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Medialon Manager was selected for system control at the
new Medal of Honor Memorial Museum, part of the Patriots
Point Naval & Maritime Museum in the harbor of
Charleston, South Carolina. More than 40 recipients of
the Congressional Medal of Honor, which has become
synonymous with bravery and heroism, helped cut the
ribbon for the museum located on the hangar deck of the
USS Yorktown. “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams
was the emcee for the gala opening; his newscast
originated from Patriots Point.
“Medialon Manager was the perfect solution for this
project,” notes Mike Grznar who, with Dan Ritchie,
programmed the system for Bowen Technovation. Bowen
offers audio, video, lighting, control and production
solutions for museums, space theaters, science centers,
large-format film and corporate communications.
“Medialon Manager allowed us to integrate many different
pieces of hardware and different types of control into
one easy-to-use interface,” he continues. “Programming
was, as it always is with this software, easy and
straightforward. As exhibits came on line, we could
test out functionality and make any needed changes
quickly. Overall programming was very easy: Medialon
allows you to actually focus on the act of getting
systems integrated and working instead of worrying about
the particulars of the program itself. The clear and
simple interface makes doing projects much easier than
they would have been using another product.”
Grznar notes that “most of the time the Medialon system
simply begins operating at the beginning of the day then
shuts down at the end of the day. If there is an
evening event that requires the museum to stay open,
operators only need to hit one button and the system is
good to go for the night. Nobody needs to ‘babysit’ it.
The ability of Medialon to work with a variety of
different technologies made this possible.”
From a logistical standpoint, “the most unique aspect of
the installation was taking seven or eight distinct
exhibits and operating them in such an automated way so
that none were affected by the other but all could still
all be manually controlled within a simple interface as
needed by museum personnel,” says Grznar. “Ideally, the
staff should not have to touch the control system at
all; if they do, it should be only to check the status
of a particular exhibit.”
The Medal of Honor Memorial Museum “required a very high
degree of installation elegance with a great flexibility
in programming onsite” which Medialon facilitated,
echoes
Bowen Technovation Director,
Jeff Bowen. Exhibit design by DJS Design features a
number of motion-sensor triggers controlling lighting,
audio clips, video playback and more.
“One of the more interesting exhibits is a set of
beautiful opaque glass towers,” notes Bowen. “When a
visitor touches one of three backlit buttons to play
back a video clip, a Privalite screen receives an
electrical charge which turns the screen transparent.
This reveals a 32-inch flat-panel screen with a video
bio of the Medal of Honor Winner created by Boston
Productions. Audio is delivered by overhead DSP focused
arrays since the space is very acoustically live. These
focused arrays are very effective at drawing the visitor
into the story while screening out distracting crowd
noise.”
The Combat Tunnel exhibit utilizes various control
techniques, including switch closures, motion sensors,
serial and DMX, all managed by Medialon. “The visitor
enters at one end of the tunnel, and as they pass in
front of one of four motion sensors they trigger sound
and lighting playback from different periods of warfare,”
Grznar explains. “Each ‘section’ runs about 15-20
seconds and literally draws the visitor forward through
the tunnel via sound and lighting effects.”
Bowen project manager Jeff Norris says initially only
one motion sensor was planned for the beginning of the
tunnel. “Our concern with this approach was that if one
visitor walked quickly through the tunnel, they would
literally walk ahead of the sound and lighting effects
in each section. Or, if someone moved through the
tunnel slowly, the sound and lighting effects would move
ahead of them and they’d miss out on the experience. By
utilizing a sensor in each of the four eight-foot
sections, the visitor controls the pace of the playback
in the exhibit.”
Grznar emphasizes that “the fact that Medialon Manager
is so easily able to communicate and work with so many
technologies, we were able to use hardware that made
issues such as small exhibit spaces easy to work with.
Because we weren't tied to any one particular hardware
solution, it gave us a great flexibility in designing
this or any other system.”
Key to Medialon’s success for Bowen and the museum staff
is the “user-friendly architecture of the program,” he
reiterates. “Programming before getting to site was
much easier to do and any tweaking that had to be done
onsite was very easy. For example, in the Combat Tunnel
we were able to tweak the timings of the various effects
on the fly in a very short timeframe. This saved time
and effort not just on our end but for the exhibit
designers as well: They didn't have to spend a whole day
waiting for a program to be recompiled and code to be
rewritten. Two clicks of a mouse and we were on to the
next effect.”
The Medal of Honor Memorial Museum exhibit design lead
was Roger Motiska of DJS Design. Exhibit fabrication
was provided by Exhibit Concepts, Inc. |
