Project - Pakfin Security Cameras
Pakfin asked us to help them with a problem at their new premises. The building is huge and at one time thousands of people worked there. Now only a few dozen people use the place. To keep track of movement of stock, prevent pilfering and ensure safe working practices they needed a decent security camera system to a budget. Sothcott Smith were able to integrate digital IP cameras and the existing CCTV cameras into a PC based system which works through the buildings existing CAT5 cabling. As well as live monitoring the system records all movement on hard drive for several months if required. The system has already helped prove to the customer that their goods will be we looked after and it has helped catch vandals who were damaging vehicles left on site. We are upgrading to a dual quad core PC running XP Pro and Go1984 with 8GB RAM and 1TB of networked storage. The more power the more cameras and faster frame rate.
Project - Robydome Production Control Upgrade
Robydome are an electronics company who manufacture sophisticated electronic crop storage systems and control systems for robotic harvesting machines here in the UK. Electronic devices have the highest density of components of any manufactured item. Robydome make hundreds of different products which often share the same components. Managing the supply of components to the production line becomes complex. The Stock Control system maintained by Sothcott Smith has recently allowed very fine tuning of stock levels for best profit, cashflow and risk. For example bulk buying provides a discount but how long until that discount costs money in borrowing or the components are no longer used and are scrapped? Another consideration is what is the risk to production of not being able to buy a component in time? The Robydome Production Control helps manage these considerations. The program was upgraded from MS Access 2000 to Access 2007 with a MySQL server back end on Dell SUSE hardware.
Project - Charsley Consultants
Up to the 19th Century the home was also the place of work. People would live above their shop, be that a cobblers or a locksmith or a bakery. With the industrial revolution production moved to factories and people had to leave their houses to go to work. They may work in production or in the office. Today many international companies have their offices in London and their production in China. Today's commuter has to travel to London everyday to sit in an office using a telephone and computer. With the right technology office workers can do much of their work from home. Charsley's new home office is a little piece of London in an Essex farm house. Working from home is a triumph of local business and supports the local area. The place has been wired to the same system as a large London office to allow for expansion and change of business direction. With the global financial meltdown in full swing, Charsley has done this at just the right time.
Project - Evil Kitty TV station
In partnership with Gadget Max and KTS Computers Sothcott Smith have helped set up the Evil Kitty TV Internet radio station. This is a micro-tv station using Internet technology to broadcast local up and coming dance and rave DJ's. The studio is actually a converted garden shed. The business model is that the DJ's pay to play to the station's audience and the station carrys a small amount of advertising. The main technical challenges were to get Internet to the studio and to compress the stream to get the best quality and larges number on concurrent subscribers. Currently we are using a Linux based server running VLC transcoding video and audio into an mms stream to a website hosted player. Internet connectivity supplied by Gadget Max.
