NVR Installation in Ulster County: Questions Answered
These are the recorder questions Ulster owners put to us that we do not hear elsewhere in the valley. Each answer gives the short version first.
Water, damp and the recorder’s shelf
Does the sea-level rise Kingston is planning for change where a Rondout business should put its recorder today?
For the recorder itself, only a little; for the cable and the room around it, yes. City planning documents for the Rondout shoreline use a 1-percent-annual-chance flood elevation of 8.2 feet and expect up to 36 inches of sea-level rise by 2060, and the city has already won federal money to raise East Strand and North Street against frequent tidal flooding. A recorder is replaced every several years as drives age and models change, so the next box can always go somewhere new. The cable paths, wall penetrations, equipment shelf and outlet it plugs into tend to stay for decades.
So we plan the fixed parts for the water the city expects, not just the water the building has seen. The equipment room is chosen a full storey above the basement where possible; the outlet the electrician adds goes high on the wall; cable routes come up through the building rather than along the cellar floor; and any switch that has to stay low is the only part at risk. When the recorder is replaced in five or eight years, its successor drops into the same dry spot without new holes in old brick.
Can footage be recovered from a recorder whose drive sat in floodwater?
Sometimes, if nobody switches it on wet. A hard drive is sealed against dust but not designed to be submerged, and river and creek water carry silt and contaminants. The damage that ends recovery is usually done when power is applied while water is still inside the recorder or the drive. The first instruction we give after any flood is therefore to leave the recorder off, and to unplug it only if that can be done safely.
When we arrive, the drive comes out of the recorder and is kept in a sealed bag. If the footage matters — for an insurance claim, a police report or a licence obligation — the drive goes to a specialist data recovery lab rather than being dried and tried on site; their cleanroom process gives the best chance, though no one can promise success. Meanwhile we install a replacement recorder, rebuild the channel map from our notes or the camera labels, and put the new box somewhere the next flood cannot reach, so recording resumes the same day.
Does a damp fieldstone or bluestone cellar hurt a recorder even if it never floods?
Yes, slowly. Stone foundations wick moisture, and many old Ulster cellars sit at high humidity for much of the summer. Warm, humid air meeting cool equipment can condense on circuit boards and connectors; over months that brings corrosion on the network ports, the power connector and the drive’s contacts, and mould on dust inside the case. The symptoms are intermittent: cameras dropping and returning, a drive that occasionally disappears, a recorder that reboots on humid days.
The cure is the same as for flooding — move the recorder up into the heated, drier part of the house — and where the cellar is the only option for a switch, mount it high on an inside wall, keep it off the stone and run a small dehumidifier in the room. When we inspect a recorder that has lived in a damp cellar, we check the ports and connectors for green or white corrosion and replace patch cords that show it; corroded contacts are a common cause of flickering cameras that owners blame on the cameras themselves.
Retention the state sets for you
Does the state’s 60-day rule for dispensaries mean continuous video or just motion clips?
The regulation says all recordings must be kept for at least 60 days; it does not set a frame rate or say motion-only recording is acceptable. We read it cautiously. Areas the rule names — safes, vaults, sales areas, entries, exits and each point of sale — are recorded continuously, because an inspector or investigator asking what happened at a register at a given minute should find video, not a gap where nobody moved. Quiet areas may use motion-triggered recording with a few seconds before and after, if your compliance adviser agrees.
Whichever choice you make, it has to be built into the drive calculation. Continuous recording at good quality on sixteen cameras uses far more space than motion clips, and the recorder starts writing over its oldest video the moment the drives are full. We size the drives for your actual settings, then check after the first two weeks how much space each day is using, and confirm in writing that the recorder will reach 60 days with room to spare. If it will not, we change the settings or add a drive before the shop opens, not after an inspection.
What does giving the Office of Cannabis Management “remote access” to our recorder look like in practice?
A viewer login, not your admin password, and a safe way to reach the recorder. The rule asks the licensee to make video available for immediate viewing by the Office on request, by remote access or login credentials, and to provide unaltered copies on request. We create a dedicated account that can watch live and play back recordings but cannot change settings, delete video or add users, and we write down how it is handed over and withdrawn.
The route matters as much as the account. A recorder opened to the internet through a port on the router is exactly what attackers scan for. Instead we use the recorder maker’s secure relay service or a VPN, so viewing works without exposing the recorder. For copies, we show staff how to export original files in the recorder’s native format along with the maker’s player, which keeps the video unaltered, and how to note the date, time and camera of each export. The aim is that any manager on duty can answer a request without calling us.
The cannabis rules say keep footage longer if an investigation is pending — how do we hold one incident past the 60 days?
Lock it on the recorder and export a copy. Most professional recorders can protect a time range from being overwritten, often called locking or tagging, and every recorder can export a clip to a USB drive or a computer. The rule asks you to keep the relevant recording until the matter is closed or the investigating body says it is no longer needed, so a protected range on the recorder alone is not enough: it uses space that the 60-day cycle needs, and it can be lost if the drive fails.
The method we set up is simple. The manager marks the incident on the recorder, exports the full camera views covering it, saves the files to two places — a USB drive kept in the safe and a secure computer or cloud folder — and writes a one-line log entry saying what was exported and why. When the matter closes, the lock is released. We leave a printed card in the recorder room with those steps, because the people who need them are rarely the people who were at the installation.
Big old buildings and campuses
We lease a suite on a large campus like iPark 87 — can we run our own recorder, or must we use the landlord’s?
