Pico Projectors 101

If you have any doubts that these miniscule light boxes are garnering interest of at least the industry one only has to take a look at the wide variety of units both tiny and not so small being described as “Pico.” Just as with a multitude of product manufactures who have and are ascribing the term HD or High Definition to products that have little relation to the term, so it appears the term Pico has begun to suffer the same fate.

So what actually defines a Pico projector?

“I have a big beef with the terminology of the term pico projector, people really misuse the terminology. I have seen units as large as 12 x12 inches and you’re talking a few pounds being called a pico. If I had to define it, it is a battery-powered unit that fits in the palm of your hand, like a cell phone,” says Paul Marganski of the website PicoPros.com in a recent podcast.

In summation, size matters. As Marganski states, these projectors are quite remarkable devices. But, how do they compare with even the small short throw projectors? What can they do? Can I go out and replace the current two to five pounders with these lightweight units?

Pico projectors are being used for placing “surprise” marketing by being small and reliable enough to be placed in tight quarters or in odd spaces, for intimate digital signage in schools, venues and as a component of interactive displays, such as the through window touch response systems.

Currently, much of the growth in interest is as a replacement for second screen viewing to accommodate viewing by select groupings such as in an office meeting or impromptu viewing on a train or in a cafe. With the ability to be powered by an AC Adapter or, in some cases, battery power, Pico projectors have the potential to not just become a sector unto themselves, but with the push to integrate into mobile smart devices may just pose a threat to displacing others.

“We’ve used these before for some matrixed video across walls in small spaces. Clients loved it, but what a chore planning with them and keeping them all working… Still, it looked good and created a great effect,”says Steven Halling, president and CMO at AVFX.

Size May Matter But It’s All About the Lumen

Lightweight and portable are fine, but what kind of punch can these units pack? The simple answer is fair to middling. A middle of the road standalone unit is capable of outputting 85-150 lumens. This is not a stunning number when compared to some of the larger short-throw units or the high-end systems, which typically can push out triple or even quadruple these numbers. If you are willing to lay down just a little bit more cash, say about $300 US, a few units can reach 300-350 lumens; at just about $1 per lumen, this is not a bad return on investment.

Brightness is key but it must be combined with a quality resolution and image size if these units are to be used as anything more than second screen — that is tablet, phablet, smartphone — accessories allowing more than a whopping four people to share in a presentation.Typical native resolutions for these projectors max out at 720p and many of the existing units unfortunately do not support 16×9. But, many manufacturers are making noise about 1080p units with 16×9 within in sight of next year. Even at a full HD, if the image size can only generate a screen size equal to an 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of paper, many of us will be left wanting.

Of course this does have a caveat, and a serious one at that.The larger the image one attempts to produce, the light engine of the projector has more area to cover with a set brightness level, as well as fighting with ambient light and surface reaction. This means that as the image size gets larger, the fixed lumen level has to cover more area and results in a darker image and an apparent drop in resolution. For example, what is the takeaway on brightness and resolution? These units may not be quite ready to be announced as same image from 1/4 the footprint, but can be used in many applications given some accommodations to the product limitations. For those folks whose interest is piqued but are not quite sure if the time to strike is at hand, look for the release of laser and LCOS-based units later this year and early next year, LCOS, or liquid crystal on silicon. It is a transmissive projection technology that uses liquid crystals to modulate the signals.

Not Quite Under My Thumb

One of the most underrated and under hyped features on many projectors is the ability to control the units remotely. More often than not, control comes in the form of IR or Serial communications, and a small but growing demand for TCP/IP and by extension Wi-Fi. The main reason we need control is because the existing models are often mounted from the ceiling to get them out of the way and reduce fan noise interfering with the meeting discussion.

Pico projectors are by their very nature small and innocuous and more often than not part of another electronics package, (such as a mobile device).  Many units do not come with a control connection as a direct result of limited available space on the unit for the connections and boards. There is hope with a few manufactures adding at least IR control, which can be easily added to nearly all quality control systems, and the very nature of smart mobile devices having built in IP/Wi-Fi connectivity and the simple process of creating an app to connect. 

Another consequence of the limited chassis space on such small units is that nearly all units in production do not provide a source video connection on the projector itself.  Excluding the one Dell unit, inputs are accommodated via a dongle connection with the physical connection being a micro something on the unit. This solution is fine for the average consumer, but for A/V pros, the threat of a dongle getting misplaced or the ease with which such cables can worry and break is a source of consternation. Fortunately there are a number of companies, like ConnectTRX, who are providing wireless connection for both control and video streaming from source to projector.

Where Are You?

Pico Projectors are an emerging market niche and finding information on these can be a bit challenging. Questions such as who reports on these and who manufactures Pico units?  A good starting place is to look at sites such as PicoPros, a site run by two pico fanatics and is chock full of great news, information and reviews. Projector Central has been steadily adding reviews and comparison reports to its well-resourced site.

Gotta Wear Shades

The future of Pico Projectors looks bright. They are poised to make terrific inroads to the consumer and Pro A/V markets. Proof of dramatic growth is provided by Linda Norton of PMA Research, who based their projections on their January 2013 report:

“We are very optimistic. In looking at standalone Pico and Personal projectors the market has grown exponentially. In 2008, less than 100,000 units sold. In 2012 it reached 850,000 and we are forecasting more than a million for 2013. That’s not including units embedded in phones and cameras,” Northon says.

