Using Google Maps to Design a System

Okay, let's do a search for Google Maps. Click into it, and here we are. Now, most of us are familiar with it. Let's use our offices as an example. Here. There it is there. So here's the office location here, but this view doesn't really help us much. So we come down and we click on satellite, pulls up the satellite view. Now we're getting somewhere. Now we can zoom into the building and we can see its perimeter, we can see the road, and we understand what's going on. Now you can discuss things intelligently with the client.

Now, one of the things I really like about Google Maps is we can click on our little guy down here in the bottom right corner and then click on the street, and now we've got a street view of what the facility looks like. So now we know what kind of construction material it is. We know what kind of installation challenges that we're dealing with. There's one of our PTZs right there. And then you can go down the road and you can take a look at the neighborhood, and maybe target points and things like that. But now at a quick glance with this, now I really understand what I'm dealing with, and I can go back up here in the top left, and I can go back to the satellite view, and we can zoom in and do things that we need to do. Now I prefer Google Earth. Now as a client, you download Google Earth Pro, and I've got that opened up right here. So let's search for the office location here. It found it. It's going to zoom in here.

Now there's the office location. It's the same view, but I really like it because now I can spin it around, I can actually tilt it, and I can zoom out. You can really see a much better bird's eye view of what's going on with the facility. Now as I zoom in, I can get closer and closer. But here's one of the things that I really like about Google Earth Pro. It's got a measuring tool right up here. And if you click measure, and it's in feet right now, so if I wanted to know the distance between this building and this building for a camera, I can just click that, and that, and I know I'm 70 feet. So we've got 70 feet right there.

Now, for example, let's say I had to pull all the cables down to an MVR that was down in the south end of the building from the north end. Well, let's see how much cable I need. I can come back to the measuring and I can say, okay, I got to go to this camera, and then I've got to run to the middle of the building, and then I've got to come down, and then I've got to cut back over to where the MVR is going to be located. That's 235 feet. So if I do that cable run, I know that that particular cable needs 232 feet of cable. Both tools are really forgiving. They're easy to use. Take time to learn them and feel comfortable with them so that when you're using them, you don't get stuck or spend time with the client on the phone and you're not able to pull up what you need.