AREC and Dante in Universities, Companies, Courts, and more!

Dante, created by Audinate, is a network-based protocol for audio and video transmission. It has grown massively in popularity over the past years and has now become a leading standard in audio over ethernet transmission, adopted by hundreds of AV manufacturers.

Dante’s global popularity and ease of use make it an essential addition to AREC Media Stations. Its inclusion helps create even better AV systems for all sorts of projects by cutting installation times, reducing cabling work, and improving overall audio quality. Take, for example, a standard conference room.

With Dante, the connection between microphones and speakerphones on the conferencing table, wall speakers, other audio devices, and an AREC Media Station is accomplished with just a network cable. This reduces clutter, preserves audio quality, and makes it easy to change audio routing should the room configuration change. Furthermore, network connection makes it easier to position hardware far away from the room, leaving only the necessary devices inside.

And it is not just the conference rooms that can benefit. Consider a regular town hall.

Plenty of discussion systems that are commonly used in them work on Dante. They are the same discussion systems that are integrated with AREC for tracking. Take, for example, Televic Confidea. Each Confidea Flex G4 can be connected to a central unit, which can then be connected to AREC LS-110 for audio recording and to the DS-4CU for automatic speaker tracking, all of it by the network.

Likewise, in lecture halls, you can send audio from the ceiling and handheld microphones, combine it with captured cameras, and create engaging learning material. Dante will deliver the audio of your speakers in high quality, whereas the wireless nature of connection makes it possible for lecturers to focus on their task. To make this even more convenient for the user, consider using our IR and AI tracking cameras. They are designed to follow your speakers and active audience members, and work wirelessly, making an ideal pairing for Dante-enabled devices.

These are just some of the ways you can use Dante audio products with AREC. Would you like to know more about how you can use our products in your projects? Reach out to us at www.a-dena.com and we would be happy to discuss it with you!

Case Study: AREC Tracking Speakers for Costa-Rica’s Governmental Meetings

Dear ADENA Partners, our new case study from Costa Rica is about the construction and equipping of a ‘Türkiye Room’ in ICAP, a public administration institute. Designed by our partner in Costa Rica, Interactiva, the room features various AREC, RADA, and other brands’ conferencing solutions. Together, these solutions have significantly improved the organisation’s video conferencing meeting experience. 

The Central American Institute of Public Administration (ICAP) is an organisation within the Central American Integration System (SICA), an economic and political union of Central American states. ICAP’s function is to modernise the public sector and develop human resources, thus increasing the integration between SICA member countries. ICAP does this by holding meetings with partners from all over the world through video conferencing and in-person meetings.

Effective conferencing necessitates the usage of quality AV products. Knowing that, ICAP got an opportunity to upgrade their existing conferencing venue with the help of one of their partners, the Turkish Agency for Cooperation and Coordination, otherwise known as TIKA. The two organisations envisaged for this updated venue to have the latest technology in AV conferencing. It was decided that the room needed to host 40 participants, featured a way to quickly display active speakers, and could output multiple cameras simultaneously into conferencing apps like Teams, Zoom, and others. Our partner Interactiva offered a solution based on the AREC DS-4CU Speaker Tracking Station, CI-21H PTZ Camera, and CI-T10 IR Tracking Camera, as well as the RADA A-BR01 HDMI to USB Bridge.

The DS-4CU is a device that allows users to connect up to 4 video sources, such as network and regular cameras, network streams, computers, and others. These sources can be mixed and displayed in customisable layouts with user-uploaded overlay and background graphics. It is set apart from other devices by its unique feature — tracking integration of discussion systems from brands like Televic, Shure, Bosch, Audio-Technica, and others. This allows the station to automatically change how it displays the video sources according to the active microphone on supported systems from these brands. 

Importantly, this switching can also be done manually, even if you do not have a compatible discussion system. This is precisely the case with ICAP, where custom presets are set up for every chair. The operator switches both the video and PTZ presets through the station’s graphical user interface by tapping on seat numbers. ICAP uses CI-21H PTZ network camera to capture each of the possible 40 participants, and a CI-T10 IR Tracking Camera to ensure that the main presenter has freedom of movement. Additionally, a computer with slides is connected as another source to the DS-4CU, and the mixed output of the station is converted into USB by an A-BR01 RADA Bridge. This allows ICAP to join conferencing calls and display their whole room with computer content, active speakers from the audience, and the main presenter all at the same time.

With the AREC system in place, ICAP’s conferencing calls can now effectively display every active participant for the remote side. Interested in learning more about this or other solutions you can build with AREC? Let us know at www.a-dena.com, and we will arrange a demonstration for you.

ADENA Hack: How to use the wide and zoomed in streams of the A-PC01 PanoCam simultaneously?

The A-PC01 PanoCam is a versatile wide-angle camera that can be used in all kinds of environments: courts, lecture halls, city halls, culinary schools, and auditoriums among others. It is particularly useful in these environments as it can produce two streams simultaneously, one for capturing the whole audience fully zoomed out, and the other for zooming in on a particular segment of the camera’s field of view.

Substream (4K) Main Stream (Full HD)

subscream

You can get both camera’s streams through the RTSP and RTMP protocols. For RTSP, the camera’s zoomed in view/main stream can be accessed via the link rtsp://ip address of the camera/ch1 whereas the camera’s zoomed out view/substream can be accessed via the link rtsp://ip address of the camera/ch2. To access the camera’s streams through RTMP, open the camera’s web page and write the server URL and key in the Media Config page.

You can use PanoCam with all sorts of recording, streaming, or conferencing equipment, but we particularly recommend using it with AREC Media Stations, as they can fully utilise the camera’s potential. Adding the camera to the station is easy. In the default configuration, you can add the main stream through ONVIF, finding it in the Network Device Manager. You can then add the substream by selecting “Signal Type” -> “IP Stream” and “Protocol” -> “RTSP”. Otherwise, simply add both streams via RTSP. To control the camera’s PTZ through the Media Station, make sure to select VISCA-over-IP as the control protocol. Simply type the IP address of the camera and you are ready to go.

With the A-PC01 PanoCam, no audience member is left behind. If you would like to see how it works live, or want to know more about any of our other products, contact us at www.a-dena.com and we will be happy to assist you.