Overview
Serving a population of over 1.14 million citizens, the Humberside Police force was looking to implement a mission-critical recording solution for its highly demanding, fast-paced, and dynamic workplace. In compliance with U.K. regulatory guidelines, the solution needed to allow the police to securely communicate for command and control of serious incidents — including the verbal decision-making processes of individual senior officers — and provide capabilities such as recording and storage for later transcription and review purposes. This meant selecting an audio capture system capable of delivering exceptional audio, fail-safe security, and unparalleled versatility to allow the force to effectively record the proceedings of both team leaders and supervisors while working on major events.
Challenge
With staff members spread across several different areas of the organization, the audio capture system needed to provide seamless multizone capabilities that would allow them to move freely into different offices without adding complexity to the installation or physical obstructions to the actual space. Since staff members would be working during sensitive emergency situations, clarity of communication would also be a major factor in the operation’s overall success. In compliance with government requirements and to ensure that critical conversations remained secure, an additional requirement for the audio solution was the need to provide impenetrable security from any interference or third-party eavesdropping. Furthermore, the solution needed to support continuous talk times — ensuring that important communications could continue uninterrupted — and the ability to integrate easily with thirdparty recording systems to round-off the force’s voice-capture solution.
Solution & Results
In order to successfully capture and record the Humberside Police Force’s emergency communications, solutions provider Weston Digital Technologies turned to Revolabs Executive HD Wireless Microphone System. Featuring wireless flexibility, unrivalled sound quality, and robust security, the system has been designed and tested to bring unparalleled audio capture to the demands of missioncritical environments such as law enforcement. Supporting up to eight wireless microphones, multiple units can be linked together up to 32 microphones over multiple areas while integrating with any control system via RS-232 or Ethernet — becoming a natural, flexible extension of any new or existing environment. Ensuring communication clarity, Executive HD microphones feature Revolabs “Designed for Speech” technology, built-in equalization, and innovations such as an improved signal-to-noise ratio to guarantee the highest possible comprehension between communicators. To keep the force’s conversations secure, the microphones bring the robustness of AES-256 encryption while allowing up to 20 hours of talk time and 72 standby hours, even with receivers up to 300 feet away. Revolabs’ wireless wearable microphone system was also seamlessly integrated with Weston Digital Technologies’ Symphony Ambient Recording system to provide the force with a complete end-to-end solution for capturing and recording audio.
“Using Revolabs Executive HD wireless microphones, we created a communication and recording solution that is secure, efficient, and extremely easy for officers to use,” said Mike Partridge, commercial director at Weston Digital Technologies. “Recordings start automatically once the lapel microphones are lifted from their charging station and subsequently stop once they are repositioned on the dock. The charging dock also removes the need for users to carry bulky battery packs that can reduce mobility and comfort. Overall, the combination of the HD mics with our Symphony Ambient Recording solution allows officers to manage incidents without worrying about any audio recording elements, and our client is extremely impressed with the results.”
Using a total of four Executive HD lapel microphones in tandem with the Symphony recording system, Humberside Police are now able to easily communicate during emergency situations while automatically recording calls.
We created a communication and recording solution that is secure, efficient, and extremely easy for officers to use.
To integrate these solutions, Weston used Executive HD’s serial control processor, which allows external systems to monitor and control both the Executive HD base station and its microphones via an RS232 or IP interface. As a result, Weston Digital Technologies was able to develop a software component that allows communication between the serial control processor and the Symphony platform — allowing control of the recording process by automatically responding to events sent by Executive HD. Furthermore, since Revolabs microphones operate outside the UHF spectrum and utilize the DECT personal communication protocol — which is unlicensed and thus protected for use by consumers — the force is able to protect its investment against any possible frequency changes to future-proof their installation.
“Our new wireless recording solution allows senior police officers to focus on managing incidents without having to worry about recording mission-critical management conversations or meeting their compliance obligations,” said Dave Christison, Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Humberside Police. “With Revolabs microphones attaching directly to clothing or lanyards, officers are also able to move freely between control rooms without dropping communication recordings while 128-bit encryption ensures that all our communications remain fully secure, providing crucial protection for our transmissions. The transparency of the system is also a true measure of its success. We’ve now eliminated unnecessary and timeconsuming processes to streamline our workflow, which greatly minimizes the possibility of user error. We are extremely pleased with the outcome — our incident management communications are now clearly and securely recorded without adding any complexity for our staff members or to the surrounding office space.”
Benefits
- Wireless flexibility
- Best-in-class audio quality
- Fail-safe security
- Extended talk times
- Third-party integration
- Ease of use