Hat Museum selects Genie to upgrade its internal CCTV camera system

(20/06/2007)

Hat Works, the UK’s museum of the hatting industry, has chosen Genie to upgrade its internal CCTV camera system. The equipment was supplied by Genie’s approved local distributor, Wigan based Fire Sound and Security. The design and installation was completed in house by Stockport Council’s wholly owned company, Solutions SK Ltd.

Housed in a restored Grade ll listed Victorian Mill in Stockport, Cheshire, which was once appropriately a thriving hat factory, Hat Works is dedicated solely to the hatting industry, hats and headwear. It has been developed as a lottery funded regeneration project and opened to the public for the first time in April 2000.

Stockport was one of Manchester's leading hatting towns in its heyday, and the museum focuses on the development of the hatting industry from its humble beginnings as a cottage industry to the mass production of the early 19th century. Live demonstrations of working machinery combined with an extensive collection of hats, stimulating audio-visual shows and a chance to experience what it was like to be a hat maker’s apprentice make for an award winning interactive visitor attraction

“As part of a security update programme at the museum we wanted to replace the outdated mono CCTV cameras with new vandal resistant domes incorporating day/night colour cameras to dramatically improve picture quality at low light levels” comments Steve Brokenbrow of Stockport Council.

“Working in consultation with Fire Sound and Security we designed a flexible camera installation that offers a significant advance in performance and picture quality and now provides improved coverage that is monitored via the council’s main CCTV control centre 24/7” Brokenbrow continues.

10 Genie VRCD 5351 vandal resistant dome day/night colour cameras were installed, dramatically improving CCTV picture quality at low light levels. Since low light levels can introduce both random and fixed noise onto video images, the cameras also incorporate Genie’s innovative digital noise reduction (DNR) technology – available in four levels - to significantly reduce this noise and produce a high signal to noise ratio and prevent ghost effects. As a result, enhanced levels of identification are possible in low light and, in addition, recorded file sizes are reduced by 40% when using JPEG compression and a massive 70% when using MPEG compression.

Simon Green, Genie CCTV’s Sales Director, says: ‘When Hat Works wanted to upgrade their cameras, prime requirements were for a state-of-the-art system that incorporated the latest technology in a value for money package. Working with our local distributor we are happy to have provided a solution that met all their requirements and this is now up and running at the museum."

Related topics:  CCTV System   Remote Monitoring and Surveillance   Security market sectors 

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