Daleville Community Schools' Shift to Coram AI from Lorex NVR

Introduction

Located in Indiana, Daleville Community School serves around 1,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade, spread across an elementary and a junior-senior high school. To ensure safety, the district has installed over 100 security cameras, managed by more than 20 regular users.

Situation Prior to Coram AI

Initially, Daleville relied on Lorex 4K cameras linked to conventional Lorex Network Video Recorders (NVRs), personally overseeing multiple NVRs and continually expanding storage to adhere to retention requirements. Despite the high-quality output of Lorex cameras, the setup faced numerous obstacles:

Challenges with the Lorex system

• ‍Remote accessibility: Remote access to Lorex cameras was cumbersome, with only a few administrators able to access the system. Onsite presence was required for viewing live feeds, and remote video quality was significantly degraded.‍
• File sharing and downloading: Sharing and downloading incident clips was inefficient, necessitating manual server access and file uploads to Google Drive.‍
• Management overhead: With limited IT staff, managing several Lorex NVRs across different locations was challenging. It required manually maintaining data retention, firewall configuration, and remote access via VPN.‍
• Customized video walls: The inability to create user-specific video walls was a limitation, despite having 15-20 users with varying interests in different camera feeds.‍
• Setting up port and firewall forwarding: Enabling remote access required extensive setup, including port forwarding and firewall adjustments, introducing cybersecurity risks for the IT team.‍
• Outdated user interface: The Lorex NVR interface was outdated and not user-friendly, complicating video downloads and sharing.

‍Success with Coram AI

‍1. Ease of accessibility and usability

Switching to Coram AI significantly enhanced the system's accessibility and user-friendliness for Daleville Community Schools. The platform's intuitive nature eliminated the need for formal user training, allowing easy access for over 20 users. 

Adam Jones, the IT technical lead at Daleville, remarked, "As long as people have been on the internet in the past 20 years, they will just know how to use the Coram AI system. It's so intuitive I don't need to give any training. Coram AI is a huge time-saver for everyone and has provided us with enhanced security and insights for the school. Coram AI's overall response and support are phenomenal."

2. Cost efficiency by leveraging existing infrastructure

Daleville Public School managed to upgrade their security software while keeping their existing Lorex 4K cameras, marking a notable cost and time-saving move. 

"Coram AI saved countless hours by utilizing our existing infrastructure. The amount of labor hours saved is almost incalculable. No other company offers this; every other company wants to sell you new cameras," stated Adam Jones.

3. Onboarding simplicity

The transition to Coram AI was impressively swift, with the setup of over 100 cameras completed in under an hour. "Coram AI stood out for its ease of onboarding. Getting more than 100 cameras up and running in under an hour was seamless. I didn’t have to make any changes to the firewall or network infrastructure. I didn’t need to call our external IT support for any help," explained Adam Jones.

4. Simplified video clip download and sharing

Compared to the previous system, Coram AI simplifies the downloading and sharing of videos, allowing for high-quality downloads and secure link sharing directly on the platform, a significant improvement over the cumbersome file management previously required.

5. Personalized video walls

Coram AI allows each user to create their personalized video walls, accommodating different monitoring needs and preferences, a feature not possible before. "It's very nice that each user can have their customized wall, arranged according to their use case," Jones commented.

6. Enhanced performance

Even with multiple users accessing the system simultaneously, Coram AI maintains real-time performance and high-quality video feeds. "At any point, there are 10-15 users accessing the Coram AI system, in near real-time. At least 15 people are looking at 20 different cameras at a time," Jones noted.

The upgrade to Coram AI has effectively addressed the previous system's limitations, offering Daleville Community Schools improved security, ease of use, and operational efficiency.