SCN: How long have you been with RTI, and what are your responsibilities?

Bill Hensley: I began consulting with RTI in the spring of 2020 and joined full time that August. I am focused on increasing awareness of RTI solutions while building the programs, communications, and tools to help RTI dealers create more opportunities and win more business. 

[Executive Q&A: Creating Connections]

SCN: How is RTI celebrating its 30th anniversary?

BH: We’re celebrating by bringing to market the solutions that will pave the way forward for integrators’ businesses to be more profitable and efficient, and that will strengthen customer relationships. This includes control solutions that ensure increasingly functional, intuitive spaces—no matter the environment, user, or equipment. That said, we’ve occasionally paused to share some anniversary cake with our partners. 

SCN: What are the short and long-term goals for your company?

BH: RTI is always focused on helping integrators grow their businesses. In the short term, we have some software updates that will add value to every product we make. Ongoing, it’s all about developing exceptional control and AV distribution solutions in both the residential and commercial space. 

SCN: RTI is well positioned in both the residential and commercial worlds. When it comes to product innovation, which area tends to lead more?

BH: What we’ve found by looking at the market is that residential dealers are increasingly securing commercial projects where control and automation is desired. Our product innovations, such as creating an ecosystem and portfolio of products that include video-over-IP with native video control inside the control system, reflect this shift. There are a number of ways to meet budgets while exceeding expectations. We work in both commercial and residential; sometimes the spark comes from commercial, sometimes from residential, but we’re seeing more and more overlap. 

SCN: What are some of the commonalities between both markets, and are your solutions interchangeable between them?

BH: Take a peek into any conference room or media room and what you’ll see is a plethora of components that all need some sort of operational control, whether it’s lowering a projector screen, adjusting the lighting and shades, or selecting the appropriate source. Our solutions are built around enabling customers to achieve a seamless control experience—no matter the component, no matter the application.

RTI’s mission is to make it easier for dealers to program, connect to, and control any component. That’s why our large and continuously growing library of drivers available for RTI projects is a major focus for the company. New and/or updated drivers release every Friday, which we call "Driver Friday," and that’s just the ones done by our internal team. The network of independent driver developers is always writing drivers for residential and commercial integrations. 

SCN: Your Integration Designer software is all about customization. How important is customization for integrators?

BH: Integration Designer is the RTI control application programming platform. It provides a single platform to achieve the full customization for which RTI is renown. The latest version, Integration Designer 11, minimizes programming tasks for the fastest customized installation ever. Integrators can modify the auto-generated pages, create their own custom interface, or even use a third-party template. It delivers the flexibility and efficiency integrators need on projects, while the new Coral user interface provides an intuitive experience in any application. The stunning UI template and auto-generated pages are important for residential integrators, but Integration Designer 11 still enables the full customization that commercial customers demand.

SCN: What was the thinking behind your automation solutions for houses of worship?

BH: Worship is not unlike the conferencing application where control solutions are used to make it easy to start meetings at the touch of a button. Often, it’s the case in the worship space where the AV crew is made up of non-technical volunteers, and there’s lots of sensitive equipment that needs to be powered up in just the right order. Rather than relying on a list of complicated steps, an integrator can program a button on a touchpanel that initiates a macro with the proper sequencing needed for sensitive audio gear.

Our KX4 delivers a simple approach to proper on/off control and room control by combining an in-wall touchpanel and hard-button input with a built-in control processor. So, an integrator could program a sequence macro that would prevent not only the painful feedback of equipment when turned on out of order, but also the damaging inrush that can fry thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment. The KX4 installed at front of house or where it’s most convenient provides both one-button control and the necessary processing power, so volunteers can manage multiple devices with ease. 

SCN: Automation for the “smart” office: What are some of the ground rules companies should follow?

BH: Like any project, integrators have to start by listening to the customer. What do they need the room to do right now? At the same time, a wise integrator will ask what companies may want three, five, or more years down the line. This encourages an immediate project that develops into an ongoing relationship. For example, they might want to add more rooms with control. By knowing that now, an integrator can begin to the lay the foundation for that growth by pre-wiring and saving the customer money in the longer term. 

