Like many schools in the U.K., Penglais Secondary School relies on its surveillance system as a valuable tool to help enforce its zero tolerance policy on bullying and any form of criminal activity, such as vandalism and theft.
Situated in the town of Aberystwyth in West Wales, Penglais Secondary School, which was established in 1973, provides education to more than 1,350 pupils aged between from 11to 19 years.
Unfortunately, the school’s surveillance system which was installed years ago, had become technologically outdated. The 16 existing analog cameras were still working satisfactorily but did not fully cover all areas of the site and the recording system was inadequate for the school’s requirements.
Like many schools in the U.K., Penglais Secondary School relies on its surveillance system as a valuable tool to help enforce its zero tolerance policy on bullying and any form of criminal activity, such as vandalism and theft.
Situated in the town of Aberystwyth in West Wales, Penglais Secondary School, which was established in 1973, provides education to more than 1,350 pupils aged between from 11to 19 years.
Unfortunately, the school's surveillance system which was installed years ago, had become technologically outdated. The 16 existing analog cameras were still working satisfactorily but did not fully cover all areas of the site and the recording system was inadequate for the school's requirements.
“There were a number of entrances and exits as well as part of the school's perimeter which were not covered by the existing cameras,” said Len Vaughan, Network Manager for Penglais. “We decided therefore to look at how best to expand the system, while at the same time, upgrade the method of recording.
” Fortunately, help was at hand in the form of a ‘Schools Target Hardening Grant' from the Welsh Assembly, which allowed the management of Penglais School to invest in the latest IP-based video surveillance technology.
Vaughan set about researching the best option for the job in hand and drew up a ‘wish list' which included a requirement to connect the existing analog cameras to 12 new network cameras and for authorized staff to be able to view images from any of the cameras from anywhere on the network. The upgraded system also had to be future-proof to allow further additional cameras to be added in the future as and when the school's requirements changed. Most importantly, Vaughan wanted to be able to record the highest possible quality images such as full D1 resolution at 25 fps, from some of the cameras.
After evaluating a number of options, Vaughan recommended to the school's management that they should invest in a Wavestore DVR solution, which utilizes a reliable Linux-based open software platform and is able to simultaneously record images from a combination of up to 64 analog and network cameras. Simple drag and drop function enables each user to create multiple display preferences. The Wavestore software offers a fast search facility to allow users to be able to quickly review recorded images of any incident.
By attending a training course conducted by Wavestore, Vaughan was able to install the solution on his own, and with DIY skills, he was also able to install the network cameras.
“For such a hybrid system, it was a relatively straightforward installation,” Vaughan said. “The solution has enabled us to continue to obtain value from the existing analog cameras, while investing in the latest technology in the form of the network cameras. Overall, we are very pleased with the solution. Being able to install it ourselves saved quite a lot of money, but most importantly, we have a system that covers all areas of our site.”