In SEASON 2 – EPISODE 6 – We will interview William Ferris CEO of Dotworkz and HDRelay to talk about outdoor camera enclosures. Dotworkz is a well known manufacturer for outdoor camera enclosures and has certified a SKU specifically for PTZOptics cameras. We will discuss the different options based on climate and location of your outdoor camera project for live streaming or video surveillance.
Many of the PTZOptics cucstomers have used these outdoor PTZ camera enclosures to set up video production systems in arenas, stadiums and sporting fields to distribute video from secure locations. We have had customers deploy PTZOptics cameras with long HD-SDI cable runs which are extended to the outdoor camera enclosures for safe outdoor usage.

Live Show Transcript

Hello everybody. Paul Richards here with PTZoptics as we are every Friday at 2pm Eastern, 11am pacific and today we are interviewing Dotworkz. I have got their camera enclosure in front of me. I’m going to be showing of in a little bit and I have with me Will Ferris. How are you doing Will?

Will: Doing great. Doing great, Paul. Happy to be here.
Paul: Thank you very much. Bill is joining us audio only today so, when we do the lightning round in the interview, I’m going to show his website here. Before we start, let me- everyone know that you can follow us on twitter at PTZoptics obviously, Facebook/PTZoptics, every live show if you like this show you add one dollar to our charity donations every week. We’ve donated I believe almost $15,000 this year to the Susquehanna cause of helping children get adoptions. This last Friday was a really fun show. We interviewed Philippe Lorent from go easy live and he had his cloud based video production solution, the only cloud based video production solution I have ever seen before. Today we are interviewing dotworkz with their outdoor enclosure and we are going to talk a little bit about using them for PTZoptics camera in broadcast solutions and then next Friday, we are going to interview the CEO of Zyptonite which is a webRTC based video conferencing system which is super secure and it’s a great cool platform so, it’s going to be interesting. Will, we usually kick this show off with lightning round, are you ready?

Outdoor camera enclosures

Will: You know, we got to see that we’re one of the biggest democracies unfolding in front of my own eyes would be a little bit more educational and maybe some enlightening could be seen through that period of time.
Paul: I think that is a great way to go. Everyone has their own thoughts on that. I think it’s so funny, I did not have… Thank you Mike, Latta out there for saving me on the fact that there is nothing in the descriptions. That is a good thing to know. Okay. We are going to do a brief introduction to dotworkz. Will, why don’t you go ahead. Who is dotworkz? We got your website up over here. I’m going to show that up a little bit. Who is dotworkz?
Will: Yeah, let’s talk about that. Dotworkz, we manufacture camera for protection systems. We’ve been in business for about 20 years now. We are located in San Diego California and we always have been. Pretty much a 100% of the product is built and manufactured here in San Diego. We’ve been in the security industry and the broadcast industry as a OEM provider for many many years. We are constantly kind of pushing things and developing new housing systems so that we can get cameras into locations and then to industries and verticals and things like that. That pretty much no one else has been really focusing on. Dotworkz is a camera housing manufacturer in San Diego of all things. We do our best to compete against overseas markets but I think we are really doing a lot of innovation, a lot of engineering to the table so that people installs and longevity and the reliability of cameras such as PTZoptics can kind of be brought to the next level as far as once it’s installed in the field for an extended period of time.
Paul: Let’s do a brief product overview. I need to do a lot of different things. Why don’t we just go ahead and talk about those things, like it’s not just camera enclosures like this, you do a whole bunch of stuff right?
Will: Yeah, yeah so, the camera enclosures obviously, that’s one part of it but there’s inside these different housings there is temperature controls, we have the ability for instance in whatever models, the ring of fire which is very very popular because really understand what ice and cold weather can do to a sensitive electronic that is installed in a field. We have an outdoor deicing system for the camera so for instance, if it frosty and icy I don’t want your camera to be actually having to see through icicles or see or not see anything at all in those very trying conditions… [crosstalk 00:06:12] Yeah, the environmental is a big thing for us.
Paul: Cool, okay. Looks, sounds good. Let’s talk about these outdoor enclosures. I already got a question in the chat about that. I’m going to have to turn my mic, just I hear a little issue with it. Are the outdoor enclosures portable or they meant to be installed permanently?