The post 2014 TechDecisions Guide to 27 Pico Projectors appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Projection mapping is the process and the art of projecting light and imagery onto objects such as sets, cars and even buildings to create visual and dimensional effects all without having light spill off the items. You may have seen this when it is used in car reveals. Two examples area recent Volkswagen show and presentations on buildings. Other examples show video and presentations that are spread across multiple wide or unusually shaped projection screens where the visuals appear to pop off the stationary object and give it a sense of motion and depth. In order to create these dramatic visuals several projectors aligned in conjunction with one another are required, but alignment alone does make for a projection mapping show.

Mapping Video

Mapping video is not new in concept and in fact goes back to the early 1970s from, of course, Disney, which reportedly used 16mm projectors with specially shot imagery and physical masking techniques. Mapping is establishing a relationship between the content, the output devices and the element on which it is to be projected. The process of mapping is, as you would imagine, a fairly complex process using specialized software and techniques. In the first mapping shows done the content would be made specifically to fit the object to be projected on and only from the perspective of the projector. It is a complicated and time-consuming process that creates a great final product but leaves very little flexibility.

A second method is to use software, usually proprietary suites provided by the server manufacturer, to align, modify, warp, bend and morph the “flat” content or multiple elements to fit the destination surfaces. This second method provides a good deal of flexibility but is also time-consuming and the results are never quite a perfect fit. A third method is where a model of the projection surface is made, like a building, which has UV coordinates mapped to it. Content folks create the images based on these coordinates, which can look a bit odd to folks who do not understand the process pre-projection, as it looks like a flattened out structure. This third method includes a final step of taking into account the physical projection positions in relation to the object to be projected on and make any minor adjustments for lens distortion and any original site survey errors.

The Media Server

Today, much of the process is handled inside of media servers. For many the term conjures up boxes in the home theater world that go by the same name and deliver instant streaming access to stored movies and music to be played on a single screen. Aside from sharing the name and the act of providing an instant output of media the boxes used in event staging are light years of difference from their consumer cousins. Physically media servers are just computers, fairly hefty and powerful computers, but just computers all the same. The units have more powerful processing, high-end output cards and connectors, usually DVI, and specially designed software to manage the content. The power is required for larger shows but you can play with the concepts and some techniques with low-cost software or freeware and standard off-the-shelf computers.

While the size and complexity of a show or installation will alter the final details of a system, we can discuss the basic methodologies and metaphors to get an understanding of how it all works. Media servers are not created equal. This is not to say that, for the purposes of this article, one brand or type of server is superior, or inferior, to another These units come in a variety of setups, options and software based on market focus and system concept intent. As with all systems in a live event it is wise to build in a backup to ensure your show can go on if the unexpected happens but we can break down the system metaphor into two camps. The first method is to use single machine where using a master-mode-only setting you can get one output to your projectors or destinations along with a preview/programing view. The second method uses multiple machines in a “cluster mode.”

As stated above it is possible to produce a show on most media servers using just one unit although there is a distinct advantage to splitting a show across a number of machines. When using more than one machine you can ensure redundancy and it can help spread the workload by giving specific servers limited tasks. There is also a cost benefit to using more machines, and while it may seem counter intuitive to save by adding, it is your best method for doing so. As we discussed above the performance specifications for what we call the display machine — that is the computer that has the processors, busses and video cards to output an HD quality image and the ability to render effects — are quite high. By using the client-server model one can add master, or control machines, which manage the show flow and cue triggers via the network connection. These control machines can be far less expensive boxes as they are relieved of the arduous tasks of generating or playing back the content and special features.

The Big Picture

Media servers can seem like the main focus of a show but as anyone involved in event staging can vouch it takes many interconnected systems to make a show. It is not just about the outward control of projector functions, such as setup parameter calls or scrolling the units to black; the units need to aware of the big picture as well. Video must be in sync with lighting, moving sets, audio and even the actions of the talent on stage. This is a lot of moving parts through which dynamic content is delivered by a media server that needs to keep track of and be able to react to and be in lockstep with. With this in mind media servers have the ability to incorporate MIDI, DMX from lighting consoles, User Datagram Protocol (UDP) streams from scenic automation control systems and an SMPTE time-code to sync with audio playback and other video elements. These are not jobs for the easily rattled and the programmers who oversee the servers must have a strong multi-disciplinarian technical depth and a natural understanding of live show flow relationships.

Content Management

The issue of content management also is one that requires a decent understanding of the differences between playback devices, which focus only on playing a single file at any given time. Think of these as a Beta tape deck whose only task is to play the unaltered video from beginning to end and only that. Media servers have many more tasks to be concerned with than just the straight playback of video. These devices need to manage not just the main video feed, the incoming control commands and dozens of files in support at once, but it also is rendering images on the fly. The stress on the CPU is not insignificant.

The reason this all matters is that expecting the server to handle uncompressed pro-res ultra-high bitrate files is akin to asking a carpenter to frame a floor, run the electrical wires and sweat the plumbing all at the same moment; some may be game enough to attempt it but we know that the quality will suffer. The answer?Compression my friend, compression. The prosumer trade magazines may wail about compression of video being the root of all evils, leading to harder less-quality video like watching movies on a nano, but here it is a necessity. It is important to get show content to the programmers as soon as is possible so it can be transcoded into a digestible format like WMV, MPEG or H.264. It is of course best practice to hand off to the event production folks the highest quality at the start, but understand that the limitations of the hardware, and frankly physics, will require for it to be altered, squeezed and even have its frame size modified.

If you are considering taking that next step toward enveloping and enrapturing your audience with projection mapping, know that it is complicated and process-driven, so allow ample time and budget to get it right.The results will be remembered by those watching long after the show is done and the gear is packed away.

