4K imaging, day and night
Large-sensor G6-series cameras with long-range infrared and glare control, specified per position so faces and plates remain readable in the light that position actually has.
Surveillance and access control — Christchurch, Canterbury and London
Cameras engineered as infrastructure, not fitted as an afterthought.
CyberCrest delivers CCTV installation Christchurch organisations can hold to a specification. UniFi Protect systems are designed against the DORI criteria in IEC 62676-4, sized to a stated retention period, recorded on hardware inside the building, and isolated inside a network segment with no outbound internet route. There is no per-camera licence, and there is no monthly fee to watch footage you already own.
- Design standard
- IEC 62676-4 (DORI)
- Platform
- UniFi Protect
- Recording
- The site's own
- Licence
- No per-camera fee
- Company
- CYBERCREST LIMITED
Why most systems disappoint
The footage was recorded. It just wasn't usable.
The complaint is almost never that the cameras failed to record. It is that when the recording was finally needed, the face was eleven pixels wide, the plate was unreadable at the angle it was mounted, the relevant camera had been offline for six weeks with nobody alerted, or the retention window had already rolled over the day in question.
Those are not equipment failures. They are the outcome of a system that was quoted by camera count rather than designed against a requirement. Eight cameras is a shopping list. It is not a specification.
A specification states what each position must achieve — detect, observe, recognise or identify — at a stated distance, in the lighting that position actually has, and for a stated number of days. Then the lens, sensor, mounting height, angle and storage are selected to meet it. That is the difference, and it costs nothing extra to do properly at design stage.
Coverage design
Every camera position has a job. We write it down first.
The DORI criteria in IEC 62676-4 define the pixel density a camera must deliver on target before a given task is realistically achievable. They are the international reference for surveillance design and they are the reason a system should never be quoted by camera count alone.
| Task | Pixel density on target | What it supports |
|---|---|---|
| Detect | 25 px/m | Something is present in the scene |
| Observe | 62.5 px/m | Characteristic details, clothing, behaviour |
| Recognise | 125 px/m | A person known to the viewer can be recognised |
| Identify | 250 px/m | Identification of a person previously unknown to the viewer |
We assign a task to every position before selecting hardware. A car park entry that needs plate capture is a different specification from an aisle that needs detection, and mounting the same camera at both is how organisations end up with footage that proves an event occurred without showing who caused it.
Light matters as much as pixels. A camera pointed at a glazed entrance faces backlight for part of every day; a yard camera works in infrared for fourteen hours in a Canterbury winter. Both are handled at design stage through sensor selection, mounting angle and illumination, not discovered afterwards.
StandardIEC 62676-4 DORI criteria
AppliedPer position, not per site
Sized toA stated retention requirement
Not toWhatever the recorder came with
Retention
Recordings stay on the site that captured them.
Subscription camera platforms move footage to an offsite data centre by default, then licence access back to the organisation that generated it. Three consequences follow, and only one of them is about money.
The organisation acquires a third-party dependency it did not choose: when the platform changes its terms, its pricing or its feature tiers, there is no practical alternative. It acquires a data-residency position by accident rather than by decision, which matters under the Privacy Act 2020 and matters more under UK GDPR. And it acquires a running cost that scales with every sensor added, which means the security design starts being shaped by the subscription rather than by the risk.
CyberCrest architects for local-site retention. A UniFi Network Video Recorder sits on the premises, inside the isolated surveillance segment, with drives sized against a stated retention figure — commonly 30 days, sometimes longer where an insurer or a regulator requires it. Where the site has UPS and WAN failover, a power cut or a line fault interrupts nothing: the recorder continues writing and the cameras continue feeding it.
Cloud replication through UniFi is available where a client wants offsite redundancy. It is scoped as a deliberate option with a stated cost, not applied as a default.
Storage sizing note. Retention is a function of camera count, resolution, frame rate, codec efficiency and drive capacity. We size storage against the retention requirement rather than fitting a recorder and discovering the retention afterwards. The capacity calculator on this site does the same arithmetic if you want to sanity-check a quote from anyone.
Storage capacity calculator| Subscription platforms | CyberCrest specification | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary recording tier | Vendor cloud | Local site |
| Data residency | The vendor's, wherever that is | Follows the site's own location |
| Per-camera licence | Typical | None on the UniFi platform |
| Recording during an outage | Usually stops | Continues |
| Offsite replication | Default | Optional, client-elected |
| Analytics | Cloud-processed, often tiered | On-device inference, included |
| Retention | Set by plan | Sized to requirement |
| Asset ownership | Access is licensed | Client owns the hardware and the footage |
Architecture
A camera network is a network. It gets treated as one.
Cameras are internet-connected computers with a lens on the front, running an embedded operating system that somebody has to patch. Traditional security installers frequently place them on the same flat network as everything else, because the cabling was the deliverable and the network was somebody else's problem.
We place the entire surveillance estate in its own VLAN with no outbound internet route and no path to staff, payment or building-services zones. A camera therefore cannot be recruited into a botnet, cannot be used as a pivot into the file server, and cannot quietly transmit anywhere. Access to live and recorded video is granted through an encrypted WireGuard tunnel to named accounts, not by forwarding a port on the gateway and hoping.
