Site Layout
The Layout sub-tab only appears when the control room has the Site Layout module on (super admins in Super-admin mode always see it). It is an alpha module — see Modules & Capabilities.
Site Layout records where things actually are on a property. Until now the platform stored one map pin for the whole site: a camera had no position at all, and a zone was a number. Everything spatial an operator or responder needed — which door, which side, which room has no camera — lived in free text or in somebody's head.
The Layout board fixes that by pinning each device at a real latitude and longitude, with a mounting height, the direction it faces and how far it usefully sees. A site can also carry floorplans and drone photos as extra views beside the map, for the rooms and detail satellite imagery cannot show.
You will find it on Sites → open a site → Hardware → Layout.
Views: the map and your pictures
The row above the board switches between views:
- Map — satellite imagery of the property. Always there once the site has a map pin.
- One button per picture — each floorplan or drone photo added to the site, by the name it was given.
- + Add floorplan or drone photo — adds another one (see Floorplans and drone photos).
A picture never replaces the map. The map stays exactly as it was; the picture is a second view you switch to.
What a pin is
A pin is not a drawing. It stores a position and a link to the record it depicts — nothing else:
- Position — on the map, a latitude, longitude and mounting height in metres; on a picture, a spot on that picture
- Aim — the direction it faces, its field of view in degrees, and its useful range in metres
- The record it points at — a camera, an alarm zone, a hub, an installed-equipment row or an asset
A device is placed once and can then stand on the map and on any number of pictures. Its label, note, mounting height, field of view and range belong to the device, so they are the same on every view — change the note on the map and the floorplan shows the new note too. Only the position and the direction it faces are kept per view, because a picture has its own orientation and no coordinates.
Everything else is read from the record when the board is drawn. A camera's online state, a zone's arm state, a battery level — none of it is copied onto the pin, so the drawing can never disagree with the site record. Delete a camera from the site and its pin disappears from every view.
Moving around the board
The board works like a map:
| To | Do this |
|---|---|
| Pan | Drag any empty part of the board. With nothing selected, the arrow keys pan too. |
| Zoom | Scroll the mouse wheel, pinch on a trackpad or touch screen, double-click empty space, or use the + and − buttons on the board. The + and − keys zoom as well. |
| See everything | Fit all — on the map it frames every pin and the site's own map pin; on a picture it shows the whole picture. |
| Go back to the saved framing | Default view. |
The site's own map pin is drawn as a small dark diamond, so the property never gets lost while you pan. Pin names hide when you zoom far out, where they would only cover each other; a selected pin keeps its name.
Saving the default view
Sites come in every size — a townhouse fits on the screen at street level, an estate or a farm needs the whole block. Frame the view the way the site should open, then click Save as default view.
From then on everyone who opens this layout starts on exactly that framing — in CleverOps and on the CleverCommand board. The map and each picture keep their own default. Until a default is saved, the map opens framed on the site's map pin and the pins around it, and a picture opens showing the whole picture. A pin more than 2 km from the site's map pin is left out of that opening frame — it is almost always one placed in the wrong spot, and framing it would open the board on empty ground between the two. It is still drawn, and Fit all still takes it in.
Placing a device
The left column lists what is not on the current view yet:
- every camera and alarm zone on the site that has not been placed anywhere, and
- devices already placed on another view — each says where it already is, such as On the map or On Ground floor.
- Click one. It drops in the middle of the board and is selected.
- Drag it to where it really is.
- For a camera or a detector, drag the white dot at the tip of the cone to aim it. On the map, and on a picture that has a scale, the same drag also sets its range — the dot sits at the far edge of what it sees.
- Fine-tune with the sliders on the right, or nudge the pin with the arrow keys (hold Shift for bigger steps) and rotate it with
[and]. - Click Save layout.
Use Add a marker for things the site record does not track — the alarm panel, the siren, a keypad, the gate motor, a panic button, or a plain annotation such as "dog in the back yard at night". These carry a position and a note but are not bound to a record.
When a pin is selected, the top of the right-hand panel shows every view it stands on. Click one of those buttons to jump to it. If the pin is not on the view you are looking at, Place it on … puts it there.
To take something off a view, select it and choose Remove from map or Remove from this picture. It only comes off that view — a device that still stands on another view keeps that position. When it stands nowhere else it leaves the layout, and the camera or zone goes back to the Not placed yet list. The camera or zone record itself is never touched.
Floorplans and drone photos
A picture is a view of its own: a building's floorplan for the rooms inside, or a drone photo that is sharper or more recent than the satellite imagery.
