AV/IT TEAM:
Joe Guenther, Information Technology director; Danny Belanger, Information Technology team member
GOALS: The University of Connecticut at Storrs recently sought to upgrade its AV systems at the Gampel Pavilion basketball facility in order to deliver an improved fan experience. This upgrade was the latest in a long line of projects that the integration team at Metinteractive has completed with UConn, including UConn Freitas Volleyball, Toscano Hockey arena, the student rec center, the university’s Athletic District Development, and exhibits for the UConn Hartford campus. Metinteractive also supplies the majority of UConn’s on-site AV game support.
“UConn is our home team—we’re big Huskies fans,” Jeff Mele, Metinteractive’s chief commercial officer and project executive for Gampel Pavilion, said. “As taxpayers in the state, it’s also important to us to see that tax dollars and donor dollars are spent wisely.
CHALLENGES: A major long-term challenge for both in-house staff and the integration team has been overcoming a lack of standardization between campus sports facilities. “Gampel Pavilion is part of the continuing effort to standardize and connect facilities across all sports on the UConn Storrs campus,” Mele explained. “Facilities that are fragmented often require more support and more initial capital expenditures due to their individual, complete systems. Although standardization and connectivity add complexity, the long-term results are lower costs and greater operational flexibility.”
An additional challenge, according to Eric Pirozzi, an integration technician at Metinteractive who served as project manager for Gampel Pavilion, involved “optimizing live production by installing an up-to-date broadcast system and integrating with existing infrastructure.”
Sony Professional: Sony Pro BRAVIA BZ30L displays, Sony SRG-X400 4K NDI cameras, SonyVPL-FHZ80 projectors
FINAL INSTALL/USER BENEFITS: The team ultimately selected Sony Pro BRAVIA BZ30L displays, SRG-X400 4K NDI cameras, and VPL-FHZ80 projectors for installation in classrooms and labs for remote viewing and recording of surgical procedures and lectures.
In the Werklund Agriculture and Technology Center, a completely renovated building, the Sony displays and projectors support classroom presentations and collaborative discussions. Additional displays are used for break-out meeting rooms and digital signage throughout the building. A dozen projectors are installed across both buildings, with more than 20 displays in 70- and 75-inch sizes and 10 cameras.
“We’re capable of doing so much more now in terms of classroom presentation, viewing flexibility, network connectivity, and interactive collaboration,” Joe Guenther, Information Technology director at Olds College, said.
The Center is capturing HD footage for use in future course materials and to provide better access for students during procedures. The cameras and displays combine to create viewing gallery areas, allowing more students to observe procedures. “Why have dozens of students crowd around a surgery table when they can view live images and audio on a large, beautiful TV just outside the room?” Guenther said.
Each AHEC room is configured for maximum viewing and content-sharing options. “Having these cameras opens up the possibility to put any signal on any screen in any classroom,” Danny Belanger, Information Technology team member at Olds College, said. “We now have the capabilities to record on every single camera and then save to a shared drive, which authorized users can access. That wasn’t possible before.”
Since the entire AHEC installation is AV over IP, the technology is also used during student open-house tours. “We can show a live demonstration of medical procedures from the animal hospital in a classroom in another part of the building,” Guenther said. “Every device connects into our network switches, every source comes into the network, and every destination comes out of the network.”
The cameras’ security features allow easy control over privacy and user access. “We don’t give camera access to everyone,” Belanger said. “Once someone is done with a procedure, we assign a preset, which keeps it private. We route the cameras to whoever needs to see them, as long as they have proper authorization.”
The AHEC classrooms and labs all have one Sony SRG-X400 camera with varying combinations of Sony Pro BRAVIA displays and projectors, all connected via the school’s NDI network. The largest space is the diagnostic lab, with four 75-inch TVs. Instructors simply plug in their laptops at the podium, and content is displayed on all four screens.
“Even if students are facing the back of the room and looking at their microscopes, they can still clearly see what the teacher is presenting on the projection screen and the TVs all around the room,” Belanger said. “The camera in the ceiling can focus on anything on the instruction table, and everything is tracked smoothly.”
In addition to enhanced active learning, the technology’s benefits extend far beyond the classroom walls. The College now has a clear competitive advantage for attracting new students and experienced faculty, who both have heightened expectations for high-quality, easy-to-use technology in education.