Officially opened on 31 January 2009 by club chairman Stewart Gilmour, and First Minister Alex Salmond, the new St.Mirren all-seating football stadium has a capacity of 8006 with 20 turnstiles situated around the perimeter of the stadium. To enable the stadium to meet strict safety requirements, Security Solutions Limited were tasked with providing a turnstile monitoring and stadium count management system to monitor turnstiles that had been fitted by another company.

Security Solutions Limited adapted each of the turnstiles to give an output signal each time a spectator entered through that turnstile. Nortech’s NCT200 counter modules were fitted close to the turnstiles to monitor those outputs and present the count values to VenueMaster software running on a PC in the control room. The NCT200 modules were linked to the VenueMaster PC via an RS485 bus cabled via a cable tray that runs around the full circumference of the stadium. 

On match days VenueMaster keeps a record of the number of spectators entering via each turnstile and calculates the level of occupancy in each of four stands as well as the stadium total. This information is displayed on the screen of the PC in the control room of the stadium. The information may be displayed as the number of spectators, the number of available seats or the percentage occupancy.

The system is primarily used by the Police to ensure that the stadium is filled to capacity in a controlled and safe manner.  The data provided by the system is also used to verify the attendance on match days so that it can be made available to the local newspapers.