Smoking Deterrent System – Exeter University

Education smoking deterrent system

Our customer, the University of Exeter – the Falmouth University and Penryn Campus is a large site, set in 100 acres of countryside, close to the waterside town of Falmouth in Cornwall. For some time, specific areas of the site had been plagued by smoking outside of some buildings and entrance ways. Despite efforts by the site services and health teams with instruction and local signage, the problem persisted. An audio based smoking deterrent system was considered as a different option and an additional media in helping to enforce non smoking policy.

Abletek have had previous experience with installing similar audio smoking deterrent systems at other education and healthcare settings.

Our audio design

Our project installation works were coordinated through the site services and campus buildings control authority. A number of functional and technical capabilities and options was discussed considered. In the end, a simple manually operated (wall push buttons) smoking deterrent system solution was decided and installed. Meaning when staff or the site security team recognised problem smokers, they would manually press the wall button/s to active playback of the pre-recorded smoking deterrent audio message file.

The ‘system’ was pre-built at the Abletek workshop. The integrated message player / amplifier was housed within a secure wall enclosure – DIN rail terminals and disconnects were also installed within the enclosure to provide speaker cable connections. The system and speakers were delivered to site for a co-op installation with the customer supporting electrician.

Google Natural Text to Speech (TTS) was used to create the project audio message files. Specialist audio processing software was then used to fine tune and create the resulting MP3 audio files.