FEATURE: COMMAND AND CONTROL xx
[KEY POINTS]
Around 3,000 CCTV cameras are linked to the Barco videowall at Delhi International Airport
IP is becoming pervasive – but it is not yet the force in control rooms that it is in other areas of the AV market
Control rooms favour proven, reliable, predictable, high-performance technologies. IP still has some way to go
IP offers compelling benefits in terms of flexibility, scalability and functionality – which is why it is likely, eventually, to prevail
A market in transition
IP technology is becoming increasingly pervasive in the pro-AV world as, in more and more applications, the network becomes the dominant force. Ian McMurray finds out if control rooms are headed in the same direction as markets such as digital signage and videoconferencing
TODAY, THE internet is about connecting people. Whether it’s corporate email or Facebook, Twitter or business videoconferencing, it enables communication between one person and another. But there is a growing school of thought that says the internet is transmuting. ‘People applications’ won’t go away – but by the year 2020, believe some analysts, there will be over 100 billion devices connected to the internet. That’s not phones, tablets, PCs and smart TVs – it’s industrial machines, domestic white goods (it’s predicted that a new home in 10 years’ time could have 100 or more internet-connected sensors) and so on. Anything that has performance characteristics that can be measured and controlled will be online. This strange new world, where no man has gone before, is being called ‘The Industrial Internet’ or ‘The Internet of Things’. And all those ‘things’ will be talking to each other via IP.
POCKET OF RESISTANCE There’s little doubt that IP has become increasingly influential in the pro-AV world – but if there has been a pocket of resistance, it’s been in control rooms. That’s
24 May 2013
perhaps no surprise: control room applications are almost invariably mission critical. They require reliable, predictable performance. Both those attributes give rise to a certain conservatism in the control room industry, favouring proven technologies and architectures. The question is: will control rooms succumb to IP as the rest of the world is doing? “In control room installations, we usually have a mixture of all kind of signals coming from different sources, such as cameras, application servers and other devices,” notes Eric Hénique, director of marketing and international sales at eyevis. “Not all of these sources come as IP streams to the control rooms. In new installations especially, the camera signals coming into the control rooms are IP video streams. For other signals it depends whether they have to be present at different locations – a second control room, a boardroom and so on. If so, these digital signals can be transferred into IP streams and are then put on the network as IP streams, for example with a device like our eStreamer. “IP will definitely become a standard for camera signals in
future, but not necessarily for all signals in control rooms,” he goes on. “Generally speaking, about 80% of the signals we have to deal with in control room installations today are IP signals, and this number will grow in future.” “When talking about IP in video processing systems for command and control, there are two distinct classes,” says Iddo Hadany, group
manager for engineering projects at Mitsubishi Electric. “The first is a regular standard system that imports IP visual information; the other one is a system which is completely based on IP communication. This second group is sub-divided into closed systems, which use proprietary network and streaming formats, and open systems, which use standard
network and common streaming formats.”
INCREASE IN DEMAND “I would say that IP architecture is not yet standard in the design of video processing systems for command and control,” he continues. “However, in the past four years, demand for importing IP sources such as IP cameras has
MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC CUBES AT HEART OF LENENERGO'S NEW NETWORK MANAGEMENT CENTRE
The fact that IP is not yet well established in the control rooms market is well illustrated by the Mitsubishi Electric display wall systems that are the centrepiece of two network control centres built for Lenenergo OJSC, one of the largest energy distribution network companies in Russia. Both are largely built around proven technologies. Mitsubishi VS-60XE70U 60in LED video cubes were installed by system integrator Viking in Lenenergo’s central control room and in its Kingisepp regional control centre. The
Network Control Centre display is comprised of 33 (11 x 3) cubes, with a total screen size of 13.4m wide x 2.74m high. The Kingisepp control room manages the electricity supply to five large towns: Kingisepp, Ivangorod, Volosovo, Slantsy and Luga. Viking equipped the control room with a display wall consisting of Mitsubishi 60in projection cubes in a 5 x 3 configuration with a total size of 6.1m wide x 2.74m high. The new control centres
have allowed Lenenergo OJSC to deliver improved control of the electrical
IP-based control rooms will require new knowledge and understanding from integrators
system network, helping to ensure maximum network reliability even in periods of peak load.
www.installation-international.com
STUDY CASE
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