- Client
- The Argonne Apartments
- Location
- 5650 Argonne St, Denver, CO
- Scope
- Residential security · Commercial security camera systems · Commercial security
Apartment coverage is decided outdoors. Most of what a manager is asked about afterwards happened in a lot, at a gate, or on the walk between a car and a door, and none of that is covered by cameras bolted to a building lobby.
The obvious answer is to put cameras on the light poles that already stand in the lot. The reason it usually does not happen is the cable: running it underground means trenching asphalt, restoring the surface and doing the work in stages so residents keep their parking. On this site that cost more than the cameras.
The installation
The photographs below are from the completed job. They show the camera positions and how each housing sits against the surface it was mounted to.
The installation The ground the system had to cover: several buildings, one open lot, and no cable path between them.
The installation One pole, three jobs: the existing floodlight, the bridge radio and the camera, fed through a single enclosure.
The installation The radio and camera bracket, with the cable glanded into the housing rather than left to hang.
During the work Installation from the lift: the pole work is done above the lot, with the surface left intact.
The installation The building corner, where the coverage that the poles cannot see is picked up — conduit on the surface, so it stays inspectable.
The installation The operator position: entry drive and lots tiled on screen, which is what makes the system something staff check.
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The bridge replaced the trench
A wireless bridge is two radios deliberately aimed at each other. One sits on a pole in the lot, the other on a building, and between them they carry the camera traffic back to the recorder at full resolution. Nothing is compressed twice, and there is no monthly carrier service in the path.
The radios are mounted on the same poles that already carry the lot lighting, which is what makes the coverage practical: the pole is at the right height, it already has power, and it is already where the traffic is.
- Point-to-point bridge radios on the parking-lot poles, aligned and aimed rather than left to find each other.
- The same pole carries the floodlight, the radio and the camera, with the cable glanded into one enclosure.
- No trenching, so the lots stayed open and the work could be staged around residents.
Cameras chosen for what a lot looks like at night
A parking lot at 2am is the hardest scene in residential security: pools of light, deep shadow between them, headlights pointing at the lens, and long distances. The cameras here are weather-rated low-light units mounted at height and angled to look along the rows and the drive aisles rather than down at the pavement.
Placement was agreed with the property, then checked against the view: the entry drive, the visitor parking, the walk from the lot to the building doors and the corner the building itself blocks. The building cameras follow the wall and the fence line, with the conduit run on the surface where it can be inspected.
A monitor position the staff can actually use
The operator side matters as much as the field side. The views sit on a two-monitor station at the office, tiled so the entry drive and the lots are visible at once instead of hidden in a menu, and the recorder sits on the same network as the bridge.
That is the practical difference between a system that is checked and one that is not: if a manager has to click through four screens to find the lot, the lot does not get watched.
What it needed from us
The design work was the wireless survey and the camera placement, and the install was lifts, pole brackets, weatherproof boxes and cable dressing on a property that stayed occupied throughout.
Nothing about this is exotic. It is the combination that matters: coverage planned from the parking lot outward, a link that avoids the trench, and cameras specified for the lighting that is actually there.
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