Michigan college uses RS-232 adapters to network 100+ projectors

Device drastically reduces costs and makes large-scale projector networking practical

I know a Fortune 500 technology firm that, just two years ago, spent over a million dollars to install a 21-classroom networked AV system. They did it to speed up support while minimizing the need for technical staff.

This year Lansing Community College in Michigan will do essentially the same thing in 140 classrooms for just $45,000.

Is this an apples to apples comparison? Well, no, but that's just the point. The technology firm ripped out almost all of their existing AV and replaced it from scratch. Lansing was able to reuse what was already installed by simply adding an interface box and a network connection. The technology firm put almost every AV component onto a networked control system; Lansing networked only their projectors. Yet if we compare the cost and functionality of each networked classroom, Lansing got probably 90% of the value for less than 1% of the cost.

Choosing a system

Lansing Community is not your father's community college. It's the nation's ninth largest single-campus community college, with over 26,000 students. Dennis Clark and Martin Pennoni, the school's Chief Video Engineer and Director of Media Services, respectively, pride themselves on offering the very best educational technology. In addition to the classroom systems, they run a television studio, broadcast radio station and distance learning operation. They do all of their own design, engineering and installation for these systems.

As they began planning their networked classrooms, Clark and Pennoni considered replacing at least their older projectors with new networkable models. The problem, though, was not just the cost. "The software is the key to making these systems work," says Clark. "Just one other manufacturer said they can do what we need to do here. But I went a little further in my questions and they kept answering, 'we don't know, we don't know, we haven't determined that yet.'"

"That's where we came back to Sharp," says Pennoni. "I challenged Dennis about a year ago: why are we just buying Sharp? There are a lot of other good projectors out there. But he showed me how Sharp already had what the industry says is the best network software, already written, already tested, already working on their higher-end models. So what I wanted to do was see if there was any way to use that, not only with new projectors but with some of the older models we already had."

The Moxa solution

At NAB last year Clark and Pennoni began talking to Sharp system engineer Dennis Brown, who told them the company was in the process of testing products that would allow a serial-capable interface to establish communications between the projector and a PC on an ethernet network. Using Brown's suggestions, Clark and his technical staff began their own testing and settled on the Moxa NPort Express, which Sharp independently came to agree was the best to use with their S.A.P.S. projector-control software. (S.A.P.S., or "Sharp's Advanced Presentation Software" is packed with every Sharp projector and can be downloaded for free from smart.sharplcd.com.) Clark has been running one classroom with the Moxa box and S.A.P.S. since August and is now in the process of installing more. His goal is to have 140 classroom projectors on the network by fall.

Clark and Pennoni see three major advantages of networking projectors using S.A.P.S.

1. Support. It's faster and less costly to support instructors from a help desk rather than sending someone in person, especially since staff at Lansing have eleven buildings to cover on campus plus two satellite locations. They have found that they can solve most problems by remote control. For example, an instructor will forget to select an input and wonder why the video isn't on the screen. The problem may or may not be obvious when described on the phone, but it generally is very obvious when the technician looks at the projector settings on S.A.P.S. He then has the option to tell the instructor how to solve the problem or simply fix it himself from his PC.

2. Maintenance. In a network this large and this busy, keeping track of issues like lamp and filter replacement times can be a big job. Quality issues, especially those caused by unauthorized adjustments, can be as well. "One of the problems in higher education," says Clark, "is that some instructors don't want interference in their classrooms. So this is a way to do the diagnostics without interrupting the teaching. We can even go through once a week or once a day if we want to and be able to take a look at the projector settings."

3. Lamp life. "Let's put this in perspective," says Pennoni. "We have instructors who leave our projectors on all night and that costs us time and money, especially since those bulbs cost $400 or $500 apiece. Now we have a program that says at 11 p.m. all of our projectors turn off."

Saving money is, of course, the biggest reason most people will install networked projectors. In a retrofitted setup like this, the savings can be extreme. "We can't afford $8, $9, or $10,000 per projector," says Pennoni. "But the cost to network all this, not including our staff labor, is probably only about $300 a box. That's for a system that's backward compatible to our Sharp C40s, C30s and even our Sharp P20s. When we saw that this could be done, we immediately went out and bought another 80 Sharp projectors."

And the labor cost? "My labor payback is probably less than a year, just in what we'll save by solving problems by phone instead of sending somebody out. Of course, you can't really quantify what we'll gain by minimizing teacher downtime. We can generally have a problem solved immediately, as opposed to the five or ten minutes it takes to send someone across campus."

Limitations of the Moxa adapter

According to Clark and Pennoni, there are only two significant limitations to the NPort Express. One is that it allows only 100 devices to talk to a PC. "We're going to have to have two different laptops or some kind of switching matrix to control all of our projectors. But that's an easy work-around," says Clark. The second is that the device eats up the RS-232 input on the projector. Clark solved that problem by switching the Extron control units he had installed in each classroom to infrared (thus controlling the projectors through their infrared connector). It would also have been possible to add another Extron device to route two different RS-232 serial signals into the projector. Clark felt the infrared solution, already part of the controllers they had, would be adequate for the control they wanted their teachers to have.

All-in-all, they are very pleased with the Moxa adapters and the S.A.P.S. software. Pennoni is especially happy with the solution as the college begins construction of a new campus four miles away in Delta Township. "We'll be able to have everything that we can do right now out in Delta. But we don't want to have a separate staff out there. We'll be able to do everything remotely."

I asked Pennoni if he really expected to be able to support a separate campus using S.A.P.S. and the Moxa connections. He answered simply, "you'd be surprised how well it actually works."