[Executive Q&A: New Business Strategies]

SCN: Many instructors are notoriously hesitant toward using technology. How do you get faculty buy-in for control systems?

BH: The beauty of a control system is that it can take learning and worrying about new technology off instructors' plates. After all, they are there to impart wisdom and expertise to students. Again, let’s use the KX4 as the example. An instructor can walk into the lecture hall with, let’s say, a projector or interactive display, camera, speakers, lighting, and more. But they don’t have to worry about all this technology to help them present. All they need to do is push the button on the panel to initiate the presentation mode and achieve optimal lighting, turn on the camera, switch to the right inputs, lower the projection screen, or turn on the display and speakers. Once they do that, they’re set. This can also cut down on help desk tickets and streamline the workflow, so tech staff don’t need to rush around setting up every class. 

SCN: How can systems contractors better position themselves to profit from products and/or services you have to offer?

BH: RTI is deeply invested in educating systems contractors. After a break due to the pandemic, we’re restarting our Integration Designer 11 programmer’s certification trainings at RTI headquarters. And understanding that everyone has busy schedules, we have a full curriculum of online courses at our training portal. That way, an integrator can learn on their own schedule.

I’ve already mentioned the ability to customize systems to customer’s needs using our software, but it’s also worth it for integrators to see how efficient it can make the control systems their businesses specify and install. And of course, our product team has worked tirelessly to ensure that our solutions are in stock and ready to ship, allowing installers to better meet project demands and deadlines.

After experiencing the performance of Brightline Flex-T lights within the Executive Committee Press Room at the previous Prince George’s County Council building in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, county officials wanted the same setup when they moved into their new digs in Largo.

The lighting installation grew in scope beyond the Flex-T lighting. 

Let There Be MORE Light

Colin Sandy, of Sandy Audio Visual in Laurel, MD, led the design and build of the county’s new Hearing Room/Legislative Chambers, Press Room and Committee Room at the new building in Largo. Each room has 22 Flex-T broadcast-quality lights, with some serving as flood lights and others providing spot beam directional lighting. In addition, each council member and their staff have ZELo desktop lights, for a total of 50 ZELo’s at the new headquarters office.

Ease of install, physical appearance, and performance of the lights are what make them so well regarded at Prince George’s County Council. “Their [Flex-T lights] performance is phenomenal. They create a nice, even wash that looks great on video,” Sandy said. “The lighting is nicely diffused, so there are not a lot of shadows or fall off from light to dark. It’s just a very even lighting pattern, even over as large an area as we have.”

[ Brightline Promotes Erin Nath to U.S. Manager of AV Solutions ]

The versatile Flex-T lights can be installed in any type of ceiling. The patented articulation feature makes them the only fixtures that can be rotated into a desired position during use and returned flush to the ceiling between sessions or for general task lighting. “We put the Brightline lights into the existing ceiling grid. There’s no custom furniture fixture, attachments or mounts that you need,” Sandy said. “The fixtures integrate seamlessly with the ceiling grip. The 2x2-inch speakers look like return vents, and because it’s all flush with the ceiling grid, it doesn’t look like a theatre.”

Previously, the County used a more traditional theatrical lighting approach. “They used Tungsten lighting, which in comparison to what the county has now, uneven lighting,” Sandy explained. “The Council members really liked the lighting we did in the County Executive Press Room in 2020. We used nine Flex-T fixtures in that room. So, we did a very similar but much larger set up in the new building’s Committee Room, Press Room, and Hearing Room.”

The County Offices in Prince George’s are well equipped for local and national media, as well as internal communication. In addition to the 66 Flex-T and 50 ZELo lights, PTZ cameras in the Press Room are connected to a switcher and used for live streaming and a feed sent to a local news channel. Lights are positioned over a retractable green screen curtain. A Crestron control system with a Brightline interface controls the Flex-T lights individually or as a group. In the Committee Room where more informal meetings are held, Brightline fixtures illuminate Council members and guests seated in a board room-type set up. Four PTZ cameras in this room, along with the lights, are also controlled by a Crestron system.

