AV Aids Corporate Lobbying

The "More Comfortable and Energy Efficient" exhibit is one of many themed displays in Honeywell's Technology Experience. This display features proprietary moveable LCD screen technology from Burlington, NJ-based exhibit builder/coordinator Lynch Exhibits, which changes the content as the displays move over a track.

CHALLENGE: Format a 22-foot-long section of an oval-shaped room for theater-quality video, and install video displays in an exhibit room without using monitors or front-projection systems to maintain aesthetics.

SOLUTION: Use projector video processors for curved projection surfaces and install customized rear-projection mirror systems to create inconspicuous video displays.

Lobbying for lucrative federal contracts in Washington D.C. is a competitive business — a lot of which is still done face-to-face or through phone calls, meetings, and lunches. But as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. That's the idea behind the Honeywell Technology Experience, the company's multimillion-dollar Washington D.C. visitor's center located on the fifth floor of the 101 Constitution building, which opened in November 2005.

The Morristown, NJ-based enterprise technology company needed a space that could show off its business ventures — ranging from building bridges and airports to power plants and security products — to potential clients, including members of congress and White House administration officials.

Honeywell turned to Lynch Exhibits, a Burlington, NJ-based exhibit builder/coordinator to design an AV-rich, multi-room facility to inform visitors about the variety of services Honeywell offers. Rob Steel, operations manager of interactive AV and onsite manager for Lynch Exhibits, subcontracted Sterling, VA-based custom multimedia solutions company Total Video Solutions Inc. (TVSI) to help plan and install the new AV system.

The first decision was to find a customized, easy-to-use system to control the center, so various Honeywell employees could act as tour guides, regardless of their technology backgrounds. Lynch Exhibits and TVSI brought in Robert Gerretz, a programmer from AMX, to configure a system that could be controlled three different ways, depending on the needs of the facility's visitors. For small groups, visitors can control the AV in each room via multiple AMX AXD-MSP8 eight-button control panels located in each area. With larger groups, a tour guide can carry a portable 8.4-inch AMX MVP-8400 Modero ViewPoint touchpanel control system. For backup, an AMX NXD-CV17 17-inch wall mount touchpanel is also installed in a control room.

Dynamic AV

The opening exhibit in the center, “People & Passion,” spans the length of the hallway just off the center's front lobby. Along the hallway are floor-to-ceiling black and white murals representing Honeywell employees from around the world. However, the company wanted to allow visitors to actually see and hear from its employees by having their projected life-size images “talk” to visitors as they walk down the hallway.

To make this concept a reality, the TVSI team, led by project manager Russell Lynch, CTS-D, mounted three 37-inch Sharp LCM3700P LCD displays on Chief PSM2241 static wall mounts interspersed throughout the horseshoe-shaped hallway. Two Denon DVN300 DVD players, which are located in the equipment rack in the control room, send pre-recorded content depicting Honeywell employees to the displays. Because the first and third monitors play identical video content, an Extron P/2 DA4xi four-output VGA-QXGA distribution amplifier splits the content from one of the DVD players.

For audio, TVSI installed JBL Control 26CT 6.5-inch, two-way ceiling speakers above each of the three LCD displays. The speakers are directed downward, so when visitors are in front of a display, they hear only the corresponding audio. Crown CH-1 900 W, two-channel amplifiers, also located in the control room, power the speakers.

To control the presentations, visitors can push a button on an AMX AXD-MSP8 eight-button keypad, and adjust the audio levels using AMX NXC-VOL4 four-channel volume control cards.

At the of the end first exhibit, a transition room gives visitors a preview of some of the themed areas still to come. To create an eye-catching display in this transition area, Lynch mounted six vertically-oriented, 42-inch Pioneer PDP 424MV plasma displays on the main wall. The displays are connected to a Video Visions Plasmaxx 6x1 multi-image processor to create one seamless image across all six displays.