Adding one
- On the Layout tab, click + Add floorplan or drone photo.
- Click Choose a file and pick a JPG, PNG or WebP image, or a PDF. For a PDF with more than one page, choose the page under Page of the PDF — architects' plan sets often carry one floor per page.
- Check the preview — it is exactly what will be stored.
- Under What is it? choose Floorplan or Drone photo (a PDF or PNG starts as a floorplan, a JPG or WebP as a drone photo).
- Give it a Name, such as Ground floor or Aerial, September, and click Add picture.
The picture opens straight away with everything still to place listed on the left. It is stored privately with the site: only people who can open the site can see it. Large photos are resized to 4096 px on their long edge when they are added, and the photo's location tag is not kept.
Setting the scale
A picture has no coordinates, so until it has a scale the board cannot know how far a metre is. Without one, cones on that picture show only which way each device faces, drawn dashed, and have no identify or recognize bands — the pill above the board says No scale — cones show direction only.
To set it:
- Open the picture and click Set scale.
- Click one end of something whose length you know — a wall, a gate, a parking bay — then the other end.
- Type the real length in metres (a comma decimal such as
12,5works) and click Set scale.
Cones on that picture are then drawn to scale, with the same identify and recognize bands as the map, and dragging the white dot sets a device's range again. Press Esc or click Cancel scale to stop measuring.
Picture settings
With a picture open, Picture settings lets you rename it, switch it between Floorplan and Drone photo, and Clear scale.
To delete a picture, open Picture settings and use Delete picture in the Danger zone. The confirmation says how many devices stood only on that picture — they come off the layout and their cameras and zones go back to Not placed yet — and how many keep their positions on the map or on another picture. The map is never affected. Save the layout first if it has unsaved changes; the button waits until you do.
Reading the coverage
Each camera draws three shaded bands rather than one flat cone. They come from EN 62676-4, the standard that defines how much detail a picture actually carries at a distance:
| Band | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Darkest | Identify — enough pixels on target to identify a face |
| Middle | Recognize — enough to recognise somebody you already know |
| Lightest | Detect — enough to know a person is there |
The distances are calculated from the camera's field of view, not typed in by anyone, so the picture cannot flatter the installation. A wide-angle lens covers more ground but its identify band is short — which is exactly the trade-off the bands are there to show. The useful range goes up to 200 m, for narrow lenses such as licence-plate cameras looking down a road.
The Coverage and Labels switches above the board turn the shading and the pin names on and off.
The bands currently assume a 1080p stream, which is the honest floor for most installed cameras. A camera's real resolution is not yet recorded against its stream, so a 4 MP camera will read more conservatively than it performs.
The map underneath
The map is satellite imagery with street names, loaded in square tiles as you pan and zoom. Neither Google's nor Mapbox's terms allow storing a copy of their imagery, so nothing is saved with the site — which also means it is never out of date.
Imagery is only requested when someone pans or zooms onto ground their browser has not already shown recently, so map usage stays tied to what a person does on the board. The imagery credits sit in the bottom-right corner of the map.
Without coordinates the Map view explains that the site needs a pin and shows nothing else — drop one on the Details tab. Pictures still work without a pin: a site that has a picture but no map pin opens on its first picture.
Who can edit
Editing needs the same rights as managing the site (manage_vcr, manage_customers or manage_service) — that covers placing pins, saving the default view, adding, scaling and deleting pictures. Anyone who can open the site can still pan, zoom, switch views and click a pin to read its height, aim and the note the field left — they just cannot change anything.
Where else the layout appears
The same pins are read by two other apps, without anyone re-drawing them:
- CleverTech — technicians place and correct map pins from the site itself, from Site layout under Equipment on a job's Site tab. The person standing in the room is the only one who knows where things really are, and the only one who notices when the plan and the building stop agreeing. Pictures are not shown in CleverTech yet, so a device placed only on a picture does not appear there.
- CleverCommand — during an alarm, operators open View site layout on the event to see which zones tripped, in what order, and which cameras cover them — on the map and on the site's floorplans and drone photos, starting from the saved default view. That view is strictly read-only: an operator can pan and zoom but cannot move a camera mid-alarm.
What is coming
- Line devices — outdoor beams and electric-fence runs drawn as a line rather than a point.
- Aligning a picture onto the map, so a device placed on one appears on the other without being placed twice.
- Pictures, panning and the default view in CleverTech, and offline placement once the sync rules are deployed. Until then the field screen needs a connection and says so.