Basic data

The unveiling of Hermitage Centre was dedicated to the 1000th anniversary of Kazan. Ermitazh-Kazan Center is a unique collaborative project of Tatarstan Republic and the State Hermitage. The project was supported by Mintimer Shaimiev, the president of the Republic. So far similar centers were only abroad — in London and Amsterdam.

The Center is located on the territory of Kazan's Kremlin. It occupies about 1000 square meter floor space. Ermitazh-Kazan Exhibition Center has exposi¬tion halls, computer rooms, information halls, lecture room and conference hall (video hall).

Tasks

To develop an integrated system for two rooms — lec¬ture room and conference hall. They are supposed to be used for: lecture room is for delivering lectures with image displaying, including videoconference sessions, video hall is for discussions conducting. At the same time each of them is to provide the work in ordinary mode for viewing films and video materials.

Hardship

The major difficulty of the project was that the customs' requested changing of functionality during the balancing and commissioning and putting the halls into operation. The system had to be modified so that the halls would be able to work in the following modes:

• Simultaneous functioning separately from each other in different modes
• Co-functioning with transmission to both halls either of lecture or videoconference session or combination of lecture and its transmission to remote users via video conference session system
• Fast automatic change-over between the modes of functioning of halls at the operator's command

Project description

The installation of initial unit of equipment was fulfilled in time and on Kazan's anniversary celebration day the director of State Hermitage, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovskij, held his lecture at the lecture room. After that the system modification started according to the new customer requirements. Before that additional cable routings were laid by Atanor engineers during the final assembling stage of initial installation of equipment allowed replanning the system in future. At the ends of the cables there were installed Kramer patch panel adapters in frames. These adapters enabled to connect up the turning cameras and movable PDPs in the different parts of the halls (both lecture room and video hall).

Later old equipment was replaced and new equipment was installed. This allowed complying with customer's requests. During equipment replacement hand-operated mixer and feedback suppressors were replaced with digital Biamp platform, and Kramer VP-103 VGA signal distributors were replaced with Kramer VP-4x4 matrix switch.

As a result, the halls were provided with the following systems:

• Video and audio systems;
• Video conference system for communication and remote lecture-halls
• System of technological TV on Sony turning cameras;
• Intelligent illumination system;
• Touch panels control system.

The comments about this project of our Company's expert

Andrey Maruhin

"During the project realization a problem on system modification according to the customer's new requests suddenly arouse. Thanks to Kramer VP-71 9XL seale" and VP-4*4 cross-connecting board we were able to offer our customer a simple and elegant solution that complying all his new requirements."