From South America to the Middle East: AV over IP for a mining company's Security Operations Center

The Polymedia team developed and implemented an audio-visual solution for a client that supports efficient operations of their Security Operations Center in the Middle East. The Center is a hub that will manage mining processes across several continents, beginning with South America.

The project scope included designing and installing an integrated solution in the Control Room, Collaboration Space, and Executive Office. A team of five operators and one supervisor, located in the Middle East, oversees the operations of the company mine in South America. They receive high-quality video streams from the mine with low latency and communicate in real-time with the mining employees through professional channels.

Polymedia installed a large 6 x 2 video wall assembled from 12x 55" Samsung LCD professional panels with 0.88 mm bezels. The Collaboration Space and Executive Office feature an all-in-one interactive Flipbox solution. All AV infrastructure is managed by Crestron Integrated Control System.

For stable and lossless AV signal transmission from far end mines, the Polymedia team has designed and implemented a network infrastructure for AV-over-IP technology deployment. The network is based on Cisco equipment, powered by direct encrypted channels between the Control Room and the remote mines.

The AV-over-IP solution is powered by POLYWALL Enterprise video wall content management platform and bundled with Matrox Maevex H.264 encoders and decoders. It supports the display of IP video surveillance streams from the mine on the video wall in various layouts. A section of the video wall image can be recorded and transmitted to an interactive screen in the Executive Office to support decision-making. This concept is also applied to the interactive screen in the Collaboration Room.

The Control Room also features a video conferencing system that supports real-time communications with the mines. The supervisor can instantly contact any employee in the mine at the touch of a button. This system, supported by AVer video conferencing solutions and Shure intelligent digital sound system, includes ceiling microphone arrays, speakers, and Digital Signal Processing (DSP).

One of the project challenges was integrating Matrox IP streaming system with Crestron control system. To achieve this, the Polymedia team developed a unique commands translation module, which is working as an interpreter between Crestron and Matrox systems. This complicated integration task required advanced programming skills from Polymedia specialists. The successful completion of this task led to the seamless operation of both devices.

The Security Operations Center is fully operational and continues integrating with other mines and regions.