Interact with the lecturer as if you were sitting in a seminar: Driven by the lockdown, the TU Ilmenau implemented an AV system that enabled students all over the world to participate in lectures and seminars.

“The main focus was to connect 10 seminar rooms so that everyone has the true feeling of being in one room and can communicate freely with each other.”

The project at a glance

The challenge

Is it possible to network 10 seminar rooms with an AV&C system to replicate the feeling of an in-person seminar?

To enable hybrid teaching during access restrictions like lockdown, two lecture halls, with 600 and 300 seats, were initially equipped with a video conferencing system. The system was intended to provide equal access to classes for faculty and students both on campus and off-site.

After the successful hybridisation of the two large lecture halls, the solution was expanded to include the TU’s 10 seminar rooms.

The special requirement: The AV&C technology was to replicate an in-person seminar feeling, i.e. real-time communication between all participants.

The new features were to be integrated seamlessly into the existing technology, so as not to create any additional work for either the technical staff or the lecturers.

The new control elements had to be foolproof, with an easy to operate user interface.

The solution

For the large lecture halls, the existing AV system was supplied with Q-SYS PTZ cameras and Sennheiser ceiling microphones. These transmit not only the lecturer’s image and speech, but also enable communication from the audience present in the hall so that no information is lost, and content is seamlessly delivered to the connected students at home.

To enable realistic interaction for all participants despite their distribution over several rooms, the seminar rooms were fully networked with each other.

An AV&C system consisting of ceiling microphones, Q-SYS PTZ cameras and Q-SYS TSC control panels ensures that voice messages from each room reach all other seminar rooms as well as students participating virtually.

Dynamic and interactive communication was made possible in the ten seminar rooms, each with seats for thirty to forty people.

For the lecturer who operates and controls the AV&C system with ease, the complexity of the system is unnoticeable.

Solution components

• Core 510i 
• Core 100f 
• Core Nano 
• AD-S6T 
• SPA2-200 
• PTZ20x60
• PTZ12x72
• NV-32-H 
• TSC-116W-G2-BK 

The result

The sophisticated AV&C system enables equal and barrier-free learning at the TU Ilmenau, even now outside of Lockdown.

The networking between the seminar rooms lets teachers transmit lecture content from one room to another as well as simultaneously to external participants. The camera image can also be transmitted to any display.

The UCI on the control panels has a bespoke design which displays all essential room functionalities for the lecturers without requiring any special assistance, making the control intuitive and easy to operate, even for inexperienced users.

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