Curved projection

The next phase of the exhibit features the “Day in the Life Theater,” an oval-shaped room that holds up to 25 people and features a 22-foot-wide by 5-foot-tall, motorized panoramic wall. Lynch's team mounted a customized, curved projection screen from Stewart Filmscreen on the wall for video projection. In the middle of the screen, Honeywell wanted to run a four-minute, widescreen movie that follows a Honeywell employee through his or her day, along with complementary still photos and video clips on the left and right sides of the screen.

CURVED SCREEN PROJECTION

Because the Honeywell Technology Experience visitor's center in Washington D.C. is confined to half of a floor in a downtown office building, space was a precious commodity. To maximize space for other exhibits, the facility's theater was designed as an oval-shaped room, which ultimately required projecting video onto a curved screen. This created a difficult challenge for the project's AV integration team.

To solve the problem, Total Video Solutions Inc., the Sterling, VA-based custom multimedia solutions company in charge of AV integration for the project, used the Silicon Optix IA-100EX Image AnyPlace projector video processor to scale the video.

“What Image AnyPlace does is a geometry correction on its way through,” explains Steve Wood, general manager and vice president at Silicon Optix. “Essentially geometry correction is scaling on a localized, point-by-point basis. You don't need to just provide a constant scale factor, but a scale factor that changes over the course of the image, depending on how the shape of the screen changes.”

To accomplish this, the first step is to mark the entire projection surface with a 4x3 grid, which will result in 20 points on the screen, Wood says. However, there are multiple ways to do this. “One way is to make marks with pieces of paper or some kind of non-permanent marking that can be taken away,” he says. “Another way is to project onto the screen using laser levels in a grid format. You can also take a transparent piece of plastic with a grid marked on it, and hang it over the screen.”

The Image AnyPlace can then be used to project a 4:3 grid over the projection screen, and the geometric correction begins. “As you project it through the system, you put 20 points on the screen that exist in our eWarp designer software, and move them so they correspond exactly to the point on the screen,” Wood says. “Then you push a button in the software and it compiles a warp map, which is completely described by the transformation you just made by pushing the points around. The software then generates the warp map, which is downloaded into the Image AnyPlace geometry correcting scaler. Finally, you select that geometry and find that the image is mapped to land perfectly on those points.”

Wood also says that if systems integrators have a standard geometric form — a sphere or cylinder, for example — they can do a mathematical calculation and input it directly into the Image AnyPlace. “Essentially, you just calculate for the kind of geometry, the radius of the sphere, the distance of projection, and the latitude and longitude upon the sphere that you want to have,” he says.

Entering these numbers will eliminate matching crosspoints, and make the process less time consuming.

 

To create this montage effect, Lynch used three rear-projection projectors. For the center projector, Lynch used a 16:9 widescreen Sanyo PLV-WF10 WXGA projector mounted on a Chief VCM-49E ceiling mount. A Pioneer DVD-V7400 DVD player feeds the projector. Next, he used Chief RPA-1065 ceiling mounts to mount two NEC MT1075 XGA, 4:3 projectors, which are connected to a separate Pioneer DVD-V7400 DVD player, on each side of the center projector.

Lynch says mounting the projectors posed a challenge for his team because they had to determine the projector placement before the screens were ordered, due to the project's short time frame. “Because of the deadline, we had to claim the space in the ceiling for the projectors long before the screen was ever put up,” he says. “This is a horrible nightmare for an AV pro because you always like to have your screen there when you're hanging projectors, so you can make sure you're lined up properly. We figured out everything on paper, applied it to the architecture of the room, and secured the projector mounts long before anything was up.”

Once the projector placement was determined, projecting the three images onto the custom curved screen on the moveable wall further complicated the task. The team considered using custom lenses and video scalers on each projector, but eventually found its solution in the Silicon Optix IA-100EX Image AnyPlace projector video processor (see sidebar). “It warps the picture to the curved screen, so the image you see isn't distorted,” Lynch says. “This was necessary because the projection is off-axis a little bit. We have one of these devices on each projector.”

