from your investment.
12) Verkada offers expertise on hand via their always online Support Team, at the click of a mouse, where and when you need it, all from within the Verkada Command dashboard. Their product documentation is also accessible from this area, making it easy to find the information you need to quickly configure their products or troubleshoot a setting.
Above all the Verkada solution is quick and easy to configure (add users, set alerts and share data). This will save you hours of time in administration and frustration and allow you to use the solution to do what it's designed to do - to detect vaping activity quickly, identify who it was, and respond to it in a timely manner.
The choice is clear - contact us for a trial of Verkada today!
Verkada have taken a different approach to unlock the benefits of the cloud without hindering bandwidth.
Unlike most cloud video security solutions, Verkada’s cameras were designed to store footage on an internal solid-state drive engineered to withstand a 10-year lifespan – storing 15-365 days of continuous video. Thus videos stream only when an authorised user requests live or recorded video.
In order to provide organisations with the best user experience, but still keep bandwidth limitations in mind, the Verkada team built an interface that operates on a camera’s “steady state”.
In this steady state, Verkada cameras send a constant metadata stream consisting of encrypted thumbnail images, related metadata (including analytics) to the cloud approximately once every 20 seconds using a bandwidth uplink of no more than 20 kbps per camera.
With a bandwidth footprint of 20 kbps per camera, an organisation can have over 100 cameras on the same connection (~ only 2mbps) in contrast with one traditional cloud camera which tend to stream at 1-2 mbps.
The thumbnail images uploaded from each camera in the steady state create a historical timeline view, which allows for time/date-based search, motion-based indexing, additional features, without the need to retrieve hours of history video.
While users can choose to stream a live feed or view recorded footage from any particular camera, this interface greatly reduces the amount of continuous video most users will need to stream for incident resolution.
More information here: Reducing Bandwidth Consumption of a Cloud Camera to 20kbps
Most businesses are invariably required to maintain a CCTV camera system but when it's needed to be called on find that getting video footage into the right hands can take hours, or might be impossible to do remotely.
It isn’t until they need to pull footage of a specific incident, that they discover a camera is down and their existing solutions are made up of a hodgepodge of different legacy systems, and the process of managing those systems is extremely inefficient and time-consuming.
Verkada's approach is simple. Footage is stored in both the camera and the cloud for redundancy. Everything is managed on a centralised platform, so visibility is streamlined and incident resolution takes just moments – with a few clicks, users can quickly find, share and archive clips.
Installation is simple as all the camera needs is a POE cable from the LAN - no supporting infrastructure or equipment (NVR) is required. The cameras average 15mins per installation and once plugged in, they are accessible online immediately.
The administrator can access, archive and share historical or live footage in just seconds, wherever they are, on any device and if cameras experience downtime or tampering, you get notifications that alert you of the incident.
Verkada's “hybrid-cloud” approach ensures that there’s no single point of failure. In the event of network outages, cameras still record locally. When internet is reinstated, that stored footage is pushed to the cloud. As an end-user, you experience no gaps in coverage.
The solution is secure out of the box – there is no need to open ports or perform special configurations on the firewall. Updates deploy automatically, so your system is always compliant with the latest security requirements.
All backed by a 10 Year warranty on the hardware.
Cloudifi has recently been added to the NSW Government ICT Services Scheme for the supply of Verkada hardware and licensing, Cisco Meraki hardware and licensing and our own Cloudifi Guest Connect Captive Portal for Guest Authentication to NSW Government buyers.
We look forward to working with our NEW Government Customers!
Cloudifi has brought it considerable experience in Cloud Managed Networking to the fore with the launch of its Cloud Managed CCTV branded Verkada Web Store today at http://www.cloudmanagedcctv.com.au.
We aim to bring our experience with the product, relationships with the local Verkada team and support from Verkada Inc. in the USA together to form the newest and most relevant Verkada Partner in Australia.
The Verkada web store has been carefully designed to make procurement of Verkada Physical Security Products and Licences easy, and allows fast processing by the Cloudifi team.
Cloudmanagedcctv, a division of Cloudifi Pty Ltd. will serve customers throughout Australia and New Zealand and offer fast online ordering for the entire Verkada Physical Security product range.
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