Latymer Upper school in London’s Hammersmith is making use of Iris, claimed to be Europe’s fastest growing IP alarm transmission and monitoring system, to improve its protection and save significant operational costs at the same time.
Latymer Upper’s facilities/projects manager Thomas Fisher said that the move to install Iris follows the introduction of a fibre optic local area network around the school last year, allowing a variety of equipment, including PCs, boilers and telephones, to share the same communications system. Iris now extends this, by enabling the separate existing alarm panels at 14 buildings on the Hammersmith site to be connected too.
Remote adjustments
“Iris allows us to change alarm codes and arm/disarm the alarm system in different buildings remotely, as well as take operational readings and make adjustments out-of-hours,” Fisher said. “So besides the substantial cost reductions we are making it is a far more flexible system – effectively we control the network now, giving us much better local control.”
The primary communications route between the alarm panel in each school building and ADT’s alarm receiving centre uses Chiron’s Iris 840 dialler to convert the analogue signal to IP. Back-up paths for dual signalling are available via both GSM and GPRS routes, in addition to low cost regular polling of the school’s alarm panels.
Latymer Upper itself is an independent co-educational school for 7-18 year old pupils and part of The Latymer Foundation, which includes The Latymer Prep School. Altogether, some 1200 pupils pass through the school gates every day and facilities include an arts centre, theatre, art display atrium, coffee shop and music rooms.
