What the job actually involves.
Homes, shops and small offices. The camera is the easy part — the cabling, the recorder and the storage are what decide whether it still works in three years.
A site walk before any quote
Camera positions are decided by what you actually need to see — the entrance, the till, the stock room, the gate — not by how many cameras come in a package. Two well-placed cameras beat six pointed at nothing.
Analog HD or IP — whichever suits the site
Analog HD reuses existing coax and keeps cost down. IP over network cable gives more detail and one cable per camera for both data and power. Which is right depends on your existing cabling, the run lengths, and how much detail you actually need from each position.
Cabling that survives the next three years
Most CCTV that fails early fails at the cable, not the camera — rodent damage, water getting into a joint, a connector corroding on an outdoor run. Cable route and termination is the part of the job that decides whether the system is still working later.
Storage sized to the days you need
The real question is how far back you need to go. That, plus the number of cameras, the resolution and whether you record continuously or on motion, is what sets the disk size — so we ask it before specifying the recorder, not after.
Power that survives a cut
When the power drops, an unprotected recorder stops recording — which tends to be exactly the window you later want to review. Backup power for the recorder and the cameras feeding it is part of the design, not an upsell.
Remote viewing, set up deliberately
Viewing from your phone is straightforward to enable. We set it up with its own credentials and walk you through who can see what, because a camera system reachable from outside is worth thinking about before it is switched on.
“The cameras are on” is not the same as “it is recording.”
Almost every bad CCTV story is the same one: something happened, someone went to pull the footage, and it wasn't there. A disk had failed months earlier. A camera had been offline since a power cut. Retention had quietly dropped to two days. Nothing on the wall looked any different the whole time — the lights were on and the live view worked.
That is the whole argument for maintenance on a camera system, and it is why every check below starts from the recording rather than from the camera.
Keeping it recording, on a contract.
For shops, offices and warehouses that need the footage to actually be there — scheduled visits with a fixed scope, so it's a budget line rather than an emergency.
Recording verified, not just power
A visit checks that every camera is genuinely writing footage to the recorder — not that the lights are on. This is the single check that separates a system that works from one that only looks like it does.
Retention checked against what you agreed
Disks fill, settings drift, a camera gets added and the days available quietly halve. We confirm you can still go back as far as your contract says you can.
Aim, focus and housings
Cameras drift over time, and a lens behind a dirty or fogged dome sees far less than it did on day one. Positions are re-checked against the original plan and housings cleaned.
The recorder disk treated as a wear item
A drive recording continuously is under constant write load, and it will eventually fail. We monitor its health across visits and tell you it needs replacing before it takes your footage with it.
Cable, connector and power inspection
Outdoor joints, exposed runs and the power supply feeding the cameras, checked for corrosion, damage and heat. Small problems here are cheap; the same problems found later are not.
Help when you actually need footage
When an incident happens, getting the clip off the system is usually the stressful part. Under AMC that is a call to us — we help you locate and export it.
CCTV can sit inside one office contract.
Alongside laptops and desktops, structured cabling, the file server and secure disposal — one vendor, one visit schedule, GST invoices against your PO.