Usually you can run your own, and for most tenants you should. Your cameras watch your space, your stock and your staff; the footage is yours to manage and, if you are regulated, yours to answer for. A recorder in your own lockable room, on your own network, keeps it that way. What you cannot do without the landlord is drill through shared walls, use the building’s risers or network closets, or mount cameras on common areas and the outside of the building.
On a campus the size of the former IBM site, with more than a million square feet across many buildings, the landlord will normally have its own cameras on roads, lots and entrances. We ask for the property manager’s rules early, agree in writing where our cable may run, and keep the tenant’s recorder separate from the landlord’s system. If the two parties later want to share certain views — a loading dock you both use, say — that can be done with a limited viewer account on either side rather than one shared admin password.
Coring through an old mill’s concrete floors is slow and costly — how few holes can a three-storey camera system get by with?
Usually one per floor: a switch on each storey and a single link between them, not a bundle of camera cables through every slab. Former mills and factory buildings, of the kind found in Kingston and in Ellenville’s old manufacturing district, often have thick concrete or heavy timber floors. Coring through them is slow, sometimes needs the structural engineer’s blessing, and every hole is a fire-stopping job. One core per floor, or an existing shaft, is far better than one per camera.
So each floor gets a small PoE switch in a closet or high on a wall, the cameras on that floor run to it, and a single network cable — or fibre where the distance is long or the run passes near heavy electrical equipment — carries everything to the recorder. Each penetration is sealed with a listed fire-stop product. The recorder sits on whichever floor is driest and most secure, and the per-floor switches are labelled on the channel map so the building’s next technician can follow the path.
Studios, galleries and shared streets
Our pottery or woodworking studio is dusty — where should the recorder go?
Anywhere except the studio. Recorders cool themselves with a small fan that pulls air across the drive and circuit boards; in a woodshop it pulls sawdust, in a pottery it pulls fine clay and glaze dust, and near a kiln it also sits in heat. Within months the vents clog, the drive runs hotter, and the recorder starts dropping cameras or rebooting. Many Woodstock and Saugerties studios are outbuildings or converted garages, which makes the temptation to put the recorder on the workbench even stronger.
The better plan is to record the studio from the house or an office: studio cameras run back to the house over cable or fibre, or to a small sealed switch in the studio that links to the house. If the recorder must live in the same building as the work, it goes in a separate closed room or a filtered cabinet with the filter on a cleaning schedule. We note that schedule on the handover sheet, because a clogged filter is a silent failure.
Can the recorder black out part of a camera’s view, such as a neighbour’s window across a narrow Uptown street?
Yes. Almost every current recorder and camera supports privacy masks: blocks drawn over part of the image that are blacked out in live view and in the recording itself. In Uptown Kingston, Saugerties Village and New Paltz the streets are narrow and apartments sit over shops, so a camera aimed at a shop door can easily take in an upstairs window opposite. A mask over that window means it is never recorded, which is both good manners and good practice.
Masks have limits. They are fixed to the image, so if the camera is moved the mask must be redrawn, and a mask also blocks anything that happens behind it. We set them after the camera is aimed, check them in recorded playback and not just live view, and list each one on the handover sheet. For galleries and studios the same feature hides a desk, a screen or a changing area while leaving the artwork and doors in view.
Rules that are specific to Ulster
Does Ulster County’s electrical licensing law reach the low-voltage camera cable?
The county’s law is broad on paper, so we plan as if it might. Chapter 185 of the Ulster County Code, the county’s electrical licensing law, defines electrical work to include wiring for signalling, communication, alarm and data transmission. Our camera and network cabling is done under a New York State low-voltage license, and the parts of a recorder job that are unmistakably electrical — a new outlet, a new circuit, a generator inlet — are done by a licensed electrician with the local permit and inspection.
Where the line falls for low-voltage work can depend on the town or village building department and the scope of the job, and we are not lawyers. On larger commercial projects we ask the local code office before work starts and keep their answer in the job file. For homeowners, the practical point is simple: if a recorder needs power where there is none, the outlet comes from an electrician first, and we take it from there.
Does putting a recorder and new cable into a building in one of Kingston’s historic districts need the preservation commission’s approval?
The recorder itself, no; what shows outside, possibly. Kingston’s Historic Landmarks Preservation Commission reviews material changes to the outside appearance of buildings in its districts — the Stockade, Rondout–West Strand, Chestnut Street and Fair Street — when they are visible from a street or alley. A recorder in a back office, and cable run inside walls and floors, changes nothing anyone outside can see. Ordinary maintenance that keeps the same design and materials is also exempt.
The parts that may need review are outside: new conduit up a facade, a camera on a front wall, a cable entering through visible brick. We plan those first, using rear and side walls, existing openings and interior routes wherever possible, and where something new will show, the owner applies before work starts. On most Stockade and Rondout jobs the recorder work goes ahead at once while any exterior camera waits for the commission.
Linking the recorder to what is already there
Can our existing alarm panel tell the recorder when someone opens the door after hours?
Usually, yes. Most professional recorders have alarm inputs on the back: small terminals that react when a contact closes or opens. An alarm panel with a spare programmable output can be wired to one of those inputs, so when the system is armed and a door opens, the recorder records that door’s camera at full quality, marks the event on the timeline and can send a still to a manager’s phone. Some newer recorders and alarm systems can do the same over the network instead of with a wire.
This turns a night’s worth of video into a list of moments worth checking. It is especially useful in Ulster’s seasonal and part-time businesses, where nobody may look at the recorder for days. We coordinate with the alarm company, because their panel programming is theirs to change, and we test each input with the panel armed before we leave. If the alarm is monitored, we also make sure our work does not change what the monitoring centre receives.
