Remote noise test helps keep festival peace
22 August 2008
Festival fans and local residents in complete harmony during Irish music festival
Festival fans and local residents were in complete harmony during Ireland’s Oxegen music festival, held this summer at the Punchestown Racecourse, as the local County Council used a wireless network to monitor noise levels in surrounding areas Kildare County Council hired state of the art measuring equipment from specialist, Bruel and Kjaer UK to ensure the festival license wasn’t breached, by the off-site levels exceeding 65dB,.LAeq, 15 minute.
Bruel & Kjaer UK technicians set up its largest network yet of 2270 sound level meters ever configured in a real customer’s application. By utilising the 2270’s LAN adaptor and the wireless network pre-installed on site, it was possible to set up a number of meters around the site and monitor noise levels from one central location on a PC.
“In the past, the council typically had several staff on site constantly checking the sound level meters, so this system simplified the monitoring and reduced the number of personnel, as we were able to control all the meters from one point,” said Daniel Saunders, Applications Engineer for Bruel & Kjaer UK. “We used a total of nine 2270s - connected to the network with unique IP addresses - and programmed each one with their location name, making it easy to identify them on the central PC. With the network it was simple to start, stop and adjust measuring on all meters, plus the data was stored onto memory cards so if we had experienced any problems the recordings wouldn’t be lost.”
Gerry Crehan of Kildare County Council, who was responsible for the noise monitoring, said: “The great thing about the system is that everything’s in one place; you can see all the levels and controls all the sound level meters from one computer screen.” The network proved further use for Mr. Crehan, as it was also used to remotely download the information after each day’s monitoring, so he was able to have daily meetings with the concert promoters and had the previous day’s data to hand ready for discussing any problems.
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Bruel & Kjaer UK
