The German-based company Geutebrück has been supplying video surveillance systems for more than 40 years. The developers at Geutebrück use Fujitsu mainboards in order to meet their requirements regarding performance and long-term availability.
Founded in 1970, Geutebrück GmbH established itself as a supplier of security systems with photographic and video cameras for keeping banks under surveillance. Even today, systems sold in the 1970s are still in operation around the world. “With the projects we develop for our customers, lead times of several months or even years are the rule rather than the exception,“ says Jan Schwager, head of product strategy and support at the Geutebrück headquarters in Windhagen, Rhineland-Palatinate. Not surprisingly, sourcing the security systems for 1,000 to 1,200 branches of a large bank not only requires meticulous preparation – once the investment has been decided on, realising the project still takes some time. Apart from safeguarding money or other valuables in banks, shops, and cultural institutions like the Louvre or the Museumsinsel in Berlin, the Geutebrück equipment also ensures the security of people, including in governmental institutions or sports stadiums.
Video surveillance as an embedded application
Nowadays fully digital solutions have come to dominate the Geutebrück portfolio. In the field of video surveillance, embedded computing has opened up new technological possibilities. The same platform that controls the whole system with can now process and archive the actual images. This means that electronics no longer control an external video recorder, they themselves are the recorder. Three systems currently form the centre of Geutebrück’s portfolio of digital products: GeViScope+, re_porter+, and G-Scope/1000. Jan Schwager explains the philosophy behind the various products: „GeViScope+ is the enterprise-level solution. A centralised system with high redundancy, it is especially suitable for large organisations. Re_porter+ is a compact business system, and G-Scope/1000 is a small-scale solution for an extended temperature range. It can also be used as a stand-alone solution, for example in cash machines.“
From the tasks at hand and the typical mechanisms of the target market, it is possible to gain a rough outline of what Geutebrück demands from the mainboards controlling their systems. Excellent performance with a high degree of fail-safety in 24/7 continuous operation, but especially the possibility of processing many video channels simultaneously in real time, are indispensable for all product families. “In G-Scope/1000 the electronics even need to work in an extended temperature range that is usually more typical of industrial applications. This is because we also sell the systems, which are used in cash dispensers, to places where ambient temperatures can be very high, such as the Arab world,“ adds Jan Schwager.
In 2012, Geutebrück changed the mainboard used in two of the product families. Since then, both GeViScope+ and re_porter+ use the D3062-B systemboard from the Extended Lifecycle Series by Fujitsu, designed for continuous operation. Geutebrück’s decision to use a Fujitsu board helped them to extend the lifecycle of their products.
Jan Schwager at Geutebrück emphasises: “In our view, the mainboards by Fujitsu are also an interesting option for future product generations. This is due not only to the quality of the components, but also to the thorough design-in support from the manufacturer. We are very happy with the cooperation because even the changes in the BIOS that we required were completed in a very good response time.“
Fujitsu made several modifications to the BIOS, which is based on an Aptio 4.x (UEFI) BIOS by American Megatrends International (AMI), in order to ensure its best possible integration with the RAID storage systems used by Geutebrück. At the BIOS level, Fujitsu mainboards come with a series of default recovery and security features. The fact that development and manufacturing both take place at the Fujitsu plant in Augsburg, Germany, enables a quick support directly from the manufacturer. Developers and sales staff are in direct communication, and there are no time lags or language barriers between the manufacturer and the customers.
Long lifecycles are crucial
“As its name implies, our Extended Lifecycle Series is aimed at customers who need components to remain available for a long time. This particularly applies to embedded systems, whose requirements in this respect are radically different from the demands of the PC market,“ explains Thomas Stanik, who is responsible for the Geutebrück account in the Fujitsu team.
Jan Schwager at confirms: “When we start developing a new product, we need to be sure that the board we base our design on will still be available when the product is ready to enter mass production two years later. We aim at supporting tomorrow’s technology today,“ says Schwager. “This means that processors and storage components should be powerful enough to cope with requirements yet to come.“
To Geutebrück, future-proof development also means that they want to make it as easy as possible for customers to change to a new platform from their existing product. This objective is supported by Fujitsu’s philosophy, explains Thomas Stanik: “Our developers always design new boards with a view to backward compatibility with the preceding generation. As a follow-up product, the D3222-B from the Extended Lifecycle Series represents an ideal solution. Its layout is modelled on the Fujitsu D3062-B currently still in use, but it boasts a brand new Intel® Q87 chipset, and in addition to 4th generation Intel® Core™ CPU Technology it also supports USB3.0 as well as PCI Express Gen. 3.”
Performance is a key factor
In 2012, electronics distributor Rutronik, a specialist in embedded mainboards, suggested the first Fujitsu board to the video experts. But first the board had to undergo Geutebrück’s challenging in-house selection tests. Likewise, the D3222-B marked out for future product generations is currently under close scrutiny by Geutebrück. Jan Schwager explains the things that matter to the manufacturer: “How many video channels can be processed simultaneously with a given system? On which combination of mainboard and CPU does our video surveillance software perform particularly well?”
Its general high computing power based on the Intel® Q87 chipset is not the only thing that helps the D3222-B score in Geutebrück’s current tests. Support of Intel® HD Graphics and PCI Express Gen. 3 are also essential for Geutebrück. The reason for this is that Geutebrück has created digital signal processors with a specially developed firmware to ensure real-time image processing even with large amounts of data. In order to reduce the workloads on the network infrastructure and storage, both GeViScope+ and re_porter+ are capable of compressing and decompressing video data in real-time with latency periods of less than 120 milliseconds. This means that it is possible to save in high quality exactly those image sequences that really matter in case of emergency, for example as evidence in court, and to export them with password protection.
Synergy between manufacturer and distributor
Since July 2013, the board is mass-produced at Fujitsu’s plant in Augsburg, Germany. Fujitsu only started mass production after the teething troubles of the latest processors in the 4th generation of the Intel® Core™ product family had been fixed. Experience has shown that going into mass production with a too early stepping of new processors is likely to lead to design-in problems that will eat up any small advance originally gained by the early start. Especially for customers with relatively long development phases, like Geutebrück, acting hastily in this phase tends to be counterproductive.
Mario Klug, product sales manager storage, displays and boards at Rutronik, explains the advantages of the partnership for the mainboard user: “Thanks to our sophisticated logistics, we can stock boards for delivery on schedule. And by managing inventory, we can prolong availability of extended-lifecycle products such as the Fujitsu industrial mainboards even beyond the manufacturer’s lifecycle.”