[ Brightline Partners with ANC on Miami Central Transit & Retail Center ]

The ZELo personal video light has gotten rave reviews from Council members and staff who use it for daily videoconferencing. It has soft and adjustable lighting that can be tilted for the most flattering angle. Built-in manual controls make it easy to change brightness and color temperature, but users can also make adjustments using Brightline’s free app for iOS and Android portable devices. ZELo also supports voice control through Alexa and Google Assistant devices.

What will cars be like in 10 years? If you’re not picturing roads full of vehicles driving themselves, you’re missing the big picture—pure and simple. At CES in Las Vegas back in January, there were autonomous concept cars galore; in presentations by tech titans like Intel and Qualcomm, the vision of the future was one from behind the rosy windshield of a smart car on autopilot. But what about the places where we spend the majority of our time? 

As far as headline trends go, it seems as though we’re in something of an innovation lull when it comes to control for our buildings, at least as far as the user experience is concerned. While touchpanel-based systems have essentially been perfected, the general public—which sadly doesn’t embrace technology like we do—is still somewhat timid when it comes to operating them. Voice control came racing in with excitement and promise, but seems to have stalled out. Sure, it broke down barriers to operating technology, but its imprecision and unreliability can sometimes border on farce.

In most cases, what we have now is like cruise control: it’s helpful, but requires a good deal of input and adjustment from the user. The goal, as pointed out by Pete Kolak of Juniper Networks, should be to get to the built environment equivalent of the self-driving vehicle, where all of a room’s systems, from lights to displays, activate automatically for the person who walks in—no button press or spoken command needed. In theory, it shouldn’t be difficult; we have all of the necessary technology to make it happen, and it’s already being done successfully, to a degree. What we need is greater awareness to breed demand, and assertive programmers to help bring it about.

In the meantime, there are a number of exciting trends driving the refinement of control in its more familiar form, and we run through them in the issues of AV Technology. Cloud-based approaches are making systems leaner and nimbler, and drastically simpler to program and set up. They provide the ability to monitor tremendous deployments with fine detail, and are beginning to provide the capability of analyzing system usage patterns at the device level. All of these developments are fantastic news for the technology manager; they mean less time spent on repetitive tasks and more time for envisioning improvements.

As for the users? As the Internet of Things gradually ties together all elements of our homes, offices, and everyplace else, it’s inevitable that we’ll soon be inhabiting buildings that know us, our preferences, and our habits well enough to just react to what we want—no questions asked. Until then, you’ll have to just keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel.

Crestron has opened its Design Showroom in Houston, TX in a grand opening gala. Located in the Decorative Center Houston (DCH), the Southwest’s premier architecture and design center, the Design Showroom provides a location in which interior designers, lighting designers, builders, technology professionals, architects, and clients of Crestron dealers can experience Crestron automation technology blended into real-world settings.

“We create these elaborate, immersive spaces with our clients in mind, and work to ensure that each location is of the highest quality and provides the same elegant, world-class experience worldwide,” said Michael Short, Crestron global residential marketing manager. “We constantly maintain them so that all the very latest Crestron technology is on display, and provides clients with the best way to ‘see the future’ as they interact with the world’s most intuitive and innovative home automation technology.”

Crestron will be hosting events in the new showroom to introduce dealers to designers and architects in the Houston area. Interested parties can schedule a personal tour of the new showroom by sending an email to showroom@crestron.com.

Wednesday, AVIXA handed out its annual awards at Center Stage, InfoComm’s engaging presentation venue in the North Hall.

In addition to all the pomp and circumstance, Center Stage is a place for networking, education and presentations that AVIXA CEO David Labuskes, CTS, CAE, RCDD, said takes the quality and the “experience” quotient to a new level. All that is made possible by the presenters, programmers and sponsors led by ConnectWise, DolbyVoice, Lifesize, Mvix and Samsung.

Located at booth N1646, it’s a place, Labuskes said, to shake up your expectations and get new ideas. (And it’s all free.)

Wednesday’s schedule put concepts such as integrated life into perspective with a panel of senior people from Microsoft, Cisco and URC in conversation with Rachel Bradshaw, AVIXA’s director of program development.

