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Medialon, thanks to the Greece-based integrator TELMACO,
marks its first installation in Greece with the
integration of a pair of Medialon Manager Pro show
control systems at the Foundation of the Hellenic World
(FHW) in Athens. FHW is a not-for-profit cultural
institution dedicated to the preservation of Hellenic
history and tradition.
In March 2006, FHW's Cultural Center completed
construction of the Tholos, a building housing a Virtual
Reality system with a capacity of 130 people. Medialon
controls the AV equipment for the Preshow and Tholos
areas and is responsible for the operation of four
plasma displays used for signage throughout the Center.
A leader in using virtual-reality technology for the
public, the FHW enables visitors, wearing special
stereoscopic glasses, to travel through time and space
to monuments and sites of Greek cultural heritage and
become immersed in virtual 3D worlds. Visitors get the
feeling that the virtual space actually surrounds them
and that they can actively participate in the
exploration of the environment and even modify it.
In the Preshow area six plasma displays and speakers
give visitors a welcome message from the staff as well
as useful information about what they are about to see.
When they enter the Tholos area they begin a virtual
journey to Athens from archaic times to the Roman era
getting a close up view of the city’s temples and
beautiful buildings. With the goddess Athena as guide in
the Agora visitors watch the destruction of Athens by
the Persians, participate in building the Poikile Stoa,
follow the Panathenaic Procession and can even vote in a
process known as ‘ostrakismos’ which allowed citizens to
vote out men who where believed to be a threat for the
good of the city; visitors take part in this process by
pressing a button next to their seats and expressing
their opinion of who they want to depart. Finally, the
newest virtual reality tour takes visitors on a walk
through Ancient Olympia, the cradle of the Olympic
Games.
“The target was to create a user-friendly GUI to enable
the FHW staff to run the show by pressing just a single
button,” says Dimitris Mexis, responsible engineer for
Control Systems of TELMACO, the integrator for the
project. “Two different timelines were created, one for
the Preshow area and one for the main show in the Tholos
area. In addition, some more pages were created in the
GUI, in order to control each device separately.”
The first timeline shuts down the lights in the Preshow
area and sends commands to computers to reproduce the
welcome and instructions AV content. By the end of this
stage, the lights turn back on and visitors enter the
Tholos area.
There Medialon Manager controls the cove lighting
equipment giving the visitors a spectacular visual
experience just prior to beginning their virtual trip
back to Ancient Athens. The FHW staff uses the Medialon
GUI to power projectors, sources, lighting, audio
devices and more.
Medialon Manager is known for its easy GUI creation. The
embedded GUI programming tool has been designed to allow
fast and easy programming of control panel and
touchscreen inside the software itself. Medialon Manager
also comes with free user interface design software to
easily deploy multiple control interfaces, such as
touchscreens, over a network.
In conjunction with a number of peripheral devices
(NPort, DMX card, IR module), Medialon Manager is used
for the full control of AV and lighting equipment. “By
using a number of communication protocols we succeed in
controlling a lot of systems,” Mexis reports.
“Specifically, the Ethernet protocol was used to control
MS Windows and Linux computer systems, Serial and IR
protocol to control audio and video equipment, and DMX
to control lighting equipment.” Medialon Manager can
adapt to any communication protocol, from DMX to MIDI,
Serial to SMPTE, even ModBus and other protocol used in
other industries.
The equipment piloted by Medialon through an AMX
controller consists of a Delta server and Projection
Design F3 projectors. Other equipment controlled by
Medialon includes a Biamp Nexia, Biamp Audia, Extron
MVX88 VGA A, Hitachi and Panasonic plasma displays,
Microsoft Windows XP and Linux-based PCs, and lighting
gear.
“We had the most excellent results with Medialon,”
concludes Mexis. “There are always some difficulties
during implementation but they were overcome with the
help of Medialon technical support.” |