The post Using Media Servers to Create Stellar Projection Mapping appeared first on My TechDecisions.

To begin with the obvious, it’s more than likely today that a small team would use either Office 365 or Google Apps as the base of its productivity solution. It’s also likely that you sell one or both solutions, so there’s no need to spend a lot of time talking about them. What is important to note, though, is that while both solutions offer cloud-based file storage and tools that enable their use from PCs and mobile devices, they are not without their flaws.

Skydrive Pro, for example, currently gives each user a fixed, 7GB pool of data, but it can’t be expanded. Google’s Drive sometimes butchers Office docs on import for collaboration, which is clearly problematic. Its file management system is also odd, and expanding beyond the base data pool is expensive if the whole team needs more storage.

The idea is to use the features Office 365 and Google Apps provide and augment them with other services when necessary. So let’s take a look at several popular solutions in use for small teams, compare costs and features, and find out which deserve your attention. Hopefully you’ll pick up a few new tools to add to your arsenal.

Dropbox

Dropbox’s popularity among consumers is justified. All users get 2GB of free storage to start and can add 16 more through a referral program. It’s fast, easy to use, offers powerful sharing capabilities, mobile applications for everything but Windows Phone, and hooks into a PC with software that exposes your cloud files in your local file system. Expanded storage plans give 100, 200, or 500 GB for $99, $199, and $499, respectively, when paid yearly.

Many small teams can (and do) get by with the free option, but Dropbox also offers a business-level service (and a partner program!). The business plan provides centralized administration, “unlimited” storage, and better security tools. Plans start at $795 per year for a team of five, which breaks down to $159 per user.

Box

At the consumer level, Box offers 5GB of free storage, sharing, simple collaboration tools, and mobile applications (including Windows Phone). In many ways, Box is a more robust option at the free level than the other products listed here, although the upload speeds can occasionally be pokey.

Box offers separate tiers for business and enterprise, and unfortunately, all the really nifty features like custom branding and mobile device management are in the enterprise SKU. Small teams will have to settle for the business level, where $15 per user per month nets 1TB of storage for each of those users, integration with Google Apps, better search, version history, and faster uploads. There’s a 2GB file size limit though, which is a bummer if the team has large encrypted containers or media files. At $180 per user per year, it’s a little more expensive than other solutions in this roundup, but it has the most features for collaboration.

PogoPlug

I have a soft spot for PogoPlug, as it was the first company to open my eyes to the benefits of cloud storage. Oddly enough, PogoPlug got started offering a plug-and-play hardware solution that allowed you to create a personal cloud with local storage drives. Over time, the company expanded with new services that enabled you to add local folders on a PC to your personal cloud, and more recently with remote cloud storage in the more traditional sense. As a result, a personal PogoPlug cloud could be a mix of local and cloud storage, and can be shared with others with certain plans.

PogoPlug recently launched a business-focused initiative for small teams. For a ridiculously low $5 per user per month, it offers unlimited storage, with no file size limits, secure collaboration, and backup. At $60 per user per year, it’s the most affordable unlimited solution available.

But there is a downside. Users often complain of incredibly slow upload and download speeds, unreliable backup software, and numerous connection issues. However, the complaints are often followed by statements such as “… but it’s still a great deal.”

SugarSync

SugarSync has evolved into a full-featured cloud storage and collaboration solution with some innovative, powerful business features at the PRO level. For example, not only is there an administrative dashboard with real-time monitoring, but admins can also remotely wipe data from a user’s PC. Given that Sync is in the name, the company clearly has that side of the business covered. Any file or folder on any device can be synced rather than having a single folder for synced items. Sharing and collaboration are also part of the offering, as is file version recovery for when accidents happen.

SugarSync isn’t forthcoming about its pricing, but does say that $550 per year gets a team of three 1TB of storage. Doing the math, a five-user team would come in at around $917 per month, which is in line with other services. And while there’s no dedicated partner program for the channel, the company has an affiliate program that gets you $150 per business sale, which is better than nothing.

The Bottom Line

Resellers looking for a structured channel program should focus on Dropbox and Box. Both are robust solutions that would serve the needs of many small businesses or workgroups and enhance more lucrative offerings like Office 365 and Google Apps. Best of all, they are additional tools at your disposal to serve customers. And isn’t that what it’s really all about?

The post Cloud Share and Collaboration: Your Options Compared appeared first on My TechDecisions.

“That was the beginning of the business case,” says Santillo, noting the inefficiencies of having data scattered between multiple internal and external security resources. “We then spent the next two years looking at technologies, looking to compare costs between outsourcing and taking security completely in house, and finding where we could add value back into the business.”

It became clear that a centralized control center was the linchpin to the move, what Santillo says would be the equivalent of putting “all the security information on a single pane of glass.” It turns out that that analogy would also become a key part of the ultimate solution: a security center with a large main display that could be quickly reconfigured to display real-time information in multiple ways. The idea is called Physical Security Information Management (PSIM), which is a software that integrates security systems, allowing for a user to manage them in one place. In this case, PSIM took the form of a digital wall to display feeds and layouts that could be easily integrated, customized, recalled and shared from multiple locations and multiple sources with high accuracy and reliability.

Key criteria for the display systems included cost effectiveness, scalability and reliability. Santillo says there was a lot to choose from; they looked initially at products from a half-dozen manufacturers, a process that ultimately took up two thirds of the two-year proposition. However, he emphasizes, this was also time well spent. “It did take a lot of time going to product demonstrations and trade shows,” he says. “The process began with looking at product spec sheets, then to looking at them in operation, in the field and in demonstration rooms. But it was the ability to see systems in action, compare them in real-world settings and spend time with them and the manufacturers — who we would rely on for support going forward — that allowed us to feel that we made the best decisions in the end.”

