Royal Armouries, Leeds
The Client:
The Royal Armouries museum in Leeds is housed in a multi-million pound purpose built building located on the £150m Clarence Docks development of Leeds Centre.
The whole collection consists of some 70,000 examples of arms, armour and artillery dating from antiquity to the present day.
It includes royal armours of the Tudor and Stuart kings; arms and armour of the English Civil Wars, including the Armoury from Littlecote House; British and foreign military weapons from the Board of Ordnance and MOD Pattern Room collections; hunting and sporting weapons, as well as an exceptional collection of oriental arms and armour.
The Royal Armouries is Britain’s national collection of arms and armour, and was moved from its original home in the Tower of London to a specially-created building in Leeds in 1996.
Visitors can enter five galleries, each with its own theme covering self-defense, war, armour of the Orient, hunting and tournament.
There is a wealth of different objects on display, including over 7500 swords, King Henry VIII’s equestrian equipment, several longbows excavated from the sunken British battleship the Mary Rose, 50 instruments of torture, and arms and armour from as far afield as central Asia, India, Africa and Japan.
The Situation:
Securi-Plex Integrated Security Systems Ltd is the approved security and maintenance contractor for the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds.
In October 2008, a long overdue upgrade project to upgrade the sites video and CCTV recording management systems was commenced.
The Royal Armouries Museum houses many priceless artifacts, therefore the security system and in particular the video solution must have the capability to monitor such an important heritage site.
The previous digital video recorders and CCTV matrix were deemed as not fit for purpose, obsolete and inefficient. The machines crashed on a regular basis which was both time consuming and put the security operation at risk. The incumbent systems were becoming costly to maintain, requiring regular repairs and replacement parts.
“The previous video 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 purposes. It was obvious that a more advanced and user friendly DVR solution was required.” Adrian Payne, Security Manager of the Royal Armouries Museum.
Pete Weathers, Sales Manager at Securi-Plex approached Neil Culff – ADI-Gardiner National Account Manager and asked him to recommend a suitable set of products to replace the incumbent system.
“Our first port of call is normally ADI-Gardiner. They are impartial and have the best selection of brands throughout the security industry. Therefore we know we are getting the right products for our requirements.” Pete Weathers, Securi-Plex.
Having assessed the situation Pete and Neil shortlisted the Honeywell Fusion DVR and Honeywell Maxpro CCTV Matrix. Following a presentation by Martin McGrath, Regional Account Manager for Honeywell and Pete Weathers – Adrian Payne the security manager at the museum was convinced that the Honeywell products were the best for the project.
The Solution:
Securi-Plex designed the system to provide a comprehensive video management solution that was within the budget. Having worked closely with Securi-Plex over a period of time, Adrian Payne was confident in the company’s skill and its ability to meet the project requirements and the deadline.
The new system consists of 6 Honeywell Fusion DVR units installed in its own mounted storage rack in a dedicated server room. All video data is stored in several RAID storage units. This allows the team to store more footage over a longer period of time. Each Fusion DVR has a 5 terabyte memory capacity.
The Honeywell Maxpro Matrix was installed to replace the previous CCTV matrix. It controls 90 existing dome cameras positioned inside and outside of the building itself. They are mixture of static and dome cameras. However, there is scope to replace them as the entire security system is progressively upgraded.
All 90 cameras are connected via the Maxpro matrix with images recorded and stored on 6 Honeywell Fusion 16 channel DVRs, each with real time live display, thus enabling a quick reaction time when needed.
The Honeywell ULTRAKey fully programmable keyboard controller was chosen because of its intelligent, user-friendly control of a CCTV management system. This is installed in the security control room.
“Honeywell gave Securi-Plex the support and provided us with the confidence that their system was the best solution available. From the expertise within Securi-Plex combined with Honeywell’s technical support engineers – the Royal Armouries in my opinion now have a scalable future-proof system with the option of adding on the ANPR and Video Analytics Fusion software modules.”
– Adrian Payne, Royal Armouries Museum
Benefits:
Since the Honeywell Fusion DVR units have been installed, the museum security has reported efficiencies in time and resources. The security operators are now able to instantly review a recording of an incident and high resolution still photos can be produced, saved and printed. This helps security staff apprehend a suspected thief or vandal or provide high quality stills for the police as and when required.
The Royal Armouries Museum has really benefited in the following ways:
- Flexible Connectivity and Expansion – Fusion connects to PSTN, ISDN, LAN/WAN and cable modems giving the flexibility needed for multiple installations. This means the system easily expandable across different sites
- Low Maintenance – Little time is required to maintaining and servicing Fusion digital video recorders. This saves cost and resource.
- Ease of Installation – The Fusion has a simple, easy to use interface. The set-up takes a simple series of mouse commands. Intuitive selection and installation tools remove unit selection and installation confusion.
- Instant Access to Information – Fusion has advanced index search and motion-based object search functionality that allows users to retrieve critical information in seconds. This saves hours of available time and resources.
- Preview Search – The Preview Search function gives a quick overview of a 24-hour period. The search can be narrowed down to ten-minute increments to one-minute increments based on the users review needs.
The Maxpro CCTV matrix has integrated seamlessly with the legacy cameras on site, the intruder alarms and DVR are also integrated through the system.
“We couldn’t be happier with the new video management system. My team is now able to retrieve and download high quality images in no time at all from the Fusion systems and the Maxpro matrix and ULTRAKey board enables the operators to easily manage the whole system.”
– Adrian Payne, Security Manager
Indeed in a visit just before Xmas 2008 to the Museum by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, his security consultant commended the Museum for its slick operation and hi-tech equipment.
