Kansas State University has installed two Vaddio WallVIEW HD-18 CCU camera systems at its “Innovation Campus” located in Olathe (KOIC).
The camera systems are going to be primarily used for videoconferencing from KOIC to the university’s main campus in Manhattan, Kan. The Olathe campus will be used as a remote campus to touch base with the larger community that is part of the Kansas City metroplex, said Chris Metzler, project manager for Raytown, Mo.-based Progressive Electronics. “Each conference room will be used for teaching small classes remotely and will host visiting professors,” he said.
The installation of the Vaddio WallVIEW camera systems at the Olathe campus is part of an overhaul of that campus, which is part of a new partnership involving Johnson County, Kan., the University of Kansas and Kansas State University known as the Johnson County Education and Research Triangle Initiative.
The Olathe campus is “a research-based campus with auditorium, divisible classrooms, teaching kitchen, conference rooms, boardrooms and a central control center,” Metzler said. “All spaces are designed for videoconferencing, intra-space event sharing and broadcasting of presentations, lectures, labs, you name it,” he said.
In addition, there are three classrooms located on the second floor that can be divided to create six classrooms, each of which is equipped with WallVIEW HD-18 CCU camera systems integrated with Crestron Digital Media control systems and touch panels, Metzler said. “All spaces, including the auditorium can be run autonomously, but are routed via fiber to the central control center,” he said. The central control center feeds the overflow material to all classrooms, the auditorium and the conference rooms.
The institute also houses an executive boardroom and two conferencing rooms each with two Vaddio WallVIEW HD-18 CCU camera systems. The cameras will also be used to stream video from any of the listed rooms for overflow purposes. “If a guest speaker is in town speaking in the auditorium, the HD-18 camera can stream to any of the six classrooms, boardroom and conference rooms,” Metzler said. The Forum Hall is a small 118-seat auditorium designed for presentations and interactive panel discussions. “The camera systems provide the campus the ability to have a scalable solution without building a huge auditorium,” he added.
Vaddio’s REVEAL IN-Wall Camera was used in the rear of the auditorium to protect the camera from unauthorized handling, and possible misalignment or damage, due to limited ceiling height and relatively short wall height, explained Steven Brown, design engineer for Progressive Electronics. “The secondary reason was because the REVEAL cameras provide a more attractive solution than a surface mount camera.”
“The decision to use Vaddio cameras was easy,” Brown said. “When looking at installed camera options for project designs, one can easily get caught in the trap of web searching for product and fair pricing. Vaddio is my salvation from that rat race. And if it so happens that Vaddio doesn’t have a specific solution, they will work to lead me in the right direction. You don’t often find that kind of support.”
-- Government Video
