Macquarie University’s Surgical Skills Lab upgraded with Gefen connectivity infrastructure
Macquarie University’s Surgical Skills Lab has been upgraded with an entirely new Gefen connectivity infrastructure that Macquarie University clinical AV and IT coordinator at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences Iain Brew says will enhance and expand the lab’s sharing capabilities.
“Our previous system was quite limited in its ability to route and control video signals. The lab’s teaching station could only send a video signal to the other student displays in the lab, and they had to be manually adjusted for them to accept this signal. We wanted to keep our existing medical equipment while changing how those signals were transmitted and accepted.”
To do this, Iain designed a new Gefen video over IP-based system that enables the entire lab to function with one cohesive matrix. This allows any video source to be routed to any video destination in full HD quality.
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The new system also allows any user to control video content sharing with an Apple iPad Pro tablet so if a student makes an interesting discovery the images can be instantly displayed on the room’s main projector.
One Gefen EXT-CU-LAN matrix controller was installed to serve as the basis of the new video over IP infrastructure, providing seamless video sharing among the lab’s 10 Stryker VisionElect 26” medical displays. Iain also installed 16 Gefen HDMI senders, 15 Gefen HDMI receivers, two Gefen KVM senders, one Gefen KVM receiver, three Gefen scalers, two Gefen HDMI scalers, 10 Gefen SDI-HDMI Converters and one Gefen audio converter.
“All routing enabled by Gefen is controlled from a wall mounted iPad Pro running iRidium Mobile software, which allowed us to program our control system in-house. Users can make preset selections on the home page, or delve deeper and route individual video sources to destinations on the ‘video’ page. As added peace of mind, lab operators can also make routes and recall presets from the EXT-CU-LAN front panel or Web GUI too, providing plenty of control redundancy and backup,” says Iain.
The system is equipped with video conferencing and recording technology, including a Panasonic AW-HE40 PTZ roof mounted camera and an AJA RovoCam 4K block camera. It also includes an Extron SMP111 recorder coupled with a Synology RackStation NAS that allows students to record a video of their findings.
“I am very impressed with the Gefen range of products and will definitely recommend anyone exploring an AV upgrade or new install to check out Gefen. The support from the Gefen team during the entire project was fantastic,” says Iain.
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