The eye in the sky is a term given to

casino A casino is a facility for certain types of gambling. Casinos are often built near or combined with hotels, resorts, restaurants, retail shopping, cruise ships, and other tourist attractions. Some casinos are also known for hosting live enterta ...

and other commercial security closed circuit cameras. In casinos, they are positioned to monitor seats, tables, hallways, restaurants, and even elevators closely. The functional component is known as a pan–tilt–zoom camera, or a PTZ, an industry standard term. The PTZ camera is covered by a semi-transparent plastic globe which makes it nearly impossible to see which direction the camera is facing from a distance. Retail stores often install empty globes, giving the appearance of additional cameras. The camera is mounted on a series of interconnected gears and levers, which usually allow two axes of rotation. This rotation can either be controlled manually by an operator using remote-control, or it can be automated using motion sensing technology. In most commercial and civilian applications, both control methods are used simultaneously to allow automated surveillance of general movement while allowing a manual over-ride mode to view specific subjects more closely. These cameras often help casino officials judge whether the person is

card counting Card counting is a blackjack strategy used to determine whether the player or the dealer has an advantage on the next hand. Card counters are advantage players who try to overcome the casino house edge by keeping a running count of high and low ...

or past posting. In case a crime or a cheat is detected after the fact, the casino employees can review the recorded tapes and find the culprit. The casino cameras are adjusted to focus on certain suspicious players by security workers in a separate casino room with banks of security monitors. These types of cameras are also found in

retail Retail is the sale of goods and Service (economics), services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturing, manufacturers, dire ...

stores as well to monitor customers and employees, such as

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

Target Target may refer to: Physical items * Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports ** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports ** Aiming point, in field artillery, fi ...

. They can also fool robbers into thinking that there is a camera watching them and that they are being monitored by

CCTV Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly ...

References

Video surveillance Surveillance Security technology Crime prevention {{electronics-stub

See also

References