Part 4 – SwimEye Product Guide
Part 4 – The Pool Technical Study
The pool technical study is the system design process for your pool.
A new or existing pool?
In many ways, every swimming pool is different. The size, shape, depth, colour and material all vary from pool to pool. For this reason, we must undertake a detailed pool technical study of each pool before commencing a project. This will ensure we can provide the highest possible monitoring coverage area and detection performance for each pool.
Firstly, we must establish if the swimming pool is a new or an existing pool.
New construction projects allow us to install the underwater cameras during the construction of the pool structure. The installation is quite straight forward.
This first step also allows us to understand if the pool is full of water or empty.
These two factors can change the way we design and install a drowning detection system. Importantly, our system design typically ensures minimal or no disruption to pool operating hours.
Does the pool have a basement?
Secondly, it is important to determine if the pool has underfloor basement access or if in fact, the pool is built “in-ground”.
A pool with basement access provides direct access for the installation of underwater cameras. And with a basement, we can typically install underwater cameras with water in the pool.
Pools without a basement, require us to lower the water level for camera installation. We must also consider any excavation or trenching work required for the installation of the camera wiring. In this case, it is common for us to install the underwater cameras during a pool maintenance period (when the water is drained from the pool).
Steel pool basement area, from a new construction project.
Camera installation at a renovation project, with a concrete basin.
Placement of cameras
Once we have an understanding of the pool architecture, we look more closely at the placement of the underwater cameras. We start with the placement of cameras around the perimeter of the pool. This is because the edges and the corners of the pool, can be the most difficult areas to achieve detection.
SwimEye underwater cameras can often see across an entire pool in perfect water clarity and in suitable depths. However, the cameras typically achieve stable detection to a distance of 9 meters in average water quality. A double camera house allows us to see a 180° view from the perimeter of the pool.
By placing our double camera houses within 9 meters of each other, we can create Monitoring Overlap from one camera to the next. With this approach, we can typically monitor 100% of the pool basin area in
After the perimeter monitoring is established, we look for any potential
For wider pools, we zoom additional cameras into the center of the pool (for example, with Olympic size swimming pools).
The SwimEye system design starts by achieving perimeter monitoring.
Then we add complementary cameras, which are zoomed into the middle of the pool.
The design process is similar for
Pools with head-walls, fixed structural elements and/or shallow depth require some additional consideration to determine the optimum camera locations.
For pools with a movable floor or movable bridge, we install a camera that is flush-mounted to the pool wall. This eliminates any clash between the camera and the structure (when moved to various positions). Our flush mounted cameras, however have a different viewing angle which requires a customized camera placement strategy.
Our philosophy of Monitoring Overlap
The SwimEye drowning detection system has been developed using a philosophy of Monitoring Overlap. This is achieved when positioning the cameras during the first part of the technical study.
By placing our double camera houses within 9 meters of each other, we can create Monitoring Overlap from one camera to the next. With this approach, we can typically monitor 100% of the pool basin area in
most pools with a suitable depth. These parameters can change in shallower pools and for pools with movable elements.
Monitoring Overlap ensures that two cameras analyse the video stream (in one part of the pool) from two different directions. This essentially transforms our monitoring from 2-dimension to 3-dimensional detection. We call this Monitoring Overlap.
We use this “cube analogy” to explain our philosophy of Monitoring Overlap
2-dimensional Square
Imagine viewing this cube from one direction.
We can only see 2-dimensions.
3-dimensional Cube
Now imagine viewing the cube from two directions at the same time.
We can now see all 3-dimensions.
Monitoring from one direction – no Monitoring Overlap
Monitoring the video stream from one camera house provides monitoring from only one direction – or 2-dimensional monitoring.
Monitoring from two directions – Monitoring Overlap
Monitoring the video stream from two camera houses provides monitoring from two directions – or 3-dimensional monitoring.
Monitoring and Control Station
Finally, we must understand the location of the lifeguard control room and the typical patrol routines of pool lifeguards. These details help us determine the best location for the SwimEye graphic user interface (which is known as the Monitoring and Control Station).
With this information, we also determine the optimum layout of the camera images within the actual graphic user interface (GUI). At the graphic user interface each camera is given reference number and name.
The pool is also divided into smaller “alert zones” for quick reference (during a drowning incident rescue). The names of the zones are coded into our radio alert system and this provides the alert message directly to pool lifeguards anywhere throughout an aquatic centre.
Often there is a “language” the lifeguards already use to describe their pool and we incorporate this language into the Monitoring and Control Station nomenclature.
The set up of the Monitoring and Control Station is one of the most important steps when introducing our concept of Digital Lifeguarding to a new project.
Camera and radio alert zone plan for a 25m Swimming Pool.
The graphic user interface from a 25m Swimming Pool (left screen).
The graphic user interface from a 25m Swimming Pool (right screen).
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