The ultimate solution took the form of the integration of three key systems: Christie’s new Phoenix, a network-distributed, open-content management system for simultaneous encode, decode and display of audio-visual data; Barco‘s ClickShare, a collaboration system that allows content to be wirelessly transferred between displays; and a Crestron Fusion enterprise management platform to monitor and manage A/V equipment, building management system, room scheduling, lighting, shades and other functions. These systems work across the two main spaces: a 3,000-square-foot main control room intended for nationwide security and systems monitoring and fitted with a huge 32-feet wide by 13.7 feet-high video wall composed of 21 Christie 55-inch FHD551-X LCD panels, and an 800-square-foot conference room with smaller displays—a 70-inch Smart SBID8070i SMART Board interactive display and a Sharp LC70LE640U 70-inch LED display panel.

All three systems met the key criteria of cost-effectiveness, functionality and reliability, including the Christie Phoenix, despite the fact that this would be the first installation of the system. Santillo says that working with their A/V integrator, ClassCraft AV, they were able to assess those criteria ahead of time by looking at certain factors. For instance, the Phoenix’s rack-mounted 12 nodes collect data from various physical and digital sources throughout the service area, such as streaming video and audio, desktop captures, online information, cable television, and facility systems, then aggregate the information, including audio, and transfer it directly to the display, reducing cabling requirements and eliminating the need for DSP to synchronize sound and picture. That kind of functionality created a significant cost saving.

Once technology platform decisions had been made, the design phase took a relatively short six to eight months. The actual implementation of the new control center and conference room took a surprisingly brief three to four months, in what Santillo says was a perfect and large-scale iteration of the carpenter’s creed of “measure twice, cut once.”

“It was really more like measure three times, cut once,” he elaborates, citing the time spent in research and then in design. “The most important time spent was during the research phase, when we not only looked at product solutions and talked to manufacturers but also to their customers, our peers, to see what their experiences had been.”

It was during that process that issues such as operator training came up, and the criteria list grew to include ease of use, which would be important for the effectiveness of training the new hires that American Water would need to staff the new control areas. Another takeaway from the process, says Santillo, is the need to coordinate between all parties during research, design and implementation phases. “Coordination is a huge issue and perhaps the most challenging, between all of the contractors, the integrator, the manufacturers, the architects and others,” he says.

Finally, he says, the ROI process doesn’t stop once the control centers opens. While it will achieve its stated goals of consolidating American Water’s security needs in house, Santillo says they will continue to look for other ways it can continue to bring value to the company. These include using it to monitor employee health and safety, for IT-network monitoring, and the possible inclusion of National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) safety protocols into the system to further enhance its security capabilities.

“It never really ends,” says Santillo of the complex project. And that’s important to know right from the beginning.

The post Major Utility American Water Brings Its Security Monitoring Operation In-house. appeared first on My TechDecisions.

An emergency notification (or mass notification), according to David Fleming, marketing manager at Code Blue, an emergency communication systems vendor, “is a one-way communication sent by first responders or security personnel to a large group of individuals who may be in harm’s way to alert them of a security risk.  This could be a weather-related incident (such as a snowstorm or a tornado), natural disaster (wildfire, earthquake, etc.), fire, medical outbreak, active shooter or chemical spill.”

Traditional emergency notification channels have included:

• press releases sent to the broadcast media (when there’s enough lead time, of course)
• automated outbound phone calling
• email, SMS text messages
• announcements by radio and television broadcast media
• digital signage, including “ticker” or even screen take-over
• Web banners
• sirens and public address systems
• Wireless Emergency Alerts, which are text messages sent to mobile devices within geographically-targeted cell towers’ service areas
• some organizations even offer their own mobile apps.

Over the past several years, Twitter and other social media have been added to the list.

(In case you’ve lost track, Twitter is basically a “micro-blogging” site, for “tweets,” which are posts no more than 140 characters, similar to SMS text message length. Tweet content may in turn include URLs (usually “shortened”) and links to attached pictures. With over half a billion registered users of 2012— although you don’t have to register to be able to see publicly viewable Tweets — Twitter has been nicknamed “the SMS of the Internet.”)

For example, one government agency using Twitter is the Clark Regional Emergency Services Agency CRESA, according to Cheryl Bledsoe, division manager of Emergency Management for the state of Washington’s Clark County. “We serve 435,000 residents, seven cities and the county in general. Information is our only commodity. We receive 911 calls and other contacts, and we communicate information to the public and to emergency response stakeholders like the police, fire, public health and public works departments, as well as to community organizations, non-profits, businesses and volunteer groups.”

CRESA began using social media in 2008, according to Bledsoe. “We wanted a more dynamic way to communicate. Wireless wasn’t as common then, and our website was hard to update without involving IT. We began with a blog CRESA911, on BlogSpot, which we still have, then added a Facebook fan page, and then also two Twitter accounts: @CRESA for emergency alerts, and @CRESATalk for everyday information and also for emergency-related information.”

Bledsoe says adding Twitter to their strategy a success. “Tweeting has helped responders find missing people in time, fill our training classes quickly and get responses when we have community requests for help,” she says. “Using Twitter is more efficient for us than traditional press releases, email, etc., and by using Twitter, we have been able to enhance our reputation with the local news media and work better with them.”

In addition to alerting about the events, “We communicate with the public on how they can protect themselves, help us, volunteer and other helpful announcements,” says Bledsoe.

