Vape/Smoke Detectors for school Toilets

[dapaulio]

Whats your experiences. Any recommendations

 

Needs to be accessible and notifies a team of people

Edited March 15, 2024 by dapaulio

[synaesthesia]

Verkada or Halo by a long way - the latter seems to be best value for money, the former more feature rich. don't get suckered into the cheap and cheerfuls.

[Net-Ctrl]

We have a webinar next week with Verkada, who provides vape sensors, as part of their wider portfolio, if you wanted to find out more about their approach you can sign up here: https://www.net-ctrl.com/curb-vaping-with-verkada

 

We have installed them into approx 70+ schools/colleges over the last year. It can be expensive - there's no getting around that. Outside of the HW/licensing costs, with whichever direction you choose, the more accurate solutions require some form of network/power/PoE connection. Typically bathrooms are out of scope for data points. This means cabling work is required and port capacity at local cabs. There are wireless ones available. I would advise you to stay away from them. We also design Wi-Fi solutions, and like data points, bathrooms are typically out of scope for Wi-Fi coverage. The likelihood is signal will be weak and the build environment of cubicles is problematic with Wi-Fi to add to complications.

 

Even with the HW - if you have floor to ceiling cubicles - you're likely to need one per cubicle. If not, you can get away with one for ever 3/4 stalls depending on configuration.

 

Vaping on school sites is a huge issue right now - hopefully, with proposed tax increased and bans on disposable vapes coming into effect this is going to reduce accessibility. However, are still likely to end up in students hands one way or another.

 

Finally, a further consideration is the school/college needs to discuss next steps - roles/responsibilities with who is dealing with alerts, how to communicate to staff, students and parents etc. We work with schools/colleges to advise on this stuff, but if you pastoral/behavoural leads they need to be included in the conversation, as well as Heads etc. Whilst the sensors will be able to create an alert the success of any solution will be what happens next.

 

We tested out many solutions and we really liked the Verkada approach - not only is the solution solid but the management platform is great. You get 24/7 support. 10 year warranty and have the ability to integrate with their cameras etc. And can do things like facial recognition etc.

 

If you want to understand the approach, the webinar next week will help. For costings, we can of course look at this with you and design around your environment.

[Aprice]

We've put Verkada in a good few schools now. The product works well, getting staff to react to it seems to be the harder part. We've got it working well with floor to ceiling cubicles successfully, quite surprising actually with only about a centimetre clearance at the top of the door and the ceiling.

 

Also have our own in house hardware in the pipeline.

[ITGuyNW]

We've put Verkada in a good few schools now. The product works well, getting staff to react to it seems to be the harder part. We've got it working well with floor to ceiling cubicles successfully, quite surprising actually with only about a centimetre clearance at the top of the door and the ceiling.

 

Ditto this.

[RobFuller]

We are testing Halo sensors and I'm very impressed and the integrations are excellent. Also like the no on going subscription and has some interesting results with the aggression and key word alerts.

[Fr0hawk]

Gonna be looking into these: https://www.discountfiresupplies.co.uk/product/807/2985/Hispec-Smart-Vape-Detector

[ITGURU]

can usually smell it then check cctv or they set off the fire alarm which then they own up to it even if wasn't them!

Even with detection you won't have proof who it was in toilets? just keeps any alarms local.

[RobFuller]

We've had a good success rate using the alerts and acting quickly. When confronted in the area they normally own up instantly realising they have set off an alarm. This even with only a small amount of vape much less than is required for a smoke alarm to be triggered. Plus the added benefits of aggression alerts, calls for help and air quality monitoring these are a good investments.

[ITGuyNW]

can usually smell it then check cctv or they set off the fire alarm which then they own up to it even if wasn't them!

Even with detection you won't have proof who it was in toilets? just keeps any alarms local.

That's why we only went for it as we have floor to ceiling cubicles in an open plan area. No real good for normal toilet blocks, especially at break times when there's lots of students in and out.

[synaesthesia]

Gonna be looking into these: https://www.discountfiresupplies.co.uk/product/807/2985/Hispec-Smart-Vape-Detector

 

These are the same as the "VapeGuardian" ones - off the shelf, £15 detectors using consumer grade home automation software to manage the hoardes of false positives. I strongly recommend avoiding using them.

[Disease]

We have 6 Verkada Vape sensors and we suffer a lot from false positive by Deodorant and Perfumes even though we set the threshold really high.

[Net-Ctrl]

Hi @Disease - do you have an open support ticket at all? Setting the vape index high is not always the answer and better to set it somewhere in the middle, default is 50, and then slowly configure to your surroundings in a series of tweaks. Verkada Support will be able to help if you have any issues, equally your aligned Verkada Account Manager should be able to advise - if not sure who that is, or any additional support needed, please let me know and will try to help. Confident we can improve things from your current experience.

[ITGuyNW]

Half of ours have gone offline . I'm talking to support who are being helpful but as yet no resolution. Seems its possibly a failed update.

