Heritage projects: In with the old Features 23/12/2019 What do you have to do to add new technology to an old building? Tim Kridel explores the tradecraft and technologies for wowing clients and making money when dealing with heritage sites.Heritage sites have a decidedly analogue charm based in the history of the building and its role as a part of the greater story surrounding the people and place. Wouldn’t it be great if this ‘analogue charm’ could be augmented with modern technology and developments? Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. Putting the technological challenges aside for a moment, there are significant financial considerations for integrators to take into account. Raj Patel, director at Vanti, says: “The majority of projects have lost us money. A lot of them are the kind where you do the job, and it will be a great case study and a great reference site because it’s a landmark. But it’s not always a great money-making project because they’re very high risk.” A major component of that risk should be obvious. You never know what’s lurking inside century-old walls to stop a wireless signal or fished cable dead in its tracks. On the flipside, the heritage market can be a lucrative niche for manufacturers. Mark Wadsworth, vice president of global marketing at Digital Projection, says: “Often these are quite high- value projects. It’s not one or two projectors.” Energy efficiency, usually associated with new construction, can also be an opportunity on heritage projects. Christophe Malsot, Crestron EMEA director of hospitality and residential, says: “In these times of growing awareness of the impact on the environment, another important requirement is attention to energy consumption and active control and optimisation. Intelligent and connected devices, smart sensors and controllers, supported by the development of new business models for energy services, help manage the energy consumption actively, creating new opportunities for heritage buildings too.” As with new construction, heritage projects stand a better chance of being smooth and profitable when AV is involved from the beginning, rather than after architectural designs are finalised and budgets spoken for. Malsot says: “Timing is key for heritage projects. If talks about the AV integration are included from the start of the project— during discussions with architects, investors and general contractors—chances of a successful end result are big, especially when the budget is reasonable and the chosen solution is the best available on the market.” Some vendors and integrators say that heritage clients often work directly with AV firms rather than through an intermediary such as a general contractor or architect. Patel from Vanti says: “Generally AV is directly procured because it’s become more specialised.” Working with other trades often helps because it’s an opportunity to leverage their tricks and techniques. And whether they’re borrowed from other trades or learned first-hand, the more tricks an integrator has, the faster it can develop a solution to a challenge—and thus stay on schedule and budget. New life for old cables Sometimes it’s possible to re-use legacy cabling to get signals around. For example, at ISE 2019, Kramer demoed technology that sends 1080 over two wires of any quality. Patel from Vanti says: “[Suppose] there’s an old set of speakers, and they want a TV now, and there’s an old bit of cabling plastered into the wall, or an old maid’s cable. I could technically sneak some HD video down it to a screen somewhere. “A lot depends on regions and codes. In some countries, you can’t just use any old cable for that because [it has to be] conduit grade. But in the UK, you can get away with that.” Re-using legacy cable can make sense in environments where the walls are too thick for wireless or where Wi-Fi spectrum is so packed that it’s tough to find a reliable channel. Patel says: “We recently did an old manor house. We used Crestron NVX to get video around the place because it uses Power over Ethernet [PoE]. The client had Cat 5e cabling when they did an overhaul of the building 15 years ago or whenever. It’s no good for HDBaseT or anything else now, but we can still get 4K video down it and power the boxes.” When legacy cabling can’t be re-used, often its runs can. For example, the conduit or chases that carry telephone lines to each hotel room could be emptied out to carry Cat 6 cable instead. The telephone wall plates then could be replaced with ones that have built-in Wi-Fi access points (APs), such as Samsung’s WEA412H. That sets up the opportunity to use Wi-Fi to connect other AV devices in each hotel room. Depending on what the walls are made of, it might also be possible to cover an adjacent room or two, minimising the time and expense of pulling Cat 6 to each room. Chris Fulton, FutureSoftware CEO, says: “It may not be the easiest of pull throughs, but once you’ve got the AP in there, then you’re getting two rooms covered with one AP.” Where there’s a will, there’s a way Emerging AV and IT technologies could provide additional tools for meeting heritage requirements. For example, the new 802.3bt PoE standard supports up to 90W. That could be helpful if it eliminates the need for mains power to certain devices—and the unsightly conduit that comes with it. Meanwhile, displays are continually becoming more energy efficient, such as with organic light-emitting diode [OLED] technology. This trend dovetails with 802.3bt. For example, a display that’s too big to power with legacy PoE might be possible in the future thanks to 802.3bt and OLED. Another example is Wi-Fi 6, also known as 802.11ax. Fulton says: “We’ll see a lot of equipment coming out in the next 16 to 18 months that will offer some interesting capabilities because of the throughput and the latency. But it comes with the challenge of the higher frequency, which means walls become a real challenge.” Some vendors are fundamentally rethinking traditional product designs in ways that benefit heritage AV projects. For instance, projectors are an ideal way to get around the problem of hanging displays on elderly, fragile walls and then getting power to them. The catch is that projectors aren’t exactly light. Wadsworth says: “If you wanted 40,000 lumens, you could be looking at 200 kg, a six-man lift and three-phase electricity—an absolute nightmare to move around and install.” That’s why at InfoComm 2019, Digital Projection demonstrated the Satellite Module Laser System, which separates the light source from the projector head. The two units are linked by fibre optic cable and can be up to 100 m apart. That means the light source—and all its noise, heat and heavy-duty power cabling— now can hide away in an AV rack in a better suited part of the building. In the process, the projector head gets smaller and around 90% lighter, thus enabling installation in locations that couldn’t support a combined unit. Wadsworth says: “It’s a bit bigger than a shoebox and can still produce 40,000 to 60,000 lumens. It makes it really easy to install super-bright projectors in very tight spaces in historical buildings, ships and other places where AV is an afterthought or has to be retrofitted.”