Presentations on the future of AR and the future of stadium entertainment drove home the point that the future is all about interactive experiences. It’s not all technology: Center Stage sessions dealt with the ethics of voice assistance and the psychology of UI.

Thursday's sessions will offer a fascinating panel on testing and measuring the performance of digital signage, as well as a range of innovative topics that tie AV to process automation and building responsiveness. Among the must-sees: How Buildings of the Future Will Change in Response to Human Occupants. Additional sessions on AR/VR will consider the classroom and the stadium. A provocative session will ask the question: Can videoconferencing connect an entire community? It’s not all digital and it’s not all emerging technology—find out at the 3 p.m. session, Combining Live Music With Both Physical and Virtual New Media.

Wrapping up on Friday, Center Stage presentations will turn to topics that include hotels and hospitality, the secrets of using spatial audio to support remote collaboration and techniques to engage audiences in immersive experiences.

The Center Stage finale at 3:30 p.m., hosted by multimedia journalist Alesia Hendley, has some surprises in store as she dialogs with Will Curran, chief event Einstein at Endless Events, and they interactively demonstrate the power of video.

Events are on the half hour (with a break for lunch). Don’t miss them.

Square Box Systems announced that the Edmonton Police Service (EPS), the municipal police force for the city of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, has passed a key milestone in its use of the CatDV media asset management (MAM) system: archiving of more than 200,000 video assets. Through CatDV's search, automation, and storage management capabilities, EPS can cost-effectively access and manage its large and growing library of content for outreach, training, and internal communications.

EPS employs almost 1,800 sworn officers and an additional 700 civilian staff, operating out of 15 stations throughout the city. With such a large workforce, effective training and consistent communications are a priority for the EPS digital media unit. In addition to managing the department's website and social media presence, the digital media team produces many terabytes of video content every year, the majority of which is used internally for officer and employee training.

"We are primarily a video production unit, with a minimal crew to produce and manage high volumes of output," said Bob Allman, video producer with the EPS digital media team. "When we migrated to HD production and a fully digital production workflow almost seven years ago, we looked for a robust media asset management system that could help us store, manage, and access our video assets. It was also important that the system scale to support our future growth. We're very glad we chose CatDV from Square Box Systems, and it has exceeded all our expectations."

EPS has built a smooth and seamless workflow using CatDV for ingest, categorizing and tagging, and archiving. Assets are primarily video footage for internal training but also include video for public outreach campaigns and a large volume of still photos. Once video footage or stills are ingested, the CatDV Worker Node uses predefined workflows to save the clip to the appropriate folder and archive the assets to the EPS shared storage system, with simultaneous backups to nearline and offline storage. For large files, Worker Node automatically creates a low-resolution proxy for user access and review, preserving system resources by enabling sharing of the proxy rather than the full-resolution file.

"We realized right from the beginning how much more efficient we could be with CatDV, but it's especially valuable now that we've begun to work with 4K and very large files," Allman added. "Our team members can start ingesting a file and then go home for the evening, and then when they come in the next morning, Worker Node has backed it up and put it in the media pool, ready for cataloguing in CatDV."

CatDV's customizable interface has allowed the digital media team to adapt the system over the years as its needs have evolved. As the organization grows and requirements change, the team is flagging types of content that might not have even existed a few years ago. CatDV's on-screen customization makes it very easy to adapt the system to the team's workflows.

"The seamless integration of CatDV with storage systems means that the EPS digital media team members can always find the content they need, without having to worry about where it lives and without ever having to leave the CatDV interface," said Dave Clack, CEO, Square Box Systems. "Plus, CatDV's ability to handle large volumes of content and scale with the organization is particularly valuable to EPS, all enabled by its metadata-handling capabilities. When EPS recently celebrated its 125th anniversary, CatDV played a big role in the celebration by helping the team access historical footage and photos. We are confident that they'll still be using CatDV when the 150th celebration comes around!"

The What: Extron has introduced the HD CTL 100, a low-cost workspace controller designed for automatic display control in small meeting rooms and huddle spaces.

