Advanced Systems Integration have completed a multi-phase installation for the City Council Chambers of Savage, Minnesota, to accommodate for hybrid meetings amid COVID-19 restrictions.
The City of Savage is a suburban city 20 miles south of downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, in a region commonly known as South of the River. Savage is a vibrant community with approximately 30,000 residents. Situated within Savage, the City Council Chambers serves as a meeting facility for the Savage City Council, Planning Commision (PC), Parks, Recreation and National Resources Commission (PRNRC) and additional community boards.
Earlier this year, Advanced Systems Integration, a Minnesota-based integrator serving the Twin Cities area, completed an initial integration in the City of Savage’s council chambers. With ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, however, the City of Savage had to transition to hybrid meetings.
“The initial project with the City of Savage was a full audio upgrade, video switching and a control system,” said Brandon Carleton, Chief Operating Officer for Advanced Systems Integration. “The City of Savage returned to us and requested additional AV solutions to create a hybrid meeting space. They wanted to utilize the lobby outside the council chamber as an overflow meeting space to accommodate for social distancing.”
Advanced Systems Integration needed to implement a solution that was versatile and compatible with the existing system that was already in place.
“We brought in Visionary to send any source to any destination, including video displays in the lobby for overflow. We incorporated video displays in the lobby with Visionary’s PacketAV Duet Series endpoints to distribute live video feeds from the council chamber,” said Paul Erickson, Senior Lead System Engineer for Advanced Systems Integration.
“With Symetrix audio DSP in place, we were able to use Dante to minimize wiring from the source locations to the DSP and transmit everything on a single cable. Additionally, Symetrix has a driver built-in for control of Visionary’s PacketAV Duet Series. Visionary’s interoperability was an important feature for us because the system provided us with pre-built drivers to streamline to installation.”
Visionary’s products are recognized throughout the world for providing outstanding performance and reliability at a cost-effective price.
“Visionary’s PacketAV Duet Series encoders and decoders incorporated the features we needed at a competitive price point,” said Carleton. “There are other products available that are similar to Visionary’s PacketAV Duet Series but at a higher price point. We were able to provide the City of Savage with everything they needed while remaining within their allocated budget.
“The City of Savage sent me a message following the installation to express their satisfaction. They said, ‘Everything has been working seamlessly. The staff are really impressed with the new capabilities of the system. They are using it frequently! We recently had guests in the lobby watching the overflow monitors and a presentation via Zoom. Everything worked perfectly.’”
Visionary engineers who design the products are available for customer and technical support requests, which is a unique benefit. Visionary has a team of in-house engineers and product specialists designed to handle any technical request.
“Visionary’s customer service and product support team is top notch,” said Carleton. “Our programmer worked directly with Visionary to get the system up-and-running. Visionary even created a custom EDID table to upload into an encoder that was having difficulties with a source. They were quick to respond and easy to work with.”
Erickson added: “Advanced Systems Integration’s partnership with Visionary and their local representative, Brad Horbal, CTS, at Bormann Marketing, made this project a success. Oftentimes, what’s more important than product selection is the support received on the particular product. Visionary’s relationships with their customers and their reliable customer support team was really valuable for us. It made this project go smoothly and the final result was a success for us and our client, the City of Savage.”
Visionary’s PacketAV Duet Encoder and Decoder integrate 4K UHD video over IP and Dante to bypass the constraints of traditional matrix systems. The PacketAV Duet features ultra-low latency IP audio and video with unlimited distribution capabilities. Utilizing existing network resources, the encoders and decoders can be rapidly deployed with point-to point, point-to-multipoint and multipoint-to-multipoint capabilities.
