Veracity technology helps Police Scotland secure Open Golf Championship

Police Scotland’s vehicle has been upgraded to integrate quickly with diverse CCTV systems

Veracity, a provider of solutions that solve real-world IP video challenges in transmission, storage and display, has provided key technology to Police Scotland’s Communications vehicle infrastructure protecting the Open Golf Championship in Troon. While 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 4 days of the Championship.

Police Scotland security

Police Scotland overt technicians deploy regularly to a variety of locations across Scotland: sports venues, such as The Open this July, the Scottish Air Show, to music festivals such as The Wickerman Festival and Coloursfest, football matches and the recent Grand Prix of the Seas at Greenock.  Their fully kitted Mercedes van includes 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.

Connecting cameras across long distances

Site builds at these 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 new 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.

Central camera control

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.

“Veracity’s ability to provide innovative solutions and reliable products has enabled us to continue upgrading our vehicles and exploit emerging technology in a very tight space, without having to revisit the system connectivity” says David MacGregor, Senior Technical Officer, Police Scotland. “Veracity have always provided great assistance and since their products were installed we’ve had no extra costs which, along with reliability, is very important.”

“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,” adds 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 utilising innovative technology from Veracity for video surveillance recording.”