New technology saves thousands for booming venue

A County Durham-based venue has been saved thousands of pounds during the installation of a new CCTV system.
Gary Trotter, who has saved Hardwick Hall £10,000 and more than a kilometre of cabling.Gary Trotter, who has saved Hardwick Hall £10,000 and more than a kilometre of cabling.
Gary Trotter, who has saved Hardwick Hall £10,000 and more than a kilometre of cabling.

One of the North East’s best-known entertainment venues, Hardwick Hall in Sedgefield, was looking for a state-of-the-art system to help protect and manage crowds attending its events.

The scene for the popular Oyster and Lobster Festivals, the Hall is also becoming increasingly well-known for its open-air concerts and art events.

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This year, cult bands like Echo & the Bunnymen and Primal Scream are due to perform.

Managing director John Adamson said: “We’ve had CCTV for many years, but the pictures were of too poor a quality to be appropriate for the numbers of people we are looking after now.

“The problem we were faced with was that many state-of-the-art CCTV systems need digital cabling which is very costly and hugely disruptive to install in a busy hotel environment like ours.”

But a chance conversation with Gary Trotter, of Sunderland-based Hadrian Technology, led to a solution at a fraction of the cost.

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Hadrian pioneered the introduction of revolutionary technology which re-used well over a kilometre of old co-axial cables by converting digital camera signals and allowing them to run over previously-installed networks.

This avoided the need to rip up floorboards and remove plaster in order to find the route of the old cabling.

Gary Trotter, general manager at Hadrian Technology, said: “By using the new technology, developed with our partners Videcon, we were also able to halve the time taken to complete the job, and saved the client well over £10,000.”

Uniquely, the system can also run at the same time as the original analogue camera installation, meaning businesses can now phase the upgrading of their systems, in an affordable way - something that was previously impossible.

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Mr Trotter added: “There are thousands of buildings and properties like Hardwick Hall where there is a need to upgrade CCTV systems.

“However, till now there has been no solution without incurring major cost and the disruption associated with ripping out old cabling and installing new networks.

“When we visited Hardwick Hall it was immediately apparent that to replace the existing 17-camera system and add another 31 high-spec cameras with minimal inconvenience, we would have to make use of existing cabling, despite the normal incompatibility issues.”