New Zealand museum in synergy with Hanwell for monitoring solutions

Hanwell Solutions has clinched a contract to supply one of the largest radio telemetry systems ever in a museum Down Under, monitoring and helping to safeguard the collection at New Zealand’s famous Museum of Transport and Technology (MOTAT) in Auckland.

One of New Zealand’s most popular attractions, MOTAT has acquired a collection of almost 100,000 items, including key pieces of the nation’s transportation and technology history, in a diverse arrangement of storage and display environments which required an upgraded monitoring system.

Charged with the task of implementing an improved framework to help protect MOTAT’s collection was Conservation Manager, Kristie Short-Traxler. Following initial research, Kristie contacted Hanwell, the UK’s leading manufacturer of wireless environmental monitoring equipment which is ideal for tracking conditions in the heritage, pharmaceutical, healthcare and food industries and related sectors.

Multi-award-winning Hanwell put Kristie in touch with its Australian distributor, ECE Fast, which worked with the museum team at MOTAT to establish that the Synergy System was the best fit to replace individual data logger monitors the museum had been using which required staff to manually download collected data from each unit. The decision to switch to Hanwell Synergy was an easy one as it immediately reduced the amount of time and resources needed to gather the environmental data, with around 40 sensors installed by the ECE Fast team at MOTAT’s three separate sites.

Following the success of the system installation, which was turned around in just four days – including training – the museum team is now able to better monitor and manage the conditions because they can interpret, share and react to critical environmental changes more swiftly.

Emma Prideaux, MOTAT’s Conservation Technician and the team member responsible for the day-to-day operation of the equipment, said: “The convenience of Synergy’s wireless monitors has been a real highlight. We need to be mobile so being able to collect data swiftly via a web browser, from anywhere and at any time means we can be much more agile in our conservation efforts.”

The ease with which this data is gathered has also given the museum’s conservation team the ability to share their knowledge with other museum staff, so that everyone working at MOTAT can better understand the roles they can play to support conservation of the collection.

Kristie explained: “As a museum, MOTAT’s most precious assets are its diverse collections. Thanks to Hanwell’s Synergy System we can now build the foundations of a sustainable and data-driven environmental programme to protect New Zealand’s heritage.”

Hanwell’s highly innovative platforms provide maximum flexibility and enhanced control of data and events from anywhere in the world via cloud or server-based configuration. Interactive graphs, tables and plan views enable users to easily analyse data in multiple ways, and user access levels can be managed through customisable groups.

The accuracy and flexibility of environmental management provided by Hanwell protects heritage sites not just from monetary loss but also from damage to irreplaceable historical and cultural items by instantly warning of compromised conditions.

ECE Fast’s General Sales Manager, David Hughes, concluded: “The MOTAT project was a fantastic challenge for us to showcase our ability to ensure the smooth set-up and training of a large system within a four-day round trip.”