Xantech's A/V Control Technology Used for Tour Center at Harley-Davidson Vehicle Operations Plant

The recently completed movie theater located within the brand new Vaughn L. Beals Tour Center at the Harley-Davidson Vehicle Operations plant in York, Pennsylvania, includes A/V control products from Xantech, a leader in the field of audio/video remote control and distribution for 40 years. SDK Electronics of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, outfitted the theater, where visitors begin the one-hour factory tour, installing a Xantech CSPLCD39G 3.9-inch Smartpad LCD Graphic Touchpanel and a WIC1200 Web Intelligent Controller to manage the presentation’s audio, video and lighting.

The Smartpad LCD Graphic Touchpanel and the WIC1200 in combination offer fully automated control of the movie presentation, which takes visitors through the famed motorcycle manufacturer’s history. The film starts with a single touch of the Xantech Touchpanel, explains Scott Koons, owner of SDK Electronics. “The system sits in idle mode until the tour guides bring the visitors in. They touch one button on the screen that says ‘play’ and the movie starts to run. The WIC box gets a signal, tells a Crestron lighting controller to dim the lights, and turns on an audio sense to the Blu-ray Disc player. As soon as it senses that audio is no longer present – in other words, the player is in full stop – it tells the Crestron to relight the room.”

The system is also programmed with an alternate mode for employee meetings. “When they hold a meeting in the theater they can touch a button that says ‘presentation’ and it will switch over to a presentation mode,” says Koons.

The Xantech products offered an affordable control solution for automating the theater’s A/V system, according to Koons. Although the system is relatively simple, the controller does need to support some specific interface capabilities. “I needed to have some way to automatically turn on the lights. The WIC1200 gave me the ability to do two-way communications as well as system status sensing.” A more complex and more costly unit was just not necessary, he adds: “It would have been overkill to spend that kind of money on a competing product for what little I needed to do, especially since the WIC box does everything I needed it to do for this system.”

The Xantech Touchpanel interfaces directly with the theater’s JVC projector. “The only codes we send to the projector are on, off and source select, so we use those straight out of the keypad because I don’t need any sense on that,” explains Koons, adding, “The only thing I need to send to the Lexicon DC2 processor is power on and source select.”

The rest of the theater’s audio system, which includes EAW loudspeakers in a 7.1 configuration with Crest amplification, is initiated through the use of a Surge X power sequencer.  A 159-inch 16:9 HDTV format Da-Lite fixed wall screen completes the A/V presentation setup.

Koons also installed a Xantech CSPLCD64G 6.4-inch Smartpad LCD Graphic Touchpanel in the employee cafeteria at the new plant. “They can hold 450-person meetings there. It has four screens, four projectors, a scaler and an SPLCD64 controlling it, along with a couple of relay packs and a 1x8 RS232 router.” 

The Harley-Davidson Vehicle Operations plant, established in York in 1973, assembles the company’s Soft Tail, Touring and Tri-Glide models. Following the demolition of 42 separate buildings and a year of construction, a brand new, robot-assisted manufacturing plant opened on the site on August 1, 2011, that combines all of its manufacturing lines and warehousing in one 600,000-square-foot facility. Over eight thousand tourists have reportedly visited the new Vaughn L. Beals Tour Center and toured the new factory in its first two months of operation.

For more information, please visit www.xantechcommercial.com.

NanoLumens® Appoints APG Displays As Its Exclusive Canadian Distributor

NanoLumens®, the pioneering Norcross, Georgia-based company that last year introduced the world’s first large format flexible LED display technology, today announced the appointment of APG Displays, of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, as its exclusive Canadian distributor, effective immediately, according to an announcement made by Rick Cope, President & CEO of NanoLumens, Inc. At the same time, NanoLumens announced that it was expanding its product line with the production of flexible LED displays in virtually any shape and size to meet customer requirements.

“APG Displays has two decades of experience supplying high impact display solutions for the temporary rental and permanent installation of innovative large screen video displays throughout Canada, which is a very important market for NanoLumens,” Cope said today. As Canada’s most complete professional audio-visual services provider, APG Displays delivers a complete solution, from the initial design and specification process right through to on-site technical assistance and troubleshooting. This is exactly the kind of commitment and support that will help drive our market growth in Canada.”

According to David Weatherhead, Vice President of APG Displays, “NanoLumens LED Flex Displays deliver a truly unique value proposition to both our rental and sales customers. NanoLumens' thin, lightweight displays represent years of research and development by some of the brightest minds in the global display industry. The result is a product without compromise whose unique attributes create a range of exciting new possibilities for integrators. Their technology is literally changing the face of our industry.”

First introduced in 2010, the NanoLumens LED Flex Display remains the only solution of its kind. It conforms to fit any surface, is thin, lightweight, and energy efficient, and can be mounted as easily as a work of art. The revolutionary NanoLumens LED Flex Display shattered the traditional usage limitations of large format LED displays.

According to Cope, the company’s flexible LED displays eliminate the structural requirements and limitations of traditional large format displays because they are so lightweight, and they are bright enough for any application while consuming significantly less energy than other display technologies.

NanoLumens’ LED Flex Displays can conform to concave and convex surfaces and even wrap around columns. They are made from seamless modules that introduce for the first time the possibilities of displaying in shapes other than squares and rectangles. At less than two inches thick, a 112-inch display weighs less than 90 pounds, making installation as easy as hanging a wall tapestry. By simplifying installation and lowering energy consumption, NanoLumens displays can drastically cut the cost of adding and maintaining a large format display for any application. And because all NanoLumens displays are sealed, fan-less, waterproof and dustproof, they are robust and durable. Compared with other current display technologies, LED technology is brighter, offers higher contrast and saturation, has a longer lifespan and can be repaired much more easily.

NanoLumens Flex Displays offer retail outlets, corporations, hotels, A/V rental companies, malls, transportation centers, stadiums and arenas of all sizes the world’s first lightweight, energy-efficient and completely configurable flexible display solution. The displays are the ideal solution for creating effective out-of-home advertising, exciting and unique trade show exhibits, and turning walls into digital architecture in corporate lobbies or at hotels and airports.

The company’s select installations include a curved-wall installation at NASCAR Media Television Studios in Charlotte, North Carolina, and an outdoor display at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. In addition, the company’s technology has been recognized by Entrepreneur magazine as a 2011 future-proof tech trend and was cited by The Wall Street Journal in its 2010 Technology Innovations Awards.

For more information about NanoLumens LED Flex Displays, please visit www.nanolumens.com or call (678) 421-9694.