Installation of PTZ Cameras Outdoors

Will: Yeah. These are meant for long term use in usually one location. Now, the portable side is a great question, well, because we actually do manufacture housing system that’s intended for vehicles or boats or places where there will be motion involved but generally they are not necessarily used for carrying around and setting up here or there, but people tend to take our housings and then make them their own. Basically, we are providing oftentimes a canvas for folks to come up with their own products. For instance, if you wanted to take that PTZoptics camera and have that mobile system just say for an event, there is room inside that housing to put a radio. There’s room in the housing we can put battery systems or the recharge devices that are on the market now in with the camera so that, yeah it can be set up on a tripod and it can be moved on a day to day basis hour on for hour basis for special event so there’s just almost endless amount of versatility that we really wanted to give the dealers and the folks that are professionals in this industry so that they can make these systems their own and use them for how they need to use and not just how we might think people are going to do the, set the cams.
Paul: Cool. I’ve got a little video here. I’m going to show about the outdoor enclosures. Can you tell us a little bit about the insulation of these things?
Will: Yeah, so what you are seeing there. That’s our D2 housing, that’s a very very popular model for us. When you are out here, you are going to notice is that it’s not just a camera housing so people often confuse oh well, there’s camera housings that kind of look like a ball on a stick or an arm or something like that. We you see in this, this little video clip here, that’s a PTZoptic camera that’s in the D2 housing and there’s seven different models like I said the earlier, the environmental side on the inside there so in this case I think just the heater blower version. Keep in mind we have our ring of fire which serve deicing version.

We actually have a cool version so we can remove heat energy out of the housing, we can, so that’s actively cooled, we can get up to about 30 degrees differential between the inside and the outside of the housing. But back into that video clip, you would notice like I said, there’s room inside. It’s not just an arm or something that’s supporting the camera. There is more of a boxer space in there to be able to add other devices. You are seeing a ring of fire there, that’s an illustration of kind of how that ring works from the inside view but that’s a 65 degree heaters ring system so that’s it’s got to be having in, we don’t have impinges it starts building up on the outside. But absolutely, there’s so much into the housing, here in like I said the D2 is one of our most popular. Its named after just anybody cared- it’s named after the whole sports utility vehicle side of things and we tend to kind of align ourselves with the auto names and things but the D2 much like the H2 at in a time, it just gets a little bit more boxy utility on the inside to add things and bring more to the table as far as what a camera systems can do outside the traditional camera only. Camera housings that we are competing with in the far east. This brings new versatility, new function, definitely more usability and of course with our environmental kit, a lot more reliability and even more performance out of electronic over time.
Paul: Yeah. Let’s talk about some of the options people have that they should be aware of because there is so much that can go inside like this basic housing, if I’m looking at this basic D2 enclosure from B&H it is $285 right so obviously, a lot of options that people have to go in there. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what the options are?
Will: Yeah, so in the D2 format because when we talk about pan-tilt-zoom cameras much like the PTZoptics systems, they are going to be for the most part mounted into different geographic locations. When we talk a little bit about the heating system, the ring of fire model that has a single port of a [00:11:11] power supply so you simply just hook up a single power lead inside the housing and then what we call the MVP or multi-viable platform actually step that down so that you have the ability to power it. 12 volt or 24 volt camera inside the housing so of course we our best with the different environmental kits so the ring of fire, the heater blower version, the base model which doesn’t have any of the MBP features in it but it’s in case the IP 68 in case that they are and then you have got a solar version even so we have set up the native 12v DC so we did have a solo application where you didn’t need a minimum amount of heat energy and a little bit more versatility out of your batteries. Solar ready versions very ready.

