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UDOT Traffic Operations Center

General Communications worked with the Utah Department of Transportation to integrate one of the nations most technically advanced Traffic Operations Centers. The system was built with tight time schedules and high security prior to the Salt Lake Olympic Winter Games. The system’s basic technologies include:

The purpose for the Traffic Operations Center was to take 150 cameras from carious points in the valley, take their video feeds, send them via fiber optic cable in a self healing loop so that each camera had a redundant video output. If one wire were cut, then the video signal would go another direction. It came via fiber to the UDOT traffic facility at which point it ran into a transceiver that converted it from a fiber into a analog video signal. At this point, the analog video signal was sent to our video switch which was a 200 input by 300 output video switch. This is where General Communications took over at this end. The video signal went into an A/V switch that would auto sense when video signal was present, and if the video signal was ever lost on the A Channel, it would automatically switch to the B Channel thereby giving the redundancy that they require. The signal was then sent into the 300x200 video switch, a matrix switch that allowed them to send any input to any output. As far as the output goes, there were 12 video projectors on one video wall, so 12 screens put together with a very small seam in between each seem. They also had a larger screen on the left and right of this screen that would allow them to look at any given image in a large format. They also have the ability to take this large screen, consisting of the 12 screens, and make it one big video screen. For instance, it could be like a monitor with multiple windows open in it. It could either show simply video on any one of those screens, or on all of the screens that would be one big image—either high resolution or video image.

The other outputs that the video switch went to various points around the building allowing video feeds to be fed into other rooms and shown to larger audiences as well as sending the video signal into individual offices whereby those people in the offices could view the video on their computers. We also had a close circuit television system with cable feeds that would allow them to view any channel they would like in their offices by simply changing the channel with their keyboards. This gave them the opportunity to not only watch various cable channels, but also there were VCRs that were fed into the switch which allowed them to send video images up to the various offices for training. In this closed circuit television system, there were 6 modulators and channel elimination filters. The modulators allowed us to send the video image from the VCRs as well as from various tuners onto their network. This would allow them to put any presentation they would like on any channel of the closed circuit television and then the employees would simply change channels to view it.

There was a feed from a camera in the front lobby which allowed them to monitor what was going on in the front lobby. Also, the outputs of the switch sent video to the internet so local residents would be able to simply pull up the internet and see what the traffic is like at any location at any given time. They also have the ability to control the cameras from their desktop, so with their mouse and keyboard, the employees could pan, tilt, zoom, and focus the cameras around the valley.

Other outputs of the video switch went to quad displays on various consoles attended by the traffic engineers. They could support any 4 images on a video monitor at their desk at any given time and watch those closely as well as tell the switch to tour through various camera feeds and allow them to monitor larger areas of traffic around the city.

Also included in this system on one of the large screens on the video wall was a feed from the National Weather Service which would allow the traffic operators to anticipate incidences before they actually happened by monitoring the weather. So when bad weather would come to a particular area in the State, they could see that there would be high probability that there would be accidents and deploy workers to that location actually before the accidents happen.

There are Training Rooms associated with this system that had an interactive whiteboard, such as a SmartBoard, as well as video feeds where they could do training for the traffic engineers before they came on full time. As far as the structure for the projectors, there was a system built that was three levels high that had four projectors on each level. Each one of those levels had an electrical lift on it, allowing us to pick up any one of the projectors, roll them to a central location and lower and raise them through the structure—facilitating repair and so forth.

In addition to this system, we installed a Television Studio that was fully capable with a production switchers, frame sync generators, monitors, video switchers, and so forth as needed for a fully functional Production Studio. The non-linear editor was mainly used for doing training tapes for different departments in the Traffic Control Center.