Veracity has provided key technology to Police Scotland’s Communications vehicle infrastructure protecting last week’s Open Golf Championship in Troon. Whilst the biggest annual golf event in the UK is played out to millions across global television networks, Police Scotland’s duty is to monitor the site which welcomed over 173,000 visitors during the four days of the Championship.
Police Scotland overt technicians deploy regularly to a variety of locations across Scotland with a fully kitted Mercedes van including generator and back-up batteries that also routes power provided by the venue to the Police-deployed CCTV cameras at the site, including a mix of analogue and high-resolution IP devices.
Site builds at events are sometimes challenging for Police Scotland with some venues requiring the mobile unit to connect to cameras across considerable distances of coaxial cable networks to record large volumes of streamed IP camera data. To meet this challenge, Police Scotland’s overt technical vehicle has been upgraded to take advantage of technology to quickly integrate with diverse CCTV systems and local infrastructure within a small footprint to fit the limited rack environment. Veracity has implemented an upgrade including Instek’s CCLite as the VMS client solution for the vehicle, with a pair of Instek 2U 16 channel recorders for the video feeds. Veracity’s HIGHWIRE Powerstars and CAMSWITCH Quads were installed into the Mercedes to connect to the cameras via a centrally-deployed Peli case which links back to the vehicle through the embedded site network.
The combination of night/day, thermal and HD cameras positioned across the venue are all controlled centrally from the vehicle, and are field-tested with a laptop nearer the camera position using the Lite version of the VMS. This year’s release of the Instek CCLite App means that the presentation of the camera feed to the controller’s screen can now be seen on a tablet or smartphone, providing even more flexibility for Commanders on the ground.
“The ability to connect into legacy and/or upgraded infrastructure upon arrival at a venue, plus a programme of introducing IP cameras, has resulted in a very practical, efficient and highly-capable service being delivered from a single mobile unit,” said Kingsley Greenman, Director of Technical Projects for Veracity who worked closely with Police Scotland on the upgrade, “It is now feasible to deploy and be fully active on site within three hours of leaving their base station, providing a fully-functioning security control suite.”
