Medical Teams International: "Real Life Exhibit"
An exhibit you can tour and learn about their work and the needs of the people they assist located in Redmond, Washington.
At the "Real Life Exhibit" from Medical Teams International, the lighting in the exhibit is no longer working properly. Without the theatrical lighting, the exhibit must function under work lights which require a long warmup time (similar to what you’d find in a high school gymnasium) and the space does not have the same dramatic effect upon its visitors. The existing lighting system had been improvised and installed by several people who no longer worked at Medical Teams. They were using an iPad with software that was no longer supported to run the exhibit on a network that had been maintained by it’s creators. Without their continued maintenance on their network, the system had fallen into a state of disrepair, and without any records of how it had been constructed.
Type of Work: Lighting & Control
Our solution? Upon arriving onsite, PNTA determined that the software being used was no longer supported, and the network no longer reachable by the older model iPad. We sought a solution which would avoid constant upkeep and obsolescence at a cost-effective price point. To get the exhibit up and running quickly, we patched in a rental lighting console as a temporary fix and were able to manually copy over all DMX output values from the previous system. The exhibit ran on an ETC Element Console from our rental fleet for approximately 3 weeks while we implemented a solution using a very small ETC ECHO System. Once the parts arrived, they were installed in just a few hours. Because we had already copied the DMX values to the console, programing was as simple as recording a snapshot of the console’s DMX output onto the ECHO System using the DMX Scene Controller. The entire exhibit lighting rig now functions with one simple button press.
One button is a much simpler solution than they had before, where someone needed to charge up the iPad, connect it to their wireless network, and then set a variety of settings to get lights on. The solution did not require any IT professionals or network security, as it runs on a discrete ECHO system. Their previous system did not, which is a bit of a vulnerability when unmanaged. Should Medical Teams’ Real Life Exhibit ever need any further assistance in the future, we have a complete backup of the DMX output stored on file, so it would only take minutes onsite to re-upload if needed.