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| The Honeywell video solution effectively monitors an important heritage site |
The museum is home to the national collection of arms and armour, which comprises over 70,000 examples of arms, armour and artillery dating from the Middle Ages to the present day. It includes the royal armours of the Tudor and Stuart kings, and arms and armour of the English Civil Wars.
This priceless collection was moved from its original home in the Tower of London to the specially created building in 1996.
The Situation
The Royal Armouries Museum contains many priceless artifacts. Therefore, it is essential that the security system, and in particular the video solution, can effectively monitor such an important heritage site.
The existing digital video recorders (DVRs) and CCTV matrix were considered to be inefficient and obsolete. As a result, faults were regularly reported, regular engineer visits were required to fix and if necessary, replace the parts or components that caused the fault. Added up over the course of a year, this meant considerable cost to the customer and was not the best use of resources from the installer's standpoint.
In addition, the integrity of the video management security was at risk due to the constant faults, repairs and downtime.
"Our old system was inefficient and difficult to use. It became time consuming and cumbersome just to retrieve images and footage to use for identification and apprehension purpose," stated Adrian Payne, Security Manager at The Royal Armouries Museum.
"It was obvious that a more advanced and user friendly DVR solution was required."
Pete Weathers, Sales Surveyor at Securi-Plex contacted Neil Culff, ADI Global Distribution Key Account Manager requesting that he recommend a suitable set of products to replace the existing system.
Having assessed the situation in August 2008, Weathers and Culff shortlisted the Honeywell Fusion DVR and Honeywell MAXPRO CCTV Matrix. They presented them to Payne and he decided that these products were the best fit for the project. In addition, he had total confidence in Securi-Plex's ability to meet the project requirements and the deadline. The installation commenced in October 2008.
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| Honeywell ULTRAKey™ fully programmable keyboard controller is intelligent, user-friendly control of the CCTV management system |
The Solution
Securi-Plex designed the system to provide a comprehensive video management solution within the defined budget. It consisted of six Honeywell Fusion 3.5 DVRs installed in a dedicated server room located adjacent to the security control room on site. The recorded video data is stored in several RAID storage units giving a five terabyte memory capacity. This allows the team to store more footage and higher quality images over a longer period of time than the previous system allowed. This is important in a museum / gallery environment where suspicious behaviour can be tracked over time and then stored for longer periods if required as evidence at a later date.
The Honeywell MAXPRO Matrix replaced the previous CCTV matrix. It controls 90 existing fixed and fully functional dome cameras positioned inside and outside of the building. All 90 cameras are connected via the MAXPRO matrix with images recorded and stored on the Honeywell Fusion 16 channel DVRs, each with real time live display enabling a rapid reaction time when required.
The Honeywell ULTRAKey™ fully programmable keyboard controller was chosen because of its intelligent, user-friendly control of the CCTV management system. This was installed in the security control room along with several monitors and control equipment.
The BenefitsSince the Honeywell Fusion DVRs have been installed the museum security team has reported efficiency gains in terms of time and resources. The security operators are now able to instantly review a recording of an incident and high resolution still images can be produced, saved and printed. This assists staff in apprehending a suspected thief or vandal and also provides high quality still images to the police, as and when required. This means that they are completely focused and matched with the elimination of false alarms and are able react to situations with optimum efficiency.
"Honeywell gave Securi-Plex the support it needed and provided us with the confidence that their system was the best solution available," added Payne.
"From the expertise within Securi-Plex combined with Honeywell's technical support engineers, in my opinion the Royal Armouries now has a scalable future-proof system with the option of adding on the automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) and Video Analytics Fusion software modules." 
All 90 cameras are connected via the MAXPRO matrix with images recorded and stored on DVRS
The Royal Armouries Museum has also benefited from the security upgrade in the form of lower system maintenance costs. Fewer installer engineer call-outs are required, the equipment is reliable and the on-site security team has been fully trained to manage any issues that may arise. Over the course of a month or a year, real value is now added to the bottom line due to these cost savings.
The transition from the existing equipment to the new Honeywell solution was extremely smooth with a highly efficient installation resulting in zero downtime for the museum. Honeywell takes great pride in the training, support and dedicated account management it provides to both Securi-Plex and The Royal Armouries Museum.
The MAXPRO CCTV matrix has integrated seamlessly with the legacy camera's on site. The intruder alarms and Fusion DVRs are also integrated in the system. This has saved significant cost for the customer as an immediate replacement of the camera and alarm system was not required. However, the system has full scalability and interoperability meaning future upgrades can be easily accommodated.
The Honeywell MAXPRO matrix and management system provides the frontend control for every security function. A major benefit of integration is that operators are not required to have multiple skills to operate CCTV, access control and fire systems for example. They are simply trained to manage one front-end system. The MAXPRO enables different applications to ‘talk' to each other in a holistic ‘cause and effect' manner.
Partner of Choice
Securi-Plex Limited, based in Leeds, is one of the UK's leading suppliers of integrated electronic security and CCTV systems. Its success stems from its absolute commitment to providing the highest quality solutions to suit its customers' requirements.
Areas of expertise encompass risk and threat analysis, design, installation, service and maintenance of small individual installations to large integrated security systems and can include both physical and electronic security products.
Securi-Plex is a member of the nationwide Plexus Association of security installers and can therefore offer full, nationwide cover to its clients.
