Free tools
Commercial security tools
Things a facilities manager or a procurement officer actually has to work out. They run in your browser, nothing you type is sent anywhere, and each one states plainly what it will not tell you.
In this section
Five tools
NDAA Section 889 checker
Walks the statute’s actual tests and tells you what to put to your manufacturer in writing.
Camera storage and retention calculator
How many days of footage your storage holds, from a bitrate you supply.
PoE power budget calculator
Whether your switch has the power budget for what you want to add.
Cable run length checker
Whether a proposed run fits the 100 metre channel, patch cords included.
California § 15044 readiness checker
Checks a dispensary system against California title 4, section 15044.
How these were built
No calculator here hides its constants
A calculator is a machine for producing confident-looking numbers, which makes it the most dangerous thing this site could publish. A page that states an unsourced figure is wrong once. A calculator with an unsourced constant baked into it is wrong every time anybody uses it, in a format that looks like a measurement, and the reader cannot see the assumption that produced the answer.
So every one of them obeys one rule: no unverified constant is ever baked in. Where a calculation needs a number we could not trace to a primary document, that number is taken as your input, from your own equipment documentation, and the tool tells you where to find it. Where a figure genuinely is verified, it is used and its source is cited on the page.
In practice that meant refusing three things outright. There is no bitrate or gigabytes-per-camera-per-day figure in the storage calculator, because that is a capability spec for a product we have not seen. There is no wattage for any PoE standard anywhere in the power calculator, because IEEE does not publish those on its free pages and every circulating figure traces to a vendor rather than to the standards body. And the Section 889 checker will never tell you a product is compliant, because no body issues that determination.
Two figures we do use as constants, because they are verified and cited: the TIA/EIA 100 metre channel for copper, which includes the patch cords at both ends, and the 90 calendar day minimum retention that California fixes for a licensed cannabis premises.
What to know before you use them
- Nothing is sent anywhere. Every tool runs entirely in your browser. There is no submission, no account, no storage of your figures and no analytics on what you type.
- They need JavaScript. The interactive panel does. The explanatory content on each page does not, which is why every tool page carries the full reasoning as readable text.
- Estimates are labelled as estimates. Where an output is a planning figure and not a measurement, it says so on the result itself. Storage in particular drifts with scene activity.
- None of them is legal advice. The two regulatory tools compare what you describe against what a text states, and both carry the date that text was verified.
- Use them in a bid we are not in. That is fine. The same applies to the downloadable checklists and the RFP template under resources.
- They do not replace a survey. Every one works from figures somebody has to establish on site. What a building actually needs is decided standing in it.