Similarly, in 2010 and 2011, Maryland’s Cecil County, located in between the cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore, turned to Twitter (@CecilCountyDES), along with Facebook and other social media platforms, to augment its emergency notification reach for its 418-square miles and 100,000-person population.

“We have four ‘audiences,’” says James E. Hamilton, emergency preparedness manager, Cecil County Department of Emergency Services. “There’s the general population, ‘itinerant guests’ like travelers and people at weekend or vacation homes, partner agencies like emergency responders, and elected officials and other key decision makers. Plus there’s the media, which we consider a partner, and a way to help us reach the general public.”

Because of the county’s geographic location, “We do not have a strong broadcast or print media market or presence,” Hamilton notes. “In a typical ‘news cycle,’ coverage for our county would be provided mostly by local print services, we generally only receive attention from the Baltimore or Philadelphia broadcast media during major news events or emergencies. By using Twitter and other social platforms, we can directly reach our core audience in a direct and timely way.

Cecil County uses just a single Twitter feed. “We issue about four to five Tweets a week, on the average,” says Hamilton. “About 75 percent are emergency-oriented. We carefully balance how many non-emergency Tweets we post. Most of our Tweets are about severe weather, others typically are about transportation issues like accidents, and hazmat events,” says Hamilton.

“We find Twitter is extremely valuable to reach not just general population but also to get fast-breaking information to traditional media, compared to the time cycle to write and issue a traditional press release,” adds Hamilton.

The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) has enough to tweet about that they have multiple Twitter accounts, says Brian Humphrey, firefighter/specialist and public service officer for the LAFD’s Emergency Public Information (EPI) Center.

The LAFD currently has 106 fire stations spread across 470 square miles, and serves a population of roughly four million people who speak nearly 150 different languages.

“We try to use the best possible tools for the LAFD Everywhere initiative to connect to people who need timely information they can act on,” says Humphrey. “We look at the four phases of an incident, Preparedness, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery, and we try to find the best tool possible.”

Twitter, according to Humphrey, “is associated mostly with Response. We also use Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, BlogTalkRadio to do radio call-in shows and even put things on iTunes.”

The LAFD started using Twitter in 2006 in a generic account, and officially began in March 2007, with @LAFD. “We quickly added @LAFDTalk, so we could use @LAFD just for alerts and advisories, using @LAFDTalk as a ‘conversational’ channel for people with inquiries and questions, about fires and about LAFD,” recalls Humphrey. “@LAFDTalk, which we started up in March 2009 has had about 27,000 tweets to date, up through June 2013,” reports Humphrey,” he adds.

The LAFD doesn’t just send tweets; they also monitor tweets. For example, in 2007, during a wildfire in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park, tweets from individuals about hot spots and wind direction helped the LAFD firefighters control the blaze.

Currently, according to Humphrey, LAFD’s Twitter accounts have about 30,000 followers, plus the uncountable ones following via Twitters 40404 SMS gateway or simply watching without registering to follow. Learn how to use Twitter to send an SMS. For comparison, Humphrey reports, “We have about 60,000 users who have signed up for our email alerts.” Plus, of course, there are all the people who get the phone calls from the county-run automatic dial-out system.

In terms of tweet volume, “@LAFD had 2,098 tweets in 2012,” according to Humphrey.

Twitter Pros and Benefits

There are compelling reasons to add Twitter.

Currently, Twitter itself is free both to post to and to follow messages on (although, like any private Internet service, that could change at any time). So, other than the minute-or-less to compose and post each message, there’s no incremental cost to using Twitter, and if your Emergency Notification System includes a Twitter gateway, there’s not even that time bump.

And many people use, even prefer, Twitter as an information-watching tool versus email, text messages, social media sites or classic websites. It’s easily usable from smartphones, and even “dumb phones” can be used, by requesting Tweets be send as text messages.

Don’t Rely Just on Twitter, of Course

But there are, if not quite negatives, limits to Twitter.

All the emergency communication professionals I talked with stressed that no single mechanism, including Twitter, should be relied on solely. Not everybody uses or follows Twitter or text messages or will have a smartphone or computer nearby and on. New York City’s Twitter feed, for example, has about 64,000 registered followers (plus whoever is getting them as SMS messages or without having registered). That’s not a lot, relative to the city’s total population. On the other hand, that may easily include a significant portion of first responders and other people and groups who need to be alerted quickly.

“We look for redundancy, diversification, and amplification,” says Cecil County’s Hamilton. “With social media, for example, people share — ‘amplify’ — information where it’s relevant.

Also, Twitter itself can be subject to unplanned downtime. For example, on June 21, 2013, service was unavailable or intermittent for roughly six hours (as reported in the Huffington Post). Back on June 26, 2012, service was unavailable for about an hour, and during October 2012, there was an hour-long outage and hundreds of shorter outages, according to CNN.

And, of course, with millions of people, companies, organizations and others Tweeting, often several times a day or even hourly, it’s easy for a Tweet-follower to miss seeing an important emergency Tweet, since Twitter and the various Twitter clients do not, currently, have an “Emergency” prioritizing feature.

Advice and Other Thoughts for Using Twitter

Be sure to archive your Twitter account settings, along with all your tweets. (There are a few services offering this.)

Keep in mind, and publicize, that people can easily arrange to have Tweets texted (sent as SMS messages) to their phone via Twitter’s FastFollow service, which accepts commands via SMS text messaging. “If you don’t have a Twitter account, this lets the information still be pushed to you, so you don’t have to try following by watching a website or a Facebook ‘Wall,’” notes Bledsoe.

