Commuting for mange on-site week two here we go! Well, I won’t say that I have completely used to the early pattern to travel to work but at least I’m able to wake myself up on the train haha. Regarding there are two teams that manage all the AV system within the organisation, since I was in event team for the first week, I will be staying with one of the engineers to go through their daily-basis work routine to get an insight of the position. Most importantly the engineering team is the one who deals with the end system/design, which I can get a detailed understanding of different system and setup by seeing them physically in real life.
Apart from the four main buildings that the engineering team is supporting on the client’s site, there are two other buildings which are collaborated office called Buckley Building and Deloitte Fusion. Luckily I got a chance to get into both buildings to do some installation and troubleshooting. The Buckley building reported that the lighting in one of the rooms are flashing, the reason why the AV team is supporting the lighting issue is that the lighting control is on the panel which is routed on the central processor. The good news was, while we get there the lights have stopped flashing itself but one of the displays in the room wasn’t showing any image and keep switching to power save mode.
Generally, when there is a problem that has to do with the display, what should be done first was to check the input sources. In that case, we checked the source which is routed all the way from the AV rack which has been placed in the room. However, there wasn’t any source inputting into the display in the first place, which the contents should be control and feed via a LAN cable and switch by the central matrix. To double check, we switch on all the displays in the room which are connected to the same source (matrix) to see if it was just a display faulty or a source error. In the end, we found out there a USB extender that is routing from the projector to the display which could be the main reason of the display issue. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to sort out the problem at that time but raised a ticket to the team instead, it was still a good experience to see the whole process of troubleshooting once there is a problem occurs.
Apart from doing maintenance and room AV technical support, installing is also covered by the team. Since there are always new construction going on within the building for new office or meeting space, the existing system couldn’t always capable to support the newly installed equipment. One of the installs that I have be shadowed with was for another corporate office to install a new processor for the new panel. The reason of adding another processor into the rack instead of routing the new panel on to the existing processor is because by doing so, it is easier to configure the new panel without affecting the other existing panels. While we were on-site, we found out there were four unused Crestron AirMedia which is a device that allows wireless content sharing by simply input its IP address that is also linked to the display. The device should be mounted behind the screen to get its best performance for wireless content sharing, however they are being placed in the rack room as a redundant. In order to place the new processor into the rack with limited power supply, network ports and space, we decided to remove the AirMedia and store them for any future use.
I have also been introduced to one of the areas in the building, which is called Green House. It is a long project which has been going on for ages and it is not quite finished yet due to some handover issue between us and another AV company. In that case it was very hard to find a slot to get in there and do the configuration even though all the equipment has already been installed, so it is still an ongoing project. The green house is basically an open presentation area which has several interactive displays sit in the middle of the room with a few projector that shine some images/logos on the floor for a more immersive environment. All the audio in the room are controlled centrally on the network and some amplifiers and speakers would need to be swap over and configured in the future. The other fascinating design was the sound control lighting within the room that you can literally just clap to trigger the lights in the room which is the pretty cool I think. Since the green house is for a more confidential meetings and events, there are only three people from our team who are totally in charge of the AV system hence I didn’t get a chance to see how every piece of equipment has been operating in real time. However, one of the team members did show me around and introduce the room that is pretty useful as well.
And that’s pretty much what I have done this week! There are more things and technology for me to check out next week, so as usual see you guys again for my new updates!
Mandy xx
