Keetons Business Park, recognized by CaSSOA (Caravan Storage Site Owner's Association) to Gold Award standard is located close to Sheffield city centre, and provides storage for caravans, motor homes, trailer tents and boats. CCTV covers the site 24 hours a day seven days a week, and is monitored by EMCS, entry is via a secure gated system.
Keetons Business Park, recognized by CaSSOA (Caravan Storage Site Owner's Association) to Gold Award standard is located close to Sheffield city centre, and provides storage for caravans, motor homes, trailer tents and boats. CCTV covers the site 24 hours a day seven days a week, and is monitored by EMCS, entry is via a secure gated system.
Simon & Gail Doyle, owners of Keetons Business Park, say the site's CCTV system using solely PIR motion sensors was experiencing numerous false alarms triggered by foxes, so they approached Neil Makin, Director at Chesterfield-based Central Electrical Ltd. He sought advice from OPTEX to see if the issue could be resolved by using a different sensing technology, and also reviewing the sensor's location.
“After a visit from an OPTEX engineer, a dual technology detector using combined passive infrared and microwave technology was installed on a trial basis and positioned in the best place to capture any potential intruder, but not detect foxes or other small animals. So far we have had very few false alarms and it is working very well.”
The REDWAVE that was specified has reduced alarms from several a days to virtually none and Neil is in no doubt as to why: “We have been using Optex REDWALL products for a number of years but were not aware of this animal immunity feature provided by the dual tech REDWAVE detectors,” he says.
“Since they have been installed and the detection area correctly set, there have been practically no false alarms and it has worked flawlessly – it detects those that should not be on site and not foxes and other small animals.”
Nigel Hackett, Sales Director for Optex Europe says intrusion detection systems should be tailored to the environment of each particular site: “Medium sized nocturnal animals such as foxes are a common cause of false alarms when the system relies on passive infrared technology only. Using a combined microwave/PIR motion sensor like REDWAVE allows users to analyze the target further and ignore animals,” he says. “In other circumstances it also avoids the detection area to over-spill. False alarms are a real burden to monitoring stations, and my team is always ready to advise and help design a system to virtually eliminate false alarms.”