18 August 2017

Set in 58 acres of parkland at the end of a sea loch, the Torridon Hotel and Inn in Scotland was originally built as a shooting lodge for the first Earl of Lovelace in 1887. It is now a modern hotel with 18 guest rooms, multiple recreational areas, a famous whisky bar, and even has a biomass district heating scheme.

When the Torridon underwent a major refurbishment in 2015-16, senior management opted for what was at the time a well-regarded analogue CCTV system. But they soon discovered that compared to modern video quality the system looked pretty poor. It also included a separate video management and storage system which also incurred an additional licence fee for each additional camera.

What the hotel needed was an all-inclusive and high resolution system. But there were strict conditions around both the installation and physical appearance of the cameras. Parts of the building are nearly 150 years old, which means great care needed to be taken in terms of where cameras and cables were installed.

MD Dan Rose-Bristow says: “The system needed to be as least intrusive as possible as to not cause guests any discomfort yet still provide the level of security we required.”

Local installer Ness Tec had experience of working in similar environments, as well as the expertise needed for carrying out the installation of new structured cabling that would replace the older coaxial cabling and separate power connectors.

Ness Tec recommended a MOBOTIX solution which impressed Rose-Bristow for its image quality, ability to use fewer hemispheric cameras to discreetly cover larger areas, and the fact that all the necessary software came without any additional licensing costs.

After conducting a full site survey, Ness Tec identified that complete site coverage – including thermal imaging cameras in the car park area and key entry points – could be achieved with just 20 MOBOTIX cameras.

By using the vendor’s hemispheric technologies, large internal rooms could be covered by just a single camera. Installation was further simplified with PoE which was connected to a single UPS for increased reliability.

Torridon’s facilities team can manage the cameras from multiple locations using MOBOTIX’s MxManagementCenter software. This has an unlimited number of connections and requires no additional fee. Each camera can independently record footage onto its internal flash memory card, and all recordings are stored securely on a Synology NAS server. The footage is accessible via MxManagementCenter through secure connections to any authorised playback devices such as standard PC or laptop.