Within the United States, for example, simply text “Follow Twitterhandle;” For example, “Follow NotifyNYC” to 40404. (Twitter’s FastFollow has other options, like just getting the most recent tweet for a given Twitter feed.)

Unless you only expect to issue a few Tweets per week at most, consider having several emergency-orientedTwitter accounts, e.g. one for alerts, one for information.

Have one or more people prepared to follow Twitter, not just your organization’s own tweets and any follow-ups, but also watching for related tweets (e.g., ones that include your “hashtags,” which are Twitter keywords that are flagged by starting with a # in the tweet).

And, of course, Twitter doesn’t have to be just for emergency-related notifications, points out Esther Schindler, coauthor of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Twitter Marketing. “When an organization has a Twitter account already in place for events, it’s just a matter of using the existing media during an actual emergency. For example, @BOSTON_POLICE and @FOX6TRAFFIC often have alerts and emergency information,” she says.

Your organization can easily end up with multiple emergency and non-emergency Twitter accounts. LAFD, for example, has additional Twitter feeds including @JoinLAFD, @LAFDFireChief, @LAFDCrew3, @LAFDArson, and monthly check-your-alarm reminders @SmokeAlarm and @COalarm.

Just remember, like you, the people you want to reach have only so much time and attention to give to Twitter-watching, so do your best to make those Tweets worth watching.

The post Adding Twitter to Your Business Emergency Notification Plan appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Though now the leaders in the UC space must continue to push the envelope for what they deliver to their clients. Both those who have systems and are seeking more and those that are looking at hanging up their old PBX or Key System are seeking to move into a next-generation unified communication solution.

However, when it comes to pushing the envelope, what does that mean? More than anything it means being ahead of the curve. It means building tools and applications to extend your UC service beyond the traditional voice, video, instant message and presence that comprise UC today. It means spotting the trends and implementing them into your suite of products.  With technology evolving swiftly, the trends can seem to come and go quickly, but right now there are five that are shaping the unified communications space. This includes Web Real-time collaboration (WRTC), mobility, bring your own device (BYOD), hosted (cloud UC) and social integration.

Here is a rundown of these game-changing technologies.

1.    Web Real-time Collaboration (WRTC):  The ability to move from a call to a collaboration session has never been truly ubiquitous.  Services like WebEx and GoToMeeting have existed for some time and their service capabilities have continued to expand, but that real-time collaboration required the creation of a meeting, an email to the invitees and a login to the service, making extra steps for collaboration to take place. Now this is all starting to change. UC providers are building the capabilities for group chats in a desktop client to launch a Web collaboration meeting or a screen share right out of the client giving instantaneous capabilities to collaborate. This tool will allow companies to collaborate and move faster than ever before seamlessly within their UC environment.

2.    Mobility:  Being connected anytime anywhere is increasingly becoming the goal for any communication. While a smartphone more or less provides this ability, the requirement to be fully connected to the office requires more than a disparate device on a wireless network. What it comes down to is the ability to use the widely available broadband to reach back to home baseand whether you are riding the train to work or you are on a beach in Fiji,as long as you have Internet you are fully connected. Perhaps the most mature UC platforms, starting with applications that ride on the mobile device, such as Jabber from Cisco or UC-One from Broadsoft, companies are giving the mobile device instant connection to the contacts, communication tools and services that would be available from the office when logged in.

3.    BYOD:  This may be one of the most discussed trends in workplace technology let alone unified communications. The ability for users to integrate their personal tools into the work environment is an exciting yet controversial subject as IT leaders and staff face offover the ups and downs of BYOD. The bottom line is that the IT’s battle will likely prove futile as CEOs are among those seeking to bring their iPad to the office.  For UC providers the trend is making this service useful and accessible as the individual choices to use the capability is not within their control. The one thing that is for sure is that this trend is going to continue to evolve and you will see more and more personal devices enter the workplace each and every day.

4.    Hosted (Cloud):  Cloud was long seen as a less secure and less reliable to go about information technologies. With equipment hosted elsewhere, the lack of control for many IT leaders was unacceptable, but with top down pushes for cost cutting and the growth of cloud as a viable business model, there is a growing consensus among IT that it is here to stay. For UC, the cloud now offers everything on-site solutions could offer and more. For instance, scalability with cloud is rarely an issue as the only requirement on the user side is bandwidth and QOS on the switch. Those are items you would really need whether on or off-site so the cost becomes a non-factor. The great thing about cloud for UC is that upgrades and growth are often included and don’t require much in the way of technical resources on the user side. The provider takes care of those things so organizations can focus on what they do rather than technology.

5.    Social Integration:  Of the five trends, this is the one that still has the longest way to go.  But organizations are more intertwined with their social media than ever before. Early on the distraction of social media at work was seen as a reason to keep an arms-length between employees and social sites. However, with end users and brands pervasive on social media websites, organizations can no longer just close out social usage from their communications. In fact they need to be integrated more than ever. Right now we are seeing social integration in customer relationship management (CRM). With UC plugins for CRM apps becoming more widely available the next logical step is to allow instant communication through UC applications to social media websites. This is a trend to watch out for and the company that leads the way here may see a rapid growth in adoption since social media communication is widely used through organizations of all sizes.

With these five UC trends, we will continue to see growth in both adoption and expansion of use within current and new unified communication deployments. And the growth will no longer be limited to just large enterprises, but the expansion will be into businesses and organizations of all shapes and sizes.

The post 5 Game-changing Trends in Unified Communications appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Along with converting to LED lights, Fulmer estimates his company has saved 50 percent or more in utility bills by integrating the security access control with the automation system. “Being passive is the key to it working,” he says. “I don’t have to worry about people shutting stuff off. Arm the security and it does the rest of it.”