PoE Power Over Ethernet

We even have a POE version so if we get into run POE that’s possible. We have a tornado is what we call it, it’s a system that’s been designed for high humidity type of conditions so think about Florida coastlines and the Caribbean and hot tropical type environment so we do that IB68 tornado model which is just absolutely perfect for those conditions where it’s going to be a little bit hot it’s not going to require the cool dome so the tornado IP 68 and it’s designed to move air around the inside of the housing not bring air from the outside or anything like that so it’s 100% sealed. Very very useful for marine applications considering the D2 is a thermoplastic system we don’t have rust, we don’t have corrosion and then in that system as well we have the fan moving air around the cameras keeps hotspots from happening in those hot afternoon suns.
Paul: Besides these things, besides like heaters and blowers and fans, are they putting actual like devices inside of these boxes since you have so much room?
Will: Yeah so, that’s the best point I think and that kind of sums up what the D2 and actually all of the other products are about. Is that there’s room on the inside of these very sealed, very weather type, very fortified basically housing systems so that you can add other products. People are putting point to point radio systems or putting fiber modems so if you did have a fiber run that you needed to connect to, you don’t have to have external boxes on the wall or on the floor or anywhere else. You would just simply run powered to your D2 housing and then you would mount often there is mounting brackets available on the inside there so you could just mount those devices either with our brackets or some folks actually make their own or you could even put the DIN rail inside there and mount different routers in different wireless systems so yeah, I can keep going on with the what folks are doing but there is so much built around the D2 it’s just very modular in that case so people are putting like i said fiber modems, they are putting point to point radio, they are putting microphones even microphone systems, audio systems which of course we do have a outstanding mike [00:14:27] for outdoors so they are able to kind of get all that in one small easy to hang housing system so that it’s all sealed, it’s all temperature controlled and it’s a single box installed so they don’t have- you know, octopus of different wires and things going from one box to the next and having to troubleshoot and do all that and if anything goes wrong, so it makes the job much faster to install but it makes it look a lot cleaner, a lot more engineered, even lighter weight if that matters so if you are doing a pole mount for instance, you can’t have a lot of weight on a traffic pole or you don’t want that vibration.
The D2 is definitely designed to be a simple build it, hang it once and then if you ever needed to get into it, it even opens from the bottom, while powered up so you can actually see Led lights and things like that on the cameras and on the other devices all from underneath so you don’t have to take it down even if you needed to add something or check something so, it’s just a tremendous little product that people love worldwide and there’s so much versatility I could probably go on for hours about what folks have put inside these but it’s made for that, so–
Paul: Cool and you can even power it over POE that really takes the icing on the cake. Why don’t we talk about the integrating with PTZoptics and show people exactly what they are going to need to buy to get a PTZoptics camera outside?
Will: Oh yeah. That’s the nice thing is that really, you pick your model. If you are talking about PTZoptics camera, you have two choices mainly with us right now is that you have the D2 model or you have the D3 model. Now the D3 model is a little bit bigger and why it’s bigger is, just because once we designed the D2 folks said, hey! I want to add a computer, I want to put an encoder, I want to multiple radio. I want to put a cradlepoint router, all the different things that can go inside, we needed to give options for just going super big and getting more product in there if needed. The first thing you look at I should say, I would take a D2 or D3 housing and right out of the box, D2 or D3 housing has the mounting place that fits the PTZoptics so, it’s you barely have to look at the instructions there because it’s just all the hardware’s included, folds right together and it’s- you center your camera you got it as lowest length as you can and its off the [00:17:02] as far as that go.

