Raytec has announced details of a lighting standard for video surveillance applications, ‘Powers’. It is designed to enable consultants, installers and end-users to more easily specify and compare the performance of different illuminators.
According to the company there has historically been no standard way to specify and compare different lighting products designed for video surveillance and their performance claims – particularly for infra-red lighting. This ultimately causes confusion and potential disappointment for customers.
Lighting manufacturers currently publish very limited information – in the majority of cases they merely quote a maximum lighting performance distance. With the absence of standardisation, one manufacturer could claim a significantly different performance distance when compared to another manufacturer for a product that delivers exactly the same output. Security professionals are therefore unable to safely rely on the lighting performance claims of the manufacturer.
Calculating accurate lighting distances should be based around achieving a standardised level of light power on scene at the required distance – which in turn helps to ensure a standardised quality of image every time. But what is classed as acceptable light power on scene and what technique has been used to measure and calculate this?
Distance is only one area of lighting performance to consider. Determining angle output is another vitally important area which is currently left open to wildly different interpretation by manufacturers. After facing this challenge almost daily for the last 25 years, directors at Raytec took the initiative to launch Powers which addresses all of the above issues and more.
Tony Whiting, Raytec’s Managing Director (joint) and one of the pioneers of the standard said: “The standard provides security professionals with an understanding as to how their chosen lighting product will perform and sets a lighting quality benchmark to help customers make an informed choice”.
Raytec has invited all the major lighting manufacturers to play an active role in helping to formulate this new standard and these have generally agreed with the proposed standard.
There will be a webinar on the standard on 25th November 2015 at 15:00 GMT (16:00 CET/10:00 EST/07:00 PST). Click here for more details.