That’s something now being addressed by larger commercial buildings, office buildings, facilities and institutions. No longer is having lighting, security, HVAC and other systems in separate silos, never to interact with other systems, the thing to do. Proper systems integration, including access control, is a good business practice.

Why? In a word, money. Integrating technologies like a security or access control systems with lighting, HVAC and other systems through a control or automation network makes sound business sense for the money it can save in improved building efficiency. And yes, that starts with energy. But it can also make more efficient use of space and help people working in the buildings be more efficient. And that means being more productive.

“The top three expenses of a business are people, space and energy,” says Mike Carter, director of Integrated Building Solutions with control company AMX. “Bringing all the technology together within the building can help companies make all three of those — people, space and energy — more efficient. Once you tie all of them together you get the old adage about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.”

“The biggest driving factor is efficiency in the workplace,” says Dave Silberstein, director of Channel Development for Crestron. “Anything I can do to make the entire process more efficient for people should be done.”

Features and Benefits Abound

With security access control and control and automation tied together, many new high-tech features that improve building, space and worker efficiency are possible. When the control system knows the building or a part of it is empty at night, it can shut off lights and dial down a heating or cooling system, saving the building owner or tenants energy and money. When people arrive in the morning, lights and HVAC systems can come on to full power. Burglar alarms can trigger lights inside and outside of the building to turn on or off or flash. And those are just some obvious features and benefits.

In the event of a fire alarm, all the audio can shut off in a conference room or throughout the building. Lights can turn on so people can find their way out, every touch screen control surface in the control and automation system can be used as a way-finder so people know where to go. Maps can automatically appear on conference room and classroom projection systems to lead people out.

In the day-to-day operations, badge readers in a lobby can direct visitors to meetings. Conference rooms can be booked via Outlook or other calendar programs, and then the presentation equipment can automatically turn on when it’s time to start. Badge readers or occupancy sensors in conference rooms can detect when people enter and leave and turn on or off equipment automatically.

“There’s definitely a move and push to bring security systems in line with audio/video and digital signage,” such as flat-panel screens used in lobbies, says AMX’s Carter.

It Starts with Sensors

Much of this, of course, starts with sensors, from badge and card readers for access, to occupancy and motion sensors, many of which are already in place and used by a building’s security system.

“Occupancy and motion sensors are fundamental tools and are already owned by the security system,” says Crestron’s Silberstein. “And once the automation and security systems are communicating, we can bring a whole other set of benefits to the buildings.”

Even if you have to add sensors like motion and occupancy sensors to parts of a building, with the security and automation systems integrated you’ll have dual benefits of the sensor, says Kirk Phillips, product manager for security systems company Elk Products. Just be sure you get a higher caliber sensor that can be used reliably on a security system, and not an average run-of-the-mill occupancy sensor like those used to turn lights on and off in bathrooms.

The Big Connections

So how are security and control/automation systems connected so they can communicate? Methods and protocols vary, but a popular way in the commercial building space is through BACnet IP. BACnet is a communications protocol used primarily by HVAC, security systems and building management systems. Once it’s on IP, or BACnet IP, it’s on an open network that an IP-based control and automation system can communicate with.

Then there are systems such as the secure computer network in a business, which run the email platforms and calendars used to schedule meeting rooms, for example. “Automation systems end up being the bridge between those systems,” says Silberstein.

“The value you can gain from doing this is tremendous,” says AMX’s Carter. “You can actually do this today. It’s no longer theoretical.”

___________________________________

9 Tips from the Security and Control and Automation Experts

Crestron, AMX and Elk Products weigh in on combining the two systems for greater cost savings.

Mike Carter, Director of Integrated Building Solutions AMX:

1. The biggest pitfalls are fear and politics. Whenever you talk about tying security into other systems, people get their backs up, so we stress access control as being separate from security, and we want to integrate access control with automation.

2. The other big hurdle is getting the right people in the room at the right time to make a decision. Through they don’t all have to be there at the same time.

3. Start small and start incrementally. Then, once you have the connections available, you can do something with it.

Dave Silberstein, director of Channel Development, Crestron:

4. The first step in retrofit is tying systems to IP (Internet Protocol) [network]. Once you have a common network, then all kinds of things can happen.

Kirk Phillips, product manager, Elk Products:

5. Think about what you are going to be controlling. Does it involve different skill sets? Are installers fully unlimited holders of electrical licenses to tie into electrical panels, if needed, or are they general low voltage installers?

6. Integrators can be like general contractors that hire the subcontractors who hold different licenses, so you may have to involve an electrician, HVAC, and you may even need to involve the plumbing trade to control water and gas in a building.

7. If a building system is already in place, do these contractors have the knowledgebase and the rights to work with these systems?

8. Different liabilities are often involved. There’s a different liability of building being broken into versus an air conditioning compressor not working.

9. Do research and find people that have the experience in this and can make it work. Interview people you’re taking bids from, check their background and referrals, and make sure you’re hooking up with the right company.

The post Security, Meet Automation appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Northeastern University, located in Boston’s busy Back Bay, was unafraid of the challenge when it carved a new Visitor Center out of an old academic building and made its technology solution the very first thing that students see upon touring the campus.

The rear wall of the Visitor Center’s open-space lobby is comprised of large “glass shingles,” as architecture firm William Rawn Associates calls them, which spring to life thanks to an array of Philips Color Kinetics LED lights that burst strategic color schemes from floor to ceiling. The eyes, however, are drawn to three specific shingles, which have been converted into large-scale interactive display areas.

