For those who say InfoComm‘s annual June event is only about networking, parties and having fun, The Integration Factory and Premier Mounts beg to differ. At the 2014 InfoComm show in Las Vegas first started talking about what became Daytona Rising.
The $400 million overhaul of Daytona International Speedway, which hosts the so-called Super Bowl of auto racing every February, included digital signage at its centerpiece. Among highlights are two 24 x 47-foot existing frames that offer 720 x 1440 resolution over 104 square meters that flank two new towers (each of which are 40 x 80 feet and project 1092 x 2240 resolution over 280 square meters).
Inside the oval of 101,000 seats at DIS, an infographic provided by the Speedway officials shows how 13 major-league and college football stadiums and arenas, including the American Airlines Arena and the Miami Marlines ballpark, could easily fit inside it.
What had been garden-variety grandstands now house 11 “neighborhoods” on the venue’s five levels, comprising 40,000 square feet and accessed by massive escalators called “injectors” that will get those huge crowds to their seats efficiently. Over 60 luxury suites with track-side views will offer corporate guests a kind of hospitality experience that has never been encountered in a NASCAR track.
Daytona Rising’s AV is equal to its architectural scale: an equipment list calls for 2,791 speakers, mostly JBL’s Control series, which cover the concourse area and suites, plus another 967 AWC series weatherproof speakers, as well as 295 Community Sound R.5 and R.2 series pole-mounted speakers to cover the grandstands.
View photos of the Daytona Rising project here.
Fans can follow the action wherever they go via nearly 1,500 Samsung and Peerless-AV 47-inch LCD screens mounted throughout the concourses and inside concessions and bathrooms. That many units are necessary for a venue whose five-story-tall seating runs unbroken for three-quarters of a mile in length.
CommScope, one of several DIS technology partners, deployed approximately 220 miles of its Systimax GigaSpeed XL Cat-6 cable, 50 miles of TeraSpeed single-mode fiber-optic cable and all of the terminations supporting the HD displays, digital signage and way-finding signage for synchronized stadium-wide messaging.
Integrator Takeaways:
1. The Integration Factory created a production-line type of workflow that let workers on the concourses wire and install pre-assembled video screens and speakers, which kept packaging materials off the concourses and grandstand
2. Daytona Rising was a learning experience, for The Integration Factory, for the International Speedway Corp., and all of the vendors involved
3. Mounting assemblies also have to be rated to withstand Florida’s chronic exposure to hurricane-force winds.
End User Takeaways:
1. The mounting solutions allowed for the end user to deliver the exact message they were shooting for to their customers
2. In addition to weather, outdoor AV is also exposed to a unique NASCAR mix of brake dust and rubber particle from tires
3. Concourses form a larger social and commercial ecosystem surrounding the race event, and the extensive AV is intended to keep fans engaged no matter where they are at the venue
Equipment Highlights:
Samsung digital signage software, Peerless-AV monitors, Premier Mounts mounts, JBL Audio, Community loudspeakers
Perhaps most apparent of the AV main points are two new, larger video display boards in the infield, each measuring 40 x 80 feet (height x width), that flank the two existing infield video screens and collectively provide 8,470 square feet of viewing surface. The video boards are supported in place by a custom structure measuring 80 feet tall by 80 feet wide built by NEP Screenworks, which fabricated and installed the new video systems.
“It’s not that it’s a complex project — it’s the sheer scale of it; the amount of AV and the distances it has to cover are overwhelming,” says Carlos Gonzalez, president of The Integration Factory, the Rockledge, Fla.-based AV system integrator that handled the Daytona Rising project. “The number of items on the equipment list and the amount of wiring are incredible.”
Guy Savage, engineering manager at The Integration Factory, added some context: a dozen semi-trailers were required just to transport all the video displays, and that many as well for their mounts. “Semi after semi, on a single day,” he recalls. “The logistics of this project were its main challenge.”
Part of The Integration Factory’s charge was to provide mounting solutions for outdoor displays and speakers to be used for digital signage and live race feeds throughout the property from the infield to the main grandstands.
The obstacles included the placement of the Premier Mounts and displays in an open environment subject to the elements along with the variety of mounting locations, positions and types of structures. The conditions were in a salty spray environment directly adjacent to the ocean with occasional high winds and a degree of seismic activity.
Mounting structures included walls, ceilings, I-beams and poles. Safety was a big concern that needed to be accommodated but in a finished look that provided future-proofing for next-generation upgrades.
Due to the environmental conditions and the need for absolute safety in a finished and unencumbered look,it was decided that custom Premier Mounts would be required to meet all their needs. More than 99 percent of the mounts, hardware and finishes were custom-designed, engineered and installed because existing products on the market did not meet all of the project requirements.
It was the environment, plus the variety of structures to attach to including ceilings, walls, I-beam and poles, that drove the choices of new mount designs and manufacturing techniques. The displays mounts needed to provide angle of view adjustability at 0-, 5-, 10-, and 15-degree increments that could be locked in place and not slip over time.
The ceiling mounts required 360-degree rotation capability for exact viewer positioning. The entire group of custom-designed mounts received specialized metal treatment that would be impervious to salty air long-term, eliminating the need to change out mounts more frequently.