The What Else: The HD CTL 100 is fully operational out of the box when using CEC. Automatic power control allows users to collaborate with minimal interaction with the AV hardware. When no signal is detected, the system will power down after a predetermined time period. The HD CTL 100 supports HDMI data rates up to 18Gbps and video resolutions up to 4K60 with 4:4:4 chroma sampling.

"The HD CTL 100 is the latest in our growing family of compact, powerful collaboration tools designed to add convenience and increase efficiency within today's modern meeting spaces," said Casey Hall, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Extron. "The HD CTL 100 is ideal for small collaboration spaces where it can automatically switch display inputs and control display power while remaining tucked away out of site."

The Bottom Line: The HD CTL 100 offers plug-and-play automation, with no remotes or buttons to press. When an active signal is connected to the HDMI input, the HD CTL 100 automatically turns on the display and selects the correct input via CEC control. For further flexibility, the unit integrates with the Extron OCS 100 occupancy sensor to automatically power the system on when users enter the room. Connecting a ShareLink wireless collaboration gateway adds support for wireless BYOD connectivity, for content sharing from a wide variety of mobile devices.

Railroad transport company CSX Transportation has long occupied one of downtown Jacksonville’s most distinctive highrises, and conducts its most critical business—such as informing investment portfolio and fund managers of its quarterly earnings and media outreach—from executive suites and meeting rooms on the 15th floor.

This floor, including the executive boardroom, committee meeting room, and vestibule/lounge area, was fully renovated by Gresham, Smith & Partners. To ensure an optimal, ergonomic video conferencing and meeting experience, this architectural firm brought Midtown Video, a Miami-based AV systems integration company, into the project to install customized videoconferencing and meeting control systems.

“Since the CSX project involved so many systems that needed to be controlled, I chose Crestron for control and Panasonic for displays because both companies dominate the market with reliable, compatible products while offering excellent local support,” said Carl VanOrmer, a systems integrator who runs Midtown Video’s Northern Florida operation. Logistical challenges at CSX included coordinating the many vendor deliveries and multi-phased installation around the construction.

While waiting for meetings to begin, attendees pass the time in the vestibule/lobby area, where they can watch TV—including satellite TV channels, DVDs, and/or Apple TV—on two Panasonic 55-inch displays, and eat food served in the nearby kitchen. When no video program is selected, Apple TV shows beauty shots as screen savers.

For private meetings and negotiations, the adjacent committee room accommodates eight people, and features a Lifesize Icon 600 videoconferencing system, three Panasonic 55-inch displays, and Crestron AV systems control.

The executive boardroom features a massive conference table—designed and built by Antique and Modern Cabinets of Jacksonville—that seats 21 people, and two Panasonic 98-inch 4K/UHD wall-mounted displays.

Powering the room are a Crestron 3-Series 4K Digital Media Presentation System 300, Lifesize Icon 800 Video/Audio conferencing system, and two Lifesize camera 10X systems that provide different perspectives of the room. AV equipment, such as a Crestron 8x8 digital media switcher, is stored in racks in the nearby IT closet.

Crestron 10.1- and 8.7-inch wired and wireless touchscreens enable meeting hosts to remotely control the sound, lights, and window shades. With custom programming and graphics, the control panels allow users to select media sources for display, like satellite TV, DVD players, and Apple TV, as well as multiple PCs, laptops, and mobile devices.

In the boardroom, an equipment trough runs the length of the conference table, so control equipment can be hidden away, including mobile device charging stations and table boxes for plugging in computer devices. While VGA with audio, HDMI, USB, Ethernet, and AC power connections are supported, a Barco ClickShare system allows people to plug a device into their USB that allows them to direct their screen output to the room’s displays, and switch between computers with ease.

At the heart of each room is a Crestron Avia 12x8 DSP with Dante audio/IP networking, USB audio, AEC and audio conferencing interface, and a Crestron eight-channel (75W per channel) power amplifier. “The most complex part of this installation was the digital signal processing (DSP) associated with the audio system,” VanOrmer said.

“Due to the large size of the conference table and room, we used the Crestron DSP and mix-minus processing to independently process each mic, and amplify the voices at each end of the table, so that all voices could be heard at the same volume,” VanOrmer said. “We programmed the DSP using the acoustic echo cancellation feature to eliminate feedback and echo caused by audio picked up by the room mics.

