Schools continue to be challenged by the high level of vaping among students. This can be highly disruptive to the learning environment and can expose them to risks, such as e-liquids laced with the dangerous drug spice.
Recently researchers have also raised concerns that vaping among young people could lead to smoking, which is a more dangerous habit. Schools have responded to this challenge by installing vape detectors to help them manage the problem and support their pupils.
We offer the powerful vape detector, the Halo Smart Sensor 3C, and were busy installing 12 devices in a secondary school in Birmingham before the start of the academic year. This school needed us to do the cabling, as well as installing the devices in its toilets.
This was a great opportunity to showcase a Halo Smart Sensor installation, and as this was not far from our office in Bromsgrove, Nicky, our Sales and Marketing Manager, went along to video our engineers at work.
The video shows Stephen Gilbert, our technical manager and David Harris, our project engineering manager: cabling, terminating the cables and then finally installing the Halo Smart Sensors on the ceiling of the school toilets.
The HALO Smart Sensor is a power over ethernet (POE) device which means it receives its data and power over a single Cat5e ethernet cable so once the network cables are in, connecting it up and getting started is simple.
Before the installation all the smart sensors were pre-staged so that they would be part of the school’s network and be ready to send email alerts to the appropriate staff more quickly. Once the devices are plugged in it will take 24 hours for the sensors to self-calibrate.
The Birmingham school chose to manage their devices via HALO Cloud so they can see alerts and historical data and easily identify vaping hotspots. Full training on using the dashboard is provided for schools that subscribe to HALO Cloud.
Whether we have just supplied the Halo Smart Sensors or installed the devices and whether they have chosen to manage them via HALO Cloud or not, we have had positive feedback from schools about the impact they have had, and the improvements in the learning environment, they have provided. Schools that have benefited include Hanley Castle High School near Upton-on-Severn, Baxter College in Kidderminster, Silverdale School in Sheffield and St Joseph’s College in Stoke-on-Trent.
Our engineers are used to working in schools as we have also installed CCTV and access controls in many locations. They are therefore used to the varying environments within them and ensuring they get the networking just right so the HALO Smart Sensors and our other monitoring and surveillance systems work effectively.
We know schools continue to be challenged by the high numbers of young people choosing to vape. If you want to know more about how HALO Smart Sensors could help then we offer a free demo. If this is of interest, please get in touch.