Spirit Mountain Casino was built to serve the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, its members, and surrounding communities by promoting economic diversity through improved housing, educational investment, and cultural programs.  And like so many gaming facilities around the world, the Spirit Mountain Casino campus has a need to grow.  Their ‘South Expansion Project' began in early 2007 to add more than 130,000 square feet of space to include an events / entertainment centre, conference rooms, administrative offices, and their Youth Activity Center. This growth had a significant effect on their network of more than 1000 surveillance cameras, so Spirit Mountain chose to work with Technical Security Integration (TSI), Optelecom-NKF, and a number of other vendors to help meet the challenge.

 Network Challenge:

Using video surveillance technology is one of the primary tools Spirit Mountain Casino depends on to secure their facility. With their recent expansion, there were a number of network challenges they needed to meet:

1. Finding a Strong Integration Partner - Spirit Mountain made a concerted effort to find an integration company that would act as a true partner seeing the project through to its full completion while minimizing last minute, expensive changes.
2. Moving Surveillance Room - There was a requirement to move the video/audio/data information on their existing video network from the original Surveillance Room location to a new Surveillance Room in the South Expansion facility over a distance of 800 feet.
3. Cabling Challenges - Over this 800 feet distance there was a need to solve the problems that coaxial and/or twisted pair cable introduce: signal degradation, ground loops, and large cable bundles.
4. Integrate Existing Network with New Network Components - Spirit Mountain needed to seamlessly integrate new video surveillance elements (cameras, access control, etc.) for the new facilities into their existing network.

Network Solution: 

The first and perhaps most important step in this network expansion project was Spirit Mountain's decision on an integration partner; they chose Technical Security Integration, Inc, out of Lake Stevens, WA.  TSI specializes in the installation and design of surveillance and safety systems for applications involving CCTV, access control, burglar, fire, and sound.  Steve Bobb, Surveillance Director for Spirit Mountain Casino said, "We were looking for a company that would take care of us and deliver on what they promised.  TSI had absolutely no change orders over the length of this multi-million dollar project, which was completed on time. I have not had a more pleasurable experience with another integrator."

Keeping in mind the challenges inherent to coaxial and twisted pair cabling, the decision was made by Spirit Mountain to use fiber optic cable as their primary network connection medium.  By using fiber cable they were able to avoid signal degradation over their 800 foot distance, completely removing any worries about electrical ground loops, and dramatically decreasing the total size of cabling bundles between the new Surveillance Room and both the old Surveillance Room as well as their multiple IDF closets. 

Spirit Mountain Casino in conjunction with TSI chose Optelecom-NKF for their video/audio/data equipment for transmission over multimode fiber. Using elements of the Optelecom-NKF 9000 Series of Video over Fiber products,

Spirit Mountain was able to create complete, realtime connections for more than 1000 video cameras, their many access control sites, additional RS-data sources, and audio / paging information.

Craig Swankosky, President of Technical Security Integration said, "Optelecom-NKF is easy to do business with. TSI has had great experience with Optelecom-NKF over the years in part because of their breadth of solutions.  These systems not only allow for high-quality transmission without interference but also the ability for trouble-free expansion for future casino projects."  Steve Bobb, Surveillance Director for Spirit Mountain Casino, said of Optelecom-NKF, "Most importantly, we have had zero failures with their products."