 

Devices flash white, so cant communicate with the cloud. If I swap device with one that works, that uses the connection fine and works fine. If I connect the "faulty" sensor to a hot spot, it works fine. If I put it back on the network, flashes white. Nothings changed except its potentially gone offline during an update. It's odd.

 

EDIT: Turned out to be dodgy IP reservations. We're all good and catching them again.

Edited April 19, 2024 by ITGuyNW

[PotNoodleTech]

Just bare in mind that if you spend 10 grand on this but then SLT don't follow up each incident then it's a total waste of money, have seen that in a few schools round here.

[Net-Ctrl]

100% - Any solution needs buy in from all relevant departments and the wider staff team - what we try to encourage is school/colleges to define a roles/responsibilities plan. Who is dealing with alerts, and do you have their buy in, and establish next steps. This can't be something else added to the workload of those in IT. Furthermore, how the topic is educated, and these changes are communicated to students, staff and parents is key to the success.

 

We have been running sessions with those dealing with the alerts and how they can manage, prioritise and deal with alerts which has helped sites.

[Millgate_Jon]

I have a school running Halo and they have pre-recorded the Headmasters voice to use as an audio alert on the sensor stating "you have been caught vaping, report to my office immediately". Students are then going off to the HT`s office and reporting themselves!

The deodorant use is an issue if the device cannot detect masking, students cotton on pretty quickly that they can disable the unit by spraying deodorant - this along with aggression is why we`ve seen clients move towards the Halo as a preferred solution as it`s the only device that covers those things.

[MattGibson]

Where can we purchase the Halo detectors, recommendations? Edited May 14, 2024 by MattGibson

[Millgate_Jon]

Hi Matt,

 

I`ve just messaged with some info about Halo.

 

if anyone else is interested or has questions please be in touch.

 

Thanks

 

Jon.

[Spookyville]

Anyone have any experience of the Meraki MT15 in real student toilet scenarios? We have a lot of Meraki kit in school (cameras,WAP's etc.) so meraki is our preferred route for this. We are contemplating 1 sensor per cubicle block and not one per cubicle.

[synaesthesia]

Information on those seems irritatingly limited and nothing specific to vape detection. Would also like to see some real scenarios with vapes in mind - any air quality sensor will pick up vape, but discerning vape from other threats for a layman is going to be the stinger. Good pricing though (for a full solution like this, it's poor pricing compared to just about anything else so paying almost entirely for the software)

[Millgate_Jon]

When we decided to partner with Halo it was after various tests of other brands and I can say the Meraki MT15 was not one of them, it has no specific sensor for vape would be redundant in a vape siutation.

 

The Halo is unique in the market because it can differentiate between all manner of detections and have a bespoke response for each. Whether it`s Vape, Tobacco, THC, Heat Not Burn Devices, Deodorant (or any other aerosol mask) the Halo know`s what it`s detecting and responds according to the parameters you set yourself, could be alarms, lights, notifications, SMS, Email - or of course, any combination you choose. This goes for the medical alerts and aggression detection as well :-)

@synaesthesia - If you`d like to see some real life scenarios, drop me a line - we can get a trial unit out for you to try "in the wild" :-) Free of charge of course - Hope this helps.

 

Thanks

 

Jon.

[CHiLL]

We have tried two units, one from HiHo and one from Verkada and both appeared to have the same detection issues when it came to open plan toilets, specifically with near floor-ceiling cubicle walls/doors. During our testing, neither device was able to reliably detect a various vapes and we determined that the issue was two fold; you'd need multiple detectors in each toilet area to target multiple cubicles and because each toilet must have a vent by law, we think it was drawing the vape away from the detector. We even put the detector in front of the vent, but we still have detection issues with both units. We have been left disillusioned with vape detectors and the costs, especially given our funding situation (or lack thereof).

[Millgate_Jimbo]

We offer Verkada and Halo here at Millgate but most of my clients go for Halo, they don't have a recurring cloud licensing cost (they do but it's optional) and they also have a few features that the Verkada one's don't. Such as the masking so if someone sprays deodorant at it the device is aware that it's deodorant and will flag the masking alert rather than giving a false positive of Vape.

 

They also detect THC(cannabis), cigarette smoking and all types of vapes. Warranty is 5yrs but can be extended to 10yrs.

 

The dashboard is easy to monitor and you can pull reports as well as setting it up to text alert members of staff or it can integrate with camera systems in the back end. The alerts can even be customised so you can get it to be silent on the device but contact a member of staff, have it blast out a siren or even record your own voice to say something when it's being detected.

 

Got free trials available as well if it's something you want to explore and pricing can be whipped up easily.

Edit: Doh responded to this and didn't even realise Jon did... it's been a long Wednesday

Cheers,

Edited June 26, 2024 by Millgate_Jimbo

[Spookyville]

When we decided to partner with Halo it was after various tests of other brands and I can say the Meraki MT15 was not one of them, it has no specific sensor for vape would be redundant in a vape siutation.

Jon.

 

https://documentation.meraki.com/MT/MT_General_Articles/Air_Quality_Metrics_Explained