Background
The police serve a fundamental role in society, keeping citizens safe and communities secure. The National Police of Colombia is a hardworking agency that relies on the latest tools to help its teams collaborate and make quick, informed decisions. Because data and visual information are critical to decision-making, the control room technology must operate flawlessly and be easy to use.
For the control room in the National Police of Colombia headquarters, Cosmos Sistemas Integrados (CSI), a renowned AV integrator, designed a unique three video-wall system. The solution offers versatility, rock-solid reliability, crisp audio, and vivid images displayed from multiple sources.
The Challenge
“The client required flexibility, stability, quickness, and practicality when using the three video walls inside the control room,” said Miguel Angel Diaz Molina, Director of the Engineering Department of Cosmos
Sistemas Integrados. “They needed to be able to display the same signal multiple times on different screens, so critical information could be seen by different people located in different points of the room.”
Additionally, all signals travel from different locations, and they need to be managed for signal integrity as well as their embedded audio streams. With the three different configurations of the video walls, across a total of 28 screens, the client has the possibility to display the same information or visuals from different sources on each screen. To drive this unique mission-critical video wall system, CSI needed an extremely and intuitive control solution.
The Solution
CSI integrated a three-wall system that is built for 24/7 operation and powered by Datapath’s VSN wall control line. This project represents the largest VSN installation in Colombia, and it includes Datapath’s VSN1172 and VSN1100X.
The VSN range is highly customizable. The systems contain either 7th generation Intel Corei7, E3 Xeon or dual E5 Xeon processors. Systems are available with either 240GB or 480GB SSD drives and up to 128GB of memory.
The three video walls are controlled simultaneously (one video wall consists of a 4×3 screen configuration and two are 4×2), with 20 inputs, and Datapath’s intuitive WallControl 10 (WC10) software.
The Datapath difference
Datapath was selected for this important project in Colombia because of the uniquely capable VSN wall controller solution. Only VSN offers the capacity to process 28 video channels simultaneously without additional peripherals, at an excellent FHD at 60Hz resolution per channel on the three video walls. It delivers this robust flexibility all while offering to the client the required performance, scalability, and redundancy they needed. VSN’s switched fabric technology provides high-bandwidth Gen3 PCIe slots. Each slot is capable of delivering high-resolution bandwidth from a range of capture cards to multiple outputs.
Real-time requirement’s for mission-critical collaboration
The control room is managed by nine people, all with specific roles and duties. The nine operators have access to the Datapath video wall control platform, WallControl 10, to display or create layouts with the system’s 12 FHD video inputs. This lets operators closely analyze all the critical information in real time. In some cases, the feeds are received from third-party solutions, such as streaming or real-time video conferencing platforms, which necessitates the capture of audio signals from up to 24 people in the room. The challenge was then to properly manage the microphone mix, acoustic echo cancellation, feedback, and any other issues that could cause a communication disruption.
Adding to the video wall’s flexible design, any visuals or information created at the operator workstations can be presented individually or together. Because every second matters, the team can change the setup easily and instantly, if and when the need arises.
Staying on schedule
The integration team had a number of challenges. “We had a short amount of time to execute the project, and we had to comply with all the designs and implementations without any issues.” said Diaz Molina. The physical infrastructure – floor, ceiling, walls, and some furniture – already existed, but the team had to implement new cabling for electric power, video signals, structured cabling, audio and control signals.
CSI’s talent and experience, along with the support of Footprint Latin America as the local representative of Datapath for Latam, helped them deliver exceptional results with no delay
The Results
“We exceeded expectations and met all required designs of the solution, following the client requests,” said Diaz Molina. “The end-user quickly accepted and adopted the technology, which is somewhat unusual.” The immediate adoption of the video wall and control technology is a testament to Datapath’s supreme ease of use.
"We exceeded expectations and met all required designs of the solution, following the client requests,"
