The copper dome over the room is the largest in Australia, spanning 31m in diameter. The dome is supported on a brick base that allows the interior of the main auditorium to be unobscured by columns.
Located within this dome is a computer to monitor the loads on all of the chain hoists suspended from the roof structure. Unfortunately the people on the stage who were operating the chain hoists couldn't see the computer's screen and hence couldn't see what load was being applied to the structure. The structural engineers on the job had specified particular load ratings on the roof trusses and roof quadrants and these had to be adhered to.
The tech boffins at Jands were asked to solve the problem of getting the computer screen down to the stage level, 180m or more as the cable runs.
"We had a spare Cat 5 cable running from the equipment rack containing the computer in the roof space down to the control room - on the other side of the building - on level 2," explained Simon Steinfurth, Jands' electrical engineer. "This cable was approximately 80m long and then there was another Cat 5 cable currently in use for Ethernet running from the control room on level 2 down to a position at back of stage on ground level (on the other side of the building) which was approximately 110m long."
The solution was to use two mating pairs - a transmitter and a receiver - of Aurora DXE-CAT-S2 units to bridge the gap. The first set went from the roof space to the control room and converted a HDMI (digital video version of the computer screen) signal from the computer into an HDBaseT signal and back again into HDMI in the control room.
"In the control room we connected this HDMI signal to a second DXE-CAT-S2 transmitter to send this HDMI information and the currently being used Ethernet information down the Cat 5 cable to the position back of stage," continued Steinfurth. "That was then split back out to the original Ethernet cable and a HDMI signal for the remote screen located back of stage."
Being able to use existing cable with transmitter/receiver pairs instead of installing new cabling meant the job cost about a third of what it would have cost.
(Jim Evans)