Students can engage with the mutli-touch, rear projection displays, calling up information about the University and campus, enlarging images and selecting short videos.
Admissions staff, many of whom are students themselves, change and control content via Apple iPads and a Crestron automation system as audio booms down from well-hidden Soundtube ceiling speakers.

Overcoming Design Challenges

The hardest part of coordinating the technology, surprisingly, wasn’t getting the warp and blend of the projectiondesign projectors right, programming via projectiondesign’s ProNet.precision software or even the critical content creation executed by interactive designer Downstream.

The biggest challenge was finding a way to cram all the necessary technology behind the glass shingles, explains Matthew J. Moore, principal consultant for Cavanaugh Tocci Associates, which designed the audio, video and control solution for the Visitor Center and co-located Admissions Office.

Architecture firm William Rawn was pretty far along in the design of the Visitor Center by the time Cavanaugh Tocci was tasked with creating a “high-tech, high-touch space that would really engage” the school’s 70,000 annual visitors, explains Moore. “We had to work within the footprint of the existing building and the architectural design, including the glass,” he says.

The other, more daunting, mission for the consultant was “to make the technology disappear when it was not in use,” he adds. “They saw this as an evolving space, and they wanted the projection glass to blend seamlessly with the architectural glass of the lobby walls.”

So Cavanaugh Tocci essentially devoted three glass shingles to video projection. The design team worked with Stewart Filmscreen who provided custom Aeroglass sized to exact sizes. To blend the technology seamlessly it couldn’t spec in front projection so it designed a rear-projection solution. That wasn’t easy since space behind the glass wall was extremely limited.

The consultant leaned on RP Visuals to design custom mounts and frame for the space-deprived projectors—four projectors for each of the three shingles’ multitouch zones plus two projectors above to provide non-interactive content such as slideshows and live text based feeds atop each zone.

The challenges went beyond space, says RP Visuals president Randy Pagnan. “Each design called for edge-blending of multiple projected images, and in no instance were we able to use multi-point mirrors, six-axis mounts, or the ideal lens optics for blending [but] with projectiondesign‘s range of lens options and WB2560 muti-image processor, together with ProNet.precision software and StewartFilmscreen projection surfaces, we were able to engineer solutions that didn’t compromise the results in any way – despite almost all of our ‘golden rules for blending’ being broken.”

Performance Pays Off

When Northeastern University came to Cavanaugh Tocci for audiovisual consulting, it was very focused on developing a solution that would engage young students. “There was a big emphasis on interactivity,” Moore says. “They didn’t want a static display; they wanted to stand out and communicate with students in a new way.”

The solution taps into young consumers’ expectation that if you touch a video screen it will, in essence, return the favor. That expectation also applies to multiple people touching the same screen, so Cavanaugh Tocci’s solution offers up to 32 touch points. “The idea,” Moore says, “is that a family or two groups who might be visiting the school can all interact with one of the screens at the same time.”

So far, so good, says Graham Bacher of Whitlock, the integration firm that worked with Cavanaugh Tocci on the project. Since the new Visitor Center opened during the summer of 2012, Bacher, an on-site technician who is embedded on the Northeastern campus as part of the school’s managed services contract, says he constantly sees students walk into the Visitor Center and begin interacting with the wall.
It’s Bacher, by the way, who has to squeeze behind glass wall for maintenance, and he is pleased with how RP Visual’s custom rack solution makes the most of tight space. “It’s really been opened up back here,” he says.

One reason space behind the glass is such a premium is because of what’s on the other side, a 115-seat presentation room, essentially the second stop that prospective students make when embarking on a tour of Northeastern. The Cavanaugh Tocci and Whitlock integration includes 60 Christie MicroTiles, Fulcrum Acoustic and Tannoy speakers.

Video content for both the presentation room and the main space projection glass is controlled by Christie Digital Vista Spyder processors and Crestron running on iPads. “They can use any source to display content and switch over from interactive modes to presentation modes,” Moore says.

The admissions office located upstairs features a smaller video presentation room and a fully-integrated board room, both Crestron controlled with Polycom Codecs.

Northeastern asked that the price of the entire A/V project not be reported here, but it’s safe to conclude that it cost a pretty penny. Know this, however: On its website Northeastern indicates that the total annual costs of tuition, room and board and fees is $55,296.

Investing in technology to greet and engage prospective students, therefore, seems like a worthy investment.

3 Integrator Takeaways:

1. RP Visuals gets a gold star on this project for custom-creating a slim rack and mount solution that allowed the necessary projectiondesign projectors and hardware to fit in a tight space.
2. When dealing with young end-users, the importance of touch-interaction on video screens can’t be over-estimated.
3. Rear-projection on glass can result in a murky image, says consultant Matthew J. Moore, so the project benefited from doing a mock-up and dealing with diffusion issues early.

3 End User Takeaways:

1. That integrator Whitlock is willing to embed an on-site technician with some of it’s bigger clients, seems to add a lot of value to a managed services contract.
2. Some of the space challenges (and perhaps some of the cost) could have been alleviated if the A/V consultant or integrator had been brought in as early as the architect.
3. Student tour guides demonstrate a high comfort level with operating a sophisticated Crestron automation system via Apple iPads.

Equipment Highlights:

Projectors: projectiondesign
Theater Wall: Christie Digital
Speakers: Fulcrum Acoustic, SoundTube and Tannoy
Automation: Crestron
Racks & Mounts: Middle Atlantic, RP Visuals
Lighting: Philips Color Kinetics

The post Innovative Video Walls Redefine Northeastern University Admissions appeared first on My TechDecisions.