“In this way, those in the room only hear the videoconferencing audio mix, not their own voices feeding back through the speakers.”

Whenever anyone enters the executive boardroom, the CSX logo, or guest companies’ logos—on Crestron Digital Graphics Engines 200—automatically appear full-screen on the displays. And if room sensors don’t detect motion for 30 minutes, it assumes everyone has left and shuts the equipment off to conserve its useful life.

“This was the first time I ever ordered so many products from a single vendor, namely 99 units from Crestron alone,” VanOrmer said, “CSX hadn’t updated these meeting rooms in more than 20 years, but now they’re ready for whatever new technology the future may bring.”

Coincidentally held around the same time the azaleas are in bloom in Augusta, April 10, 2018 kicked off the 17th year for the annual Crestron Masters.

For the past three years at AV Technology, we’ve been moving the conversation beyond the AV and IT conversion to data. But data is really nothing without the ability to parse and deliver it in a way that can be analyzed and visualized. Without it, a data dump is exactly what it sounds like.

All About the Cloud

Could this be the year that AV firmly plants both feet into the IT world? I think so. The groundbreaking news at Masters 2018 was the official launch of Crestron’s XiO Cloud hosted by Microsoft Azure. When XiO Cloud, Crestron Fusion, and Microsoft Power BI are used together, an incredible visualization of collected data is available.

“If a company already uses O365 (MS Office 365) then they will not have a problem with XiO because it’s hosted in the same data centers,” said Jon Ottesen, enterprise solutions architect at Crestron. “We use the exact same transport mechanisms, queuing, and security that Microsoft uses.”

This is a significant step forward in the evolutionary ecosystem of a 12-year-old product—Crestron Fusion.

“This effort actually started about seven years ago,” Ottesen said at the Designing for Enterprise Management session at Masters 2018. “It required us to reorganize and restructure our entire firmware library from the first variable up. Now if that doesn’t mean anything to you, disassemble your life to the moment of conception and start over. That’s what we did to get to this.”

Ottesen then went on to explain where Crestron XiO Cloud fits into the hierarchy of the company's platforms, beginning with Crestron Fusion, with its primary job of providing proactive monitoring and data collection. With Crestron Fusion Cloud, users can manage and monitor devices. To get devices setup quickly and easily, Crestron XiO Cloud allows the integrators the ability to claim the devices via MAC address and serial number to configure the equipment.

“Crestron Fusion is still needed to manage systems and device status,” said Richard Sasson, global director of technical services. “But the bottom line is that XiO Cloud is a cloud-only configuration and management tool that enables large-scale deployments in warp-speed. Combine XiO Cloud with Crestron Fusion and Power BI, you get real-time analytics.

“We have created dashboards so that we can own the experience without having to own Microsoft Power BI,” Sasson said. “In essence, creating templates and dashboards that our customers can use to have a good experience but were not going to maintain Power BI.” Templates can be customized for a service fee.

An Industry Evolves

Approximately six years ago, Crestron Authorized Independent Programmers became known as Crestron Services Providers. “We’re telling you, you need to offer services beyond programming,” Sasson said. “Will programming exist? Sure. The bread-and-butter is going to be mass deployments, configurations, reporting, creating a service that customers want and real value that customers need—a real return on investment.”

Programming of custom-controlled, one-off boardrooms and auditoriums isn’t going away. The paradigm shift is that systems such as XiO Cloud can now enable the configuration of 50, 100, or thousands of rooms at a time.

Power BI was introduced at InfoComm 2017, and at the time, the interest came more from end users. This makes sense given that technology managers, facilities managers, and CIOs need real information for lifecycle and real estate planning. “After we explained the benefits of the MTA program, we had unprecedented spike in people wanting to change their coursework to obtain the MTA certification,” Sasson said.

“We realized we wanted to offer Masters level training to a wider audience,” he said. “By creating the Masters Technology Architect program, we can really help the industry. We must be able to create a great experience for the end client by having the design community and the programming community work together to create the best solution.”