Drug-related crime in central London prompted a university campus to overhaul its security.
Drug-related crime in central London prompted a university campus to overhaul its security. The university has seven city centre sites spread over almost three miles. IDS, specialists in digital CCTV technology considered several potential solutions. The installer suggested the Digital Sprite multiplexer from Dedicated Micros. Michael Pye from IDS says: “The university had originally specified a much more expensive digital system, but we advised against it. We were aware of the complicated operating procedures it demanded and thought it unnecessarily expensive for the university?s needs. Instead we recommended DM?s Digital Sprite, without doubt one of the most user-friendly digital options on the market. As well as being straightforward and quick for us to set up, it is also exceptionally easy to use for the university’s security staff, and can be fully networked with existing security cameras – without the need for major capital investment.” Locations covered by the new security umbrella include halls of residence, lecture theatres and the marking centre for all of London?s colleges. IDS have installed 20 colour dome cameras at external, strategic locations including car parks, main roads, and building entrances. Supervision of security arrangements is centred at an operational nerve-centre in London?s W1. The university employs a contract security company to provide 24/7 monitoring. The control centre has been equipped with ten Digital Sprite multiplexers, each controlling two cameras, together with an external archiving drive, a high specification printer, and a spot VHS recorder. Images are stored on an integral hard drive with storage capacity for up to 31 days of coverage. There is also an option to externally archive material onto disk. This allows operators to produce almost instantaneous hard copies, and transfer digital images onto standard VHS cassette tapes for potential police use. It also ensures that the whole system complies with the Data Protection Act, as it allows the centre to supply a member of the public with a VHS tape of footage of them captured on CCTV, if requested. Pauline Norstrom, Marketing Communications Manager at Dedicated Micros says: “In a market where time is increasingly money, we’ve focused on keeping Digital Sprite intuitively easy to use, keeping installation and training investment to an absolute minimum.” The system enables the police or university management to log on to view either live or recorded footage remotely. Snapshots of images can also be saved as j-pegs to the hard drive and emailed as an attachment. A stand-alone PC allows access to all live and recorded material captured by the cameras, without interfering with the remainder of the system. The Digital Sprites are duplex, allowing security staff to review a section of footage without disrupting a recording. Digital Sprite’s integral networking capability has allowed the university to extend the coverage of the system to include all of the internal cameras already installed inside the university buildings ? without re-cabling. Michael Pye says: “Typically, integrating an existing set of cameras into a new network would prove to be extremely expensive. The job would require extensive rewiring to link up each camera individually to the multiplexer. Instead, we have been able to connect all the cameras to the central control room with a single cable which simply plugs directly into the back of the Digital Sprite.? The university points out that particularly in winter the new system is invaluable in providing secure residential areas, and also safe lecture and seminar venues. See www.dedicatedmicros.com.
