Large Screen Technology for Professional Visualisation in Control Rooms
A control room, fitted with modern, ergonomic equipment comprising latest display technology, can decisively enhance the efficiency of the processes, and therefore can improve the productivity of the complete site. Unclear arranged work spaces, inappropriate or even no large screen system, make the workflow more complicated, inefficient, and may even cause an increased amount of stress in case of emergencies, which may lead to faulty operations and false reactions. Today, the implementation of large screen systems for the comprehensive display of all relevant processes and information is very common. They are the only solution granting a clear overview of the situation to all operators in the control room at the same time.
The technologies most often used in control rooms of today and tomorrow, are rear-projection cubes, based on DLP technology, and LC displays. Rear-projection cubes are available with various screen sizes and resolution standards. Numerous of these cubes can be combined to almost “seamless” large screen walls. DLP cubes are available with all common aspect ratios, 16:9 (16:10), 4:3 and 5:4. A disadvantage of the DLP cubes is the high-performance lamp used for illumination. These lamps have an MTBF of approx. 10,000 hours. To guarantee higher reliability of the systems, they can be equipped with automatic double-lamp systems, i.e. the system automatically switches within seconds to a second spare lamp if the operating lamp breaks. Cubes using alternative light sources for illumination (LED) provide a higher MTBF of approx. 50,000 hours, and will be available from 2009.
In the recent past, we observe an increasing number of large screen systems using a matrix of LC displays. LCD monitors are already available with a relatively thin bezel which is especially important for modular video wall applications.
The LC displays from eyevis’ Eye-LCD series are available as stand-alone monitors from 42” to 82”. The displays offer resolutions from WXGA and HD, up to quadHD and 4K (4,096x2,160 px). In addition to these displays, eyevis provides LCD modules especially designed for combined video wall applications. These modules feature narrow bezels and special ventilation, making them a competitive alternative to DLP cubes for video walls. With the new version EYE-LCD4600-SN the gap between the displayed content of two neighbouring modules could be reduced to 7.3 mm.
Besides the display solution, sophisticated large screen systems generally comprise a so-called split controller including appropriate control management software. To avoid problems of interoperability, the preferable solution should be to receive all of these components from one provider. One of the only manufacturers who are able to provide complete one-stop solution is eyevis. With its EC DLP rear-projection cube series, its Eye-LCD series, the Netpix graphics controllers and the eyecon wall management software, eyevis is able to provide complete systems for any kind of control room application.
A modular matrix of screens made up of LCD monitors or DLP cubes is generally controlled by a so-called split controller which provides special graphic boards for incoming and outgoing signal sources (RGB, DVI, LAN, analog Video or IP Video).. With a comfortable software solution like eyevis’ eyecon software, it is possible to control and administer the complete system and all connected signal sources.