After selecting the Image AnyPlace, the team had to calibrate the projection — a process that took two nights to finish. “It's a tedious process that involves producing a large printout with a grid that covers the curved screen,” Lynch says. “Lynch Exhibits created the grid for us using plotter paper and their large plotter from a CAD drawing we created. Once the screen came in, we taped the printout to the screen and activated the device. Using the mouse on your computer, you line up the grid on the paper with the grid created by the Image AnyPlace.”

Lynch says using the Image AnyPlace reduced labor time as well as costs in the long run, despite the fact that the three units cost nearly $3,000 each. “Otherwise, we would have had to mathematically calculate the custom lenses,” he says. “The Silicon Optix device also saves money because it's a scaler. We fed it component signal from the DVD players and scaled it to RGBHV, which we fed to all of the projectors. If we would have gone the custom lens route, we would have needed another scaler involved in the system. This was a one-box solution that solved both of those problems. It saved a couple of thousand dollars per projector or about $5,000 to $6,000 total.”

When the movie starts, the plasma screens in the adjoining transition room fade out. The theater uses five 8-inch Tannoy I8 AW loudspeakers and a Tannoy VS18 DR passive subwoofer for audio. The audio system is controlled by an Onkyo TX-SR55 7.1 surround sound receiver. As the movie ends, the 22-foot projection wall slides over the transition area, revealing the next exhibit, “Honeywell City.”

Themed AV

“Honeywell City” is cityscape area made up of white acrylic models of famous buildings around the world that use Honeywell technologies and products. As visitors enter the space, the lighting sequence begins and a button on an AMX AXD-MSP8 eight-button keypad starts the voiceover. The audio comes from five 8-inch Tannoy I8 AW loudspeakers mounted with Tannoy MB 8 mounting brackets.

“Honeywell City” leads into three separate themed sections with nearly identical setups and AV systems: “Safer & More Secure,” “More Comfortable & Energy Efficient,” and “Innovative & Productive.” Each area incorporates a patented I-Wall display system, which Lynch Exhibits devised and installed, consisting of a vertically-oriented LCD monitor that runs on a track in front of the display wall in each area. As the monitor rolls by a number of pre-programmed stations, information is automatically activated on the LCD displays.

Honeywell also wanted to install stationary, vertically-oriented video displays in each of the themed areas, but wasn't sure how to implement them. Moveable LCD monitors were already in place, and front-projection would mean leaving ceiling-mounted projectors out in the open.

Lynch decided to try rear-projection, even though there was less than 3 feet of space behind the exhibit wall. “We had to ask Da-Lite to come up with a vertically-oriented mirror setup for a short depth,” he says. “They came up with one that holds the projector upside-down. It faces sideways in relation to the final display. The images bounce off the side mirror at an angle to the main mirror at the back, and then forward because of the short distance and the vertical orientation. There's about 1 foot from the projector to the first mirror, about 2 feet to the second mirror, and then 3 feet to the main screen. This is accomplished without any additional lenses.”

Lynch used Epson EMP-821 LCD, XGA projectors in the system, fed by three Denon DVN-300 DVD players located in the control room. Each rear-projection display also has its own audio system consisting of two JBL Control 128 W in-wall speakers, a Crown CH-1 900 W two-channel amplifier, and a Rane SEQ 30S stereo equalizer.

“The speakers in the three areas were originally intended to mount on the wall and face outward, but because of the concerns of spillover and space, we wound up mounting them overhead on a false ceiling,” Lynch says. “They're mounted in stereo pairs, straight down in front of the screen. That cuts down on spillover.”

Although the center has only been open to the public since November 2005, Honeywell says its tours have already increased. Now, with the ability to present its image and capabilities to more than 120,000 company employees and thousands of lawmakers in Washington D.C., Honeywell expects the facility to become even more valuable in the future.

CORRECTION

The “AV Aids Corporate Lobbying” article in the April issue misidentified one of the project's integrators. The company, Total Video Products Inc., is an AV and digital media integrator based in Mickleton, NJ.