Dotworkz D3 Heater Blower Enclosure

Paul: This is all we need right here, so there’s D3 heater blower enclosure for $500 that’s all they need?
Will: Yup and that’s the D3. That’s a little bit bigger than the D2. That comes with the MVP, that multi viable platforms you simply just hook your power up to the MVP and then you take the power from the MVP right to the camera so, MVP will take in that one- 10, two 10, two 40 so even if you had different power in the field you are not basically not going to get caught once you have that MVP in the box there, you are not going to need a different part. It’s all designed so that it takes some of that gas work out for some of the insole for instance we know what it’s like to be in a field and we know what it’s like to not have all the right parts and all that. We really wanted to make sure that this was first of all not so that right out of the box. You are going to have the right product that could do the right job without having different part numbers of models.
The only thing really in a PTZoptics integration you would need to decide is where it going right. Are we going to be in a cold icy environment, great get the ring of fire? Are we going to be in a temperate environment like most of the US like? The heater blower is what you are going to want because that’s going to keep the camera safest from most temperate in climates what we have. You know little bit of cold, little bit of heat, we got it covered with the heater blower. If do you want to just build your own from just from the base up and not have the electronic on the inside and you are on a budget project, but definitely the base that IP68 case with the camera bracket so that’s also a way folks tend to go. But again, if we are dealing with hot climate, you need the cool dome. You are going to want to keep the camera at a much cooler temperature to get this reliability up because you are growing up in Arizona you can’t have thinned out in that type of heat for very long without them breaking. The cool dome is the go to for those hot desert environments and then again, back to that tornado, if you are going into a hot humid climate the tornado is kind of where it’s at.
Paul: I really appreciate this quick overview because I think within 20 minutes, we’ve kind of gone over your product lines, we’ve shown people exactly what they need, with the PTZoptics camera. I’m going to roll the credits because we just hit 20 minutes and if you can we’ll stick around and we will stay around and answer any questions that people might have.
[Music]
Paul: Okay we are back. I’m here with Will Ferris, he is on audio so for video we are showing his website. But we do have him here, he is the CEO of dotworkz and he is telling us a little bit about their location in San Diego, the products that you need in order to get PTZoptics into the field. I see so many of our dealers and customers using these to get these PTZoptics cameras out into arenas, for sporting events things like that. We had a couple of questions Will and the first one that came in, here’s another one here, could you mount the enclosure to a clamp that could clamp to a speaker or a light tripod?
Will: Yes, yes so, the enclosure is designed to be mounted on to a pole but there is a pole mount adapter system that is right away available, that’s called our BR-MPM1. That is ready to go bolts right onto the D2 or D3 housing and then they can go down to a pole size of just about one inch or so, so if you are going into a small diameter pole, you just need that pole adaptor piece that’s all and then you are good to go with that, so people do mount that for events, they sometimes make their pole mounts like I said down to one inch or so, we are good on that pole mount adapter.
Paul: Interesting. Okay. You have answered my main question which I wanted to leave this show with was, what options do my customers have to purchase an outdoor enclosure, you answered that for us, you answered for us what types of options they have depending on the climate, area of mainly the United States but the rest of the world. We had a couple of questions, there was another question that I asked you earlier about outdoor enclosures being actually portable. That is kind of interesting to me. Do you actually have an outdoor enclosure that are put on to cars and things?
Will: Absolutely. We have a complete line of different products. I would recommend looking at our BASH-OG ballistic anti shock housing. That’s a very popular product for smaller cameras but that does have a vibration system that’s built into it so that the housing itself actually almost levitates around a support mechanism so that we do remove some of that high frequency vibration that you might see on vehicles such as brings more longevity to the camera itself but yes, our BASH housing is made for that and it’s perfect for moving around if needed, yeah.
Paul: Interesting. Well, it looks like I think it’s fairly straightforward here. I know you do offer a lot of different things here. It’s like you can buy right off your site. Quick question I always kind of ask people, do you actually work with resellers and integrators?
Will: Yes. We are mainly in distribution. We do a lot of OEM business, we do a lot of dealers will tend a purchased product worldwide through some of our distribution group so they will purchase through pretty much every distribution company that is involved in security cameras and some broadcast. Like you mentioned, B&H is an excellent source for us. But yeah, we are sold worldwide right now. We do have a complete line of mounting systems so I touch little bit on the pole mount but there are different mounts for these just corner mount adapters if needed. There is arms that kind of extend the camera out if you needed that. There’s even angle correction mounts so if we are mounting it to a surface that not a 100% vertical, we even have that kind of figured out for you so in the PTZoptics world, you got to get that camera directly on the horizon and if you don’t, it goes left and it goes right. It’s going to fall of that level very quickly so we do have a system called angle correction plate.
On that pole mount adapter that people just love and then I hate to mention it, but it’s so simple and so ridiculous but it’s very needed when we are mounting cameras outside and if keeping the camera housing clean is a big big thing we even have a tool for that. That’s called the dome cleaner system. People just love that. Getting the cameras cleaned or keeping that lower bubble clean and especially from production use is I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to make sure that there’s no, no dust or anything on the outside of that bubble then. So, we have that cleaning kit that people just love and that goes a long long way because you don’t even have to get on a ladder. Just push it right up against the housing from down below and it basically cleans in 3 seconds. It’s a great tool.
Paul: Let’s do a final explanation of this video. From what I understand, I’m more of a sales and marketing guy so I don’t get, I wish I kind of got my hands more dirty than they do but they look as though, I’m going to try to pause this video at the right place. They have it mounted to like steel strut, I don’t know if that’s what you call it.
Will: Yeah, that’s a unit strut, that’s a very universal way to mount as opposed to just going into the block so yeah, there’s four bolts on the back of that housing that in the instructions is a template you just line that template up, make sure that you are going to be horizontal on that so you are definitely going to use a bubble level when you get those four holes drilled so that you don’t have any migration of anything kind of tilting in the wrong way, so yeah it’s an easy four bolt mount and that’s what they used to instruct the very common piece. But the more important thing is how you want to run your cables. You always want to have your cables lower than the housing, you never want the cables coming down from high up and then into the housing no matter it’s ours or anybody else’s. You do need to have a drip loop and that’s all part of that. But we use, like I said this housing is IP68 so if you wanted to put that under water for a period of time you could, I’m not going to suggest that but as long as you have installed it right if you ever needed to, that is definitely ready for being underwater and I don’t recommend that. But it is IP68 housing so, another little unique feature that people like to know about because I just needed airtight and it means it’s water tight.
Paul: Sounds good. I think that’s all the time we have today. Thank you so much for watching everybody and tuning into our show. Well, I appreciate having you. There’s your website and everybody thanks for watching. Have a good holiday. We do have one last show next week. I will try to keep the rumbling of the audio down. I think it’s because this cable is moving around. Apologize. Take care everybody.
Will: Thank you Paul, thank you guys.
Paul: Thanks Bill.