BMI completes Vision Center installation for Cerner Corporation
Oct 14, 2004 10:44 AM
Business Media, Inc. (BMI) of Lincoln, Nebraska, recently completed a high-tech, control-systems-intensive AV installation for Cerner Corporation at its world headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri. As the leading supplier of healthcare information technology, Cerner Corporation services over 1,500 healthcare clients.
BMI designed and installed the AV system in Cerner’s Vision Center, a group of seven presentation rooms with a large theater and a central control room. "The project represented a unique design aspect of combining both shared and dedicated AV resources," said Matt Hodges, lead systems designer at BMI.
Cerner uses its rooms for sales presentations and meetings. "The idea for the Vision Center is to impress our clients," says Dan Cowan, formerly the technical project manager for Cerner, who oversaw the project from start to finish. "All the AV technologies are not only useful, but impressive in their function."
The Vision Center expansion consists of three Forums that include circular conference tables; a rear-projection system and communications controls; three Suites that each seat up to 10 people with plasma displays and integrated audio; and one Experience Theater with a nine-cube videowall, full surround sound, and theater seating for 18 to 20 people. The Vision Center was both new construction as well as an add-on to an existing building. While working closely with the architect, BMI’s installation team was able to overcome the architectural challenges commonly seen in the industry.
Each of the three Forum rooms is equipped with Christie Digital projectors on a Da-Lite rear-projection unit and Da-Lite acrylic screens. The Forums feature JBL speakers and Audio-Technica microphones embedded in the ceiling. Each Forum also has an ELO touch panel connected to an AMX TPI-4 interface. Laptop video connectivity in each room is accomplished via an Extron computer interface. Network access ports located in custom through-table assemblies were designed by the architect. Depending on the intended use, each Forum has up to three Canon pan/tilt/zoom cameras.
In each Forum room, the rear-projection is hidden in a back room. Whiteboards were installed and designed so that they are a matching acoustical panel to the rest of the room when closed and not in use. BMI also designed and installed video- and audioconferencing with room for four Tandberg codecs that are shared across six rooms.
All three of Cerner’s Suites carry identical AV, although the physical layouts differ. Each Suite features a wall-mounted Fujitsu 50-inch plasma display with integrated speakers. Similar to the Forum rooms, each Suite’s audio system includes Audio-Technica microphones and JBL loudspeakers are embedded in the ceiling.
Wireless 802.11b AMX touch panels with tabletop docking stations control all aspects of the room’s AV. The control system is also tied back to the central control room, where an operator can route audio and video signals to or from another room. Each Suite also has a dedicated PC, DVD player, and VCR located in the central control room that can be accessed via the AMX touch panel.
The most striking portion of the Experience Theater is its nine-cube Clarity Tigress 52-inch DLP video wall. The wall is capable of acting as independent screens or as one big screen for client presentations.
BMI also designed a full surround-sound audio system using custom-built JBL loudspeaker enclosures that are THX-certified. The main loudspeaker cluster consists of left, center, and right cabinets and two subwoofers, all hidden behind grill cloth. The loudspeakers and subwoofers are hung above the cube wall, with additional left and right speakers at the front, sides, and at the rear of the theater.
Surround-sound processing is handled by a Lexicon MC12 processor. In the control room, a Biamp AudiaFLEX unit runs the ceiling speakers while a Crown amplifier powers the program and surrounds. The Biamp AudiaFLEX unit also handles system DSP.
Cerner’s central control room is split into three rooms – one with user access, one a server room, and a rack room with administrator access. The control center is completely controlled by touch panel. From the control room, the operator can listen, monitor, and talk back to any of the Vision Center rooms. Using the AMX control system, central control can route all video signals, all personal computers in the facility, and switch sources for any display. For maximum flexibility, the rooms can also run independently without an operator in the control room.
"The external wow factor is the architecture points, whereas the unseen wow factor is the AV, which is transparent and high-tech," says Cowan. "Overall I am most happy with the quality of the work and the quality of the design and implementation. There have been no problems to date."
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