So I looked at the photo gallery from yesterday and it didn’t capture the LED’s and center hung display unit as I would have liked. So I busted out the Flip camera and headed over today to shoot some shaky video. I uploaded it at HD resolution, so you should be able to embiggenfy. Enjoy.
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Crunch time.
As rapid as the pace has been the last 7 months, I don’t think that anything can compare to what’s gone at at Consol the last two weeks.
Big time convergence – and I don’t mean just from a tech standpoint. Rather, all of the different sub-contractors are completing their work for final inspections and we’ve begun to see how these different systems finally will work together — or in some cases, how they will not. On a project of this size, you are always going to have small gaps in scopes and that’s what we’re working on now. Things that have slipped through the cracks the past few months are now coming to the forefront. Training has to be wedged in. Content is finally being created after what seems like years of discussion.
Fret not, I’m not talking about a huge fire here, but more like 100 little brush fires. They are easily handled, but you still have to put out each one. The result? I think I’ve spent a total of 15 minutes at my desk this week not counting being an active participant in conference calls or meeting with someone in my office.
So whats new? ANC Sports and Mitsubishi are doing the the commissioning on the LED fascia rings. Looks incredible. ANC will have there creative team in today to meet with the Marketing and Presentation staff and start to iron out the imagery. Some images in the photo gallery of the LED with some generic logo animations on it.
I also got to see the LED in the Trib Entry gate for the first time. Pretty impressive. This thing will run during business hours every day, as I imagine that entrance will always be open since the team store is in there.
Almost all of the TV’s are installed and being configured with the Cisco Stadium Vision setup. I know I’ve raved about the amount of TV’s, and I don’t think I’ve done it justice. Once you see them all lit up – even with just color bars – it’s really impressive. Even caught me off guard.
Amazing to think we’re 1 month away from substantial completion. I remember the sick feeling we all had in the construction trailer, where we’ve had a countdown clock since the trailer went in, when we clicked 180 days. Where did it go?
Sound system starts to get balanced next Tuesday. I know I still owe the audiophiles a rundown on the room, and I promise that it’s on it’s way.
As you’ve probably read or heard, we’ll be moving the goal horn from Mellon Arena over to Consol Energy Center. Initially it was planned to install a new unit, but after some thought and a unanimous vote from front office, hockey operations staff, and a “C”ertain player, we decided to bring it over. And wow does it resonate at Consol. They started testing it when I was still parked on Lemieux Place under the arm of the dome and I could here it from there.
Saw the visitors locker room as well. Too nice. We should have used pink wood or something.
Stuff!
Finally made it back down to the entry mez area (where the Trib All-Time Team setup is going to be) to check out the new LED boards that were installed there. Looks a lot bigger than it did on the drawings. I believe that this area is going to be open to the public most of the day, so it’s going to run pretty non-stop. This strip is right above the team store and runs almost the entire length of the facade.
As always, I’m amazed at the sheer amount of LED in this building. To think that we have a total of about 400 linear feet at Mellon Arena, and we have more that 1000 feet per ring on the 360 fascia alone.
To the right, you can see the VisionSoft interface from ANC Sports that we’ll use torun most of the LED in the building.
VisionSoft’s power lies in it’s ability to show multiple LED units and let one operator get a total look at what’s going on in this system by having “virtual displays” on the monitor. In short, it’s pretty cool.
For the LED in the entry mez area and the spine, however we’re going to use a setup from Scala to keep things going. While VisionSoft is really a revolutionary product in the LED world, Scala handles long-term programming very well. The intention is to run venue and event information as well as news headlines and most likely some founding sponsor inventory. We will switch these displays to the VisionSoft system during game time so they can be tied in with the rest of the presentation.
In case you missed it, PensTV posted an updated time lapse of the construction site:
http://penguins.nhl.tv/team/embed.jsp?catid=19&id=72562
Finally, I want to pop in a plug for one of the sites that inspired me to do this one. Glen Gower is the director of event presentation (probably not his exact title) for the Ottawa Senators and does a great blog that covers a lot of game presentation and sports entertainment. He’s always timely with the updates and always seems to find great articles. Check out http://ggower.blogspot.com if you get a chance.
Evolutions
Thanks to Tony @TheConfluence for pointing out that dust was collecting here. It’s always great to have your support. 
So some updates. Black ice tests last week to check the chillers. From all indications, everything went well and there was nice even temperature across the ice.
The concession stands are looking pretty good — all of the signs are backlit, and as most of you saw on the EyeSee360 camera, the Primanti Brothers sign looks good enough to eat. A lot of finish work going on right now, and even from a few weeks ago the building looks much, much more finished. I promise some pictures this week.
Diversified Systems upped their presence the last two weeks as we continue the heavy commissioning and configuration of the control room. So far, we’ve only had to make minor adjustments and things are going well. To the right you can see the Ross switcher and part of the multi-viewer wall. We think that we should try to program a Lets Go Pens on the buttons, since you can change the colors to pretty much any color on the planet.
We also set up the EVS Replay, Chyron HyperX3 CG, and Crossfire video playback.
The last big news – and if you walk near 5th Avenue by the arena you know this already — they’ve taken the gates down at the Center/5th avenue side of the building. Take a walk on your lunch hour and you can get a nice feel for how the CEC blends in to the neighborhood.
So back to the title of this post. When I launched this blog, I had intended not just to talk about the CEC, but to also discuss the world of content creation and digital media production. I’ve slacked on that, and turned into a general update blog on Consol — which has been fine. I’ve really enjoyed bringing the updates to you, and have been overwhelmed by the amount of visitors and uniques. I’ll still continue to do the updates, but I also hope to write a little more on some other topics that interest me. I’ve had a lot of great email discussions with people on these other topics, and simply hope to bring a little more of that into the fold here.
For The Audio Geeks
So a couple requests today to give some love to the audio room. Well, here you go.
There’s lots of shiny stuff in there. A couple things have some really really cool blinking lights. There’s this giant thing that says Yamaha on it that I believe is very very important to the arena. I thought they only made motorcycles. Learn something every day!
Seriously, I don’t have time to go deep into the audio room tonight, but I wanted to get some pictures posted. Give me a couple days and I’ll give some more detail. I also want to talk to the guys from TSI to make sure I’m accurate on everything. We didn’t have as much to do with the audio as we did with the video, so I’m still getting a grasp on the system
It is nice having it right next to the control room. At Mellon the main soundboard, amps, etc were one level below us. We had another operator in our control room doing a sub-mix.
Also, some photos from the concert announcement last week.