If there ever was a time for business as usual, it isn’t now in 2022. The pandemic, high inflation, supply chain shortages, and unrest in certain parts of the world have conspired to make these extraordinary times. What does this have to do with commercial AV? Undoubtedly you understand the effects of today’s business environment on your world. But we’d like to focus on three areas you may want to think about as you consider your AV investments and how they support your business. 

What do supply chains, Microsoft's new Front Row features for videoconferencing, and conference room acoustics have in common? More than you might think – or at least we think so. So dive in with us below, because these three things are representative of issues in commercial AV right now.

The first step towards proper AV monitoring is admitting The Problem: the tools are simply not there. Admit it. You are flying blind. You don’t even know what you have. Answering the simple questions of, “What is our total number of conference rooms? And how many are working right now?” in a larger organization is blurry at best. This is not an easy problem to solve, due to the isolated AV ecosystems and vendor allegiances.

And even if you can solve it, you may not yet be able to implement it, because your solution is not scalable. Or not manageable, or both. For now, your best solution is to include multiple windows to monitor the siloes. Human eyes have to jump from window to window or screen to screen, trying to piece together the data in real-time, which often leads to information overflow for the human mind.

Monitoring is a fundamental step that gathers the telemetry data from AV devices, automatically. This level of automation requires some level of programming skills to implement. It also assumes that the data you need is readily available, and that you can somehow check the data for integrity.  

At Level 3 Audiovisual, we are taking a more standardized, templated approach, more cattle, less pets.

If your organization uses tens, hundreds, or thousands of AV devices, that’s much too many to manage manually. For instance, if an LED display in one of your lobbies is showing a blank screen, when will your IT department hear about it? Even if a staff member walks by the screen, they might not tell anyone or know who to notify. It could be days or weeks before anyone repairs the unresponsive display. 

Whether you’re in healthcare, education, hospitality, or another industry, you rely on technology to help your customers and share essential information. Is it time to improve the way you manage your business’s technology? It may be time to invest in AV device monitoring.

If you’re evaluating how to better support your business’s AV devices, here’s what you should consider.

I loved playing with Nerf guns as a kid. Scratch that... I love playing with Nerf guns. Period. They are fun as heck, and they continue to get more creative, novel, and innovative. They get the kids outside, make them run around and have fun. It’s awesome. Back in the day, one of my friends had a traumatic experience with a Nerf gun, where one of the foam bullets caught him right in the eye. He had fuzzy vision and his eye puffed up for days. His trauma obviously had an effect on me as well, but the fix was obvious: just wear glasses when you play with Nerf guns. Easy! You can still run around like a maniac, still come up with all sorts of crazy games, and look super tough in some sporty, “operator” sunglasses. Oh, and not shoot your eye out! It’s a win-win. My friend, however, did not get the memo. Not two weeks after his swelling went away, he got shot in the eye AGAIN by one of the sharp shooters on the other team. The protective-eyewear-fix only lasted two outings and then was put to the wayside. New habits are tough to form.

Remember the famous Verizon commercials from earlier in this century? Call quality and geographic coverage were major issues at that stage in the development of mobile networks. Fast forward to 2022, and "can you hear me now" has more applicability to today's Zoom, WebEx, and Microsoft Teams video conferencing. The same is true for any other form of audio that involves an IP network, a conference room, and the need for all parties to comprehend each other.

Two decades after that Verizon campaign first appeared; why is this phrase still a common refrain, only now in many videoconferences? It has to do with several factors, not the least of which is the design of modern conference rooms. We have addressed conference room audio-video quality in an earlier post, and in this one would like to go a bit further, as audio quality will be crucial to creating meeting rooms that work for in-office staff and remote teams alike. 

Please read on to learn more about improving conference room audio in your Scottsdale, AZ, organization.

If your college or university conducts hybrid learning, are you prepared for some of its technical challenges? Many college classrooms are not equipped to instruct in-person and remote students simultaneously and are struggling to make it a worthwhile experience for all.

In worst-case scenarios, remote students might strain to see and hear professors and fellow students during lectures. They might feel left behind and struggle to pay attention. 

But your institution can get ahead of these issues by installing classroom technology that simplifies remote and hybrid learning. From lecture halls to auditoriums and small classrooms, everyone can see and hear to facilitate collaborative learning.

Here are some technologies and strategies that can improve your school’s remote learning!

Many of you reading this already understand edge computing, although it probably means different things to different people. By definition, edge computing is done at the edge of the network, close to the data source. In cloud computing, data is sent back to the cloud for processing. So is it just a fancy way of differentiating between distributed and centralized computing, some older terms for similar concepts? Perhaps, as the computer and software industries excel at developing new terminology for old concepts applied to new platforms. 

We joke a little here, but let's look at an example. Apple's fancy term for software-enhanced photography and computational photography is taking advantage of the considerable processing power of today's iPhones to do some serious editing, enhancement, and tricks with images. Could that be done in the cloud? Yes, as Google Photos does with any browser-equipped device. So what are the advantages of doing this at the edge? If you have the computational power, edge computing can enable faster, more responsive applications. And the less potentially sensitive information that has to travel back and forth from the cloud, the more secure the application.

Security is important in edge computing. And edge computing is important in network monitoring and management of AV devices in internal networks. You don't want all those inherently insecure devices directly connected to the internet, as they present many attack points into your network for would-be hackers. Instead, an edge appliance or computer sits at the "edge" of your network, monitoring and collecting information and sending it back to the cloud to aggregate into other management systems. But how do you ensure the security of the edge appliance sitting in your Scottsdale, AZ offices from the wild and woolly internet? That’s what we explore further in this blog post.

Your local courthouse or municipal building is a beacon for citizens that want to know more about what’s going on in their community. As the person in charge of audiovisual technology, you’re responsible for many things, including providing access to meetings, assistive listening in public spaces, or emergency notifications. Your audiovisual technology should be easy to use and work every time—especially for emergency meetings. Read on to learn more about AV solutions that can make your job easier and help government officials better serve their constituents.