SDVoE Technology Delegates Expandable AV-over-IP Distribution for the Virginia Senate

Created by the 1776 Constitution of Virginia, the Senate of Virginia is composed of 40 senators representing an equal number of single-member constituent districts. Alongside the Virginia House of Delegates, the Virginia Senate forms the legislative branch of the Virginia state government. It works alongside the governor of Virginia to create laws and establish a state budget. A Virginia Senator represents approximately 200,000 citizens of the Commonwealth. The Lieutenant Governor is the Senate presiding officer, pursuant to the Constitution of Virginia. The legislative responsibilities of the Virginia Senate include passing bills on public policy matters, determining levels of state spending, raising and lowering taxes, voting to uphold or override gubernatorial vetoes, and other important legislative duties to represent the citizens of the Commonwealth.

Recently, Virginia officials unveiled a new office building for the Virginia General Assembly, a project years in the making for America’s oldest legislative body. The building, named the General Assembly Building (GAB), features spacious meeting rooms, modern technology, food services and other amenities and public spaces to welcome guests to visit and participate in the legislative process. Additionally, the new building will better ensure legislative processes and the people’s business is conducted in a more timely, accessible and transparent manner.

Challenge

The nearly $300 million project creates a necessary home for the members of the Virginia Senate, including assembly chambers, committee rooms and individual offices for each member. There’s new technology throughout designed to help the people of Virginia see and influence what their elected representatives are doing in Richmond. Lincoln King-Cliby, commercial market director for ControlWorks Consulting, explained, “The Senate of Virginia required a new, scalable audiovisual system that would last them for years to come. We’ve had a relationship with the Virginia Senate for 17 years, and we’re thrilled they’ve selected us to oversee the technology integration in the new General Assembly Building.”

King-Cliby added, “The General Assembly Building is unique because it’s not a square audiovisual system. We required significantly more inputs than outputs. Additionally, we wanted to harness AV-over-IP technology because of the flexible and scalable design that it supports.”

The Senate of Virginia wanted to integrate a solution that met the current video standards requirements for high-definition video. The audiovisual system needed to be upward scalable to 4K video and provide the ability to distribute video throughout the building, including many of the individual meeting rooms and large public areas. Additionally, the video needed to be seamlessly delivered to the Virginia State Capitol nearby.

Solution

ControlWorks Consulting designed an easy-to-use, scalable solution that enabled the Virginia Senate to distribute high-resolution video across the General Assembly Building and the Virginia State Capitol. To meet the requirements of the Virginia Senate, ControlWorks Consulting selected an AV-over-IP solution from IDK America. IDK America’s IP-NINJAR, powered by SDVoE Technology, provided an expandable, flexible and reliable solution.

“We integrated IDK America’s IP-NINJAR to meet the requirements of technical performance and reliability,” noted King-Cliby. “The IP-NINJAR supports video distribution in many of the rooms, including the individual meeting rooms and large public viewing areas, and equipment rack rooms. The IP-NINJAR is unique because it’s based on ASIC chipsets that power SDVoE products and solutions, which enables a small, form-factor design that allows us to integrate the devices in podiums or under desks without requiring a lot of space.”

King-Cliby added, “The IP-NINJAR reduced traditional power consumption to create an environmentally friendly solution, too. Most importantly, the IP-NINJAR is incredibly expandable, allowing us to add more endpoints as the client’s needs change. If they want to send video elsewhere or add additional rooms, we can easily integrate additional endpoints to support the new requirements.”

SDVoE technology, as implemented through IDK America’s IP-NINJAR Series, allowed for high-quality, expandable video distribution across all displays throughout the General Assembly Building and Virginia State Capitol to create a reliable, high-performance visual experience for legislators and the public.

Benefits of SDVoE Technology

SDVoE reaches beyond existing standards to provide benefits no other technology can claim:

  • A complete ecosystem – SDVoE Alliance members are manufacturers with expertise in signal distribution, display manufacture, IT infrastructure, chip design and AV software. The integrator has dozens of partners to align with and products to choose from.
  • A flexible yet simple software platform – the SDVoE API allows rapid development of highly specialized software, custom-tailored to the needs of a vast array of end users.
  • A full OSI stack solution – only SDVoE offers the simplicity of a complete top to bottom solution, fully encompassing infrastructure, transport, processing, and a simple control layer.

For more information on the SDVoE Alliance, please visit www.sdvoe.org. Keep up with the latest news from the SDVoE Alliance on LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.

SDVoE Alliance® is a registered trademark and SDVoE™ and SDVoE API™ are trademarks of the SDVoE Alliance. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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