PoE budget, switch capacity and uplink headroom are calculated for the full camera count plus planned expansion, so adding four cameras in two years does not require replacing the switch.
How the network underneath it is built- Segment
- Dedicated camera VLAN
- Outbound internet
- None
- Path to staff / payment zones
- None
- Remote access
- WireGuard, named accounts
- Capacity planning
- Sized for expansion
Capability
What the platform does.
On-device inference
Person, vehicle, animal and package classification processed on the camera itself. Alerts are filtered at source, which means notifications that warrant attention rather than one per passing cat.
PTZ and auto-tracking
Pan-tilt-zoom units that follow movement across yards, forecourts and car parks, with preset patrol positions and defined home positions.
Licence plate capture
LPR-capable cameras at gates, driveways and car park entries, logging plates into a searchable index. Placement, angle and illumination are specified for the approach speed at that entry.
Sensors and real-time alerting
UniFi sensors for door, motion, water and environmental conditions, tied into the same platform. Alerts are routed to nominated people in real time and configured against what actually matters on that site, rather than triggering an audible alarm at every event.
Access control
UniFi Access door entry on the same platform and the same timeline as the video, with credential management, audit trail and after-hours policy.
Built for Canterbury conditions
IP66-rated outdoor units with vandal-resistant options where warranted, mounted and sealed for frost, nor'west wind loading and coastal salt.
Compliance
Surveillance carries obligations. We design for them at the start.
Operating a camera system in New Zealand means collecting personal information, which brings it under the Privacy Act 2020 and its information privacy principles. Footage must be collected for a lawful purpose connected to a function of the organisation, people must be made aware that collection is occurring, the material must be kept secure, and it must not be retained for longer than the purpose requires. In the United Kingdom the equivalent frame is UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
None of that prevents a well-designed system. It shapes one. At design stage we work through camera positioning relative to areas where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy, signage placement and wording, retention periods set to the actual purpose rather than to the size of the drive, who holds access to recorded material and under what process, and how a request for footage is handled when one arrives.
Holding recordings on the local site under the client's own control makes every one of those positions materially simpler to hold. Where a system involves licence plate capture, facial recognition or surveillance of a workplace, we flag the additional considerations before the hardware is ordered rather than after somebody complains.
Privacy and data handlingSectors
CCTV installation for Christchurch businesses, sites and homes.
Commercial and retail
Coverage at points of sale, entries, back-of-house and stockrooms, with camera positions specified around shrinkage patterns and staff safety rather than around cable convenience.
Office and corporate
Entry control, reception, server room and after-hours coverage, integrated with door access so a badge event and the video of it sit on the same timeline.
Industrial and manufacturing
Plant, yard and perimeter coverage in environments with dust, vibration and heavy metal structure, with hardened enclosures and PoE reach planned across distance.
Logistics and warehousing
Loading bays, dock doors, racking aisles, yard and gate coverage, with licence plate capture at vehicle entries and retention sized for dispute resolution windows.
Education
Grounds, entries and corridors, designed with explicit attention to privacy obligations, retention discipline and who holds access to footage of minors.
Healthcare
Entries, car parks and controlled areas, with strict separation between clinical systems and surveillance, and retention set tightly to purpose.
Agriculture and rural
Sheds, yards, tanks, races and remote gates, often over point-to-point wireless links where cable is impractical, with power resilience designed for unreliable supply.
Recreation and leisure
Grounds, car parks, entries and plant rooms, with coverage that holds under crowd density and outdoor lighting conditions.
Residential
Homes, home offices and lifestyle properties: perimeter and approach coverage, video entry, local recording, and cabling finished to a standard that suits the house rather than a standard that suits the installer.
Process
From first conversation to handover.
- 01
Consultation
A short conversation at no cost about the site, the risk and the constraints. Enough for both parties to judge whether there is a fit.
- 02
Assessment and design
Site survey, coverage modelling against DORI, storage sizing to a stated retention figure, and a camera-by-camera position schedule. Presented in person, with a fixed-price proposal to follow.
- 03
Delivery
Cabling and physical installation delivered by licensed partner trades to our specification and sign-off, then configuration, network segmentation, hardening and commissioning by CyberCrest.
- 04
Handover and operation
Walkthrough, full documentation including the position schedule and retention policy, credentials handed to the client, then monitoring and health checks under a managed agreement where required.
Where we install
CCTV installation across Christchurch and Canterbury.
Based in Christchurch, delivering camera and access control systems across the city, the Selwyn and Waimakariri districts and the wider Canterbury region, with national coverage by scope.
Christchurch Central · Riccarton · Addington · Papanui · Hornby · Halswell · Sydenham · Woolston · Sumner · New Brighton · Belfast · Wigram · Rolleston · Lincoln · Prebbleton · West Melton · Rangiora · Kaiapoi · Woodend · Selwyn District · Waimakariri District · Ashburton · Timaru · Wider Canterbury
Next
See what your cameras would actually see.
Start with a conversation about the site and what it needs to protect. If there is a fit, the assessment returns a camera-by-camera position schedule with the task each one performs, the coverage it delivers and the retention it holds — before anything is ordered.