The $3.9 million AV project was completed in April 2008. Because it was a retrofit of an existing facility, AVS had to oversee re-wiring electrical outlets, customized projector mounts, and the installation of adequate cooling and ventilation to ensure the equipment's reliability.
Credit: Acolyte Photo
CHANTILLY, VA., IS A LONG WAY from the U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific Headquarters in Hawaii. But on the integration floor of Audio Video Systems in suburban Washington, D.C., there's a custom-designed watch station that's almost identical to the 35 that sit on the watch floor of MARFORPAC's Command Operations Center. AVS's Barry Goldin once explained the lengths his company went to design the Marine watch stations, which serve as critical tools for monitoring threats against the United States.
AVS began by creating 3D renderings of the unique workstations where analysts would be able to switch among video feeds and data networks. The AV integrator then had a custom woodworker build a watch station to their specifications, wired a mock-up in Chantilly, tweaked the design, then tweaked it again when the watch stations arrived in Hawaii. Now Marines can log into any watch station, get access to the mission-critical information they need, and route video up to the command center's new videowalls for briefing purposes.
The MARFORPAC main watch floor includes 35 custom-designed workstations, each with a secure touchpanel acting as a KVM switch over IP to access up to four PCs.
Credit: Acolyte Photo
The original plan for the completely renovated command center called for a 3x9 wall of video cubes. But after further discussion, planning, and site surveys, AVS instead recommended a single videowall to better fit the space (a second, smaller videowall would be built at the other end of the watch floor). The larger, 32-foot display comprised a Stewart Filmscreen SnoMatte screen and six Panasonic 3-chip DLP, 10,000-lumen 1080p projectors, edge-blended vertically and horizontally through a Vista Spyder processor. With a limited amount of space in the pre-World World II facility, AVS created a unique design to accommodate the short, 50-foot throw, mounting the projectors above and below the opposite videowall.
Today MARFORPAC is using 45 of AVS's watch stations, with extras built for the center's conference rooms and offices. A master controller can call up any of multiple pre-defined, blended video layouts that combine sources, including data from individual watch stations, satellite receivers, tuners, and other components. It's a 21st-century AV design to match the military's 21st-century mission.
AV INTEGRATOR
Audio Video Systems, Chantilly, Va.