Voting System Control, Meeting Management, and More

The Riverside County Board of Supervisors had a need for a centralized control system infrastructure for their Administration Center and Board Chambers. The Board of Supervisors is the governing body of the County of Riverside, California, responsible for enacting ordinances and resolutions, adopting the county’s annual budget, determining land use zoning for unincorporated areas, and appointing certain County officers and members of certain boards and commissions. Their building is host to many different types of meetings with diverse and specialized audiovisual needs.

AVPA was tasked with programming the Crestron system that would provide centralized control of the building’s video and audio, meeting management, and lighting systems.

The end result was a set of new control systems and displays that work with the building’s pre-existing audio system. In this project, AVPA also integrated the Board of Supervisors’ new online voting system with a new high definition video switching system that can display meeting content and voting results. In addition, the building’s lighting can be controlled from the system, with several different pre-set lighting scenes to choose from.

Easy Meeting Set-Up and Management with Crestron Programming

With their new system, a meeting administrator can select from various defined meeting types, and with the touch of a button, set up meeting displays and meeting participants. New meeting types can be added at any time through an easy-to-operate interface.

Video and audio switching is virtually seamless with the new Crestron control system. Content from computers, cameras, DVDs, etc. are easily routed to video archives, the County website’s live video stream, as well as to two cable carriers and local displays.

A key function of the system, requested by the client, is the ability to control from a centralized location the 48 microphones used during meetings, 35 of which are dedicated to meeting delegates.

The system allows for “Open Meetings,” in which speakers can control the use of their own microphones from a delegate keypad, and also a mode in which speakers must request to speak and add themselves to a queue, controlled by the meeting’s chairman. When a speaker is next in the queue, his keypad will blink and when his turn comes up in the queue, his or her keypad is illuminated. The chairman has complete control over the queue and is able to move speakers up or down in the queue, as well as remove them from the queue.

There is also a timer for public speakers that is controlled by the chairman that provides a visual prompt to the speaker of their allotted time. When their remaining time is within 30 seconds of expiring, it turns red.  Once their time has expired, the microphone is automatically muted. This system gives a greater level of control to meeting administrators. It also helps meetings stay on schedule and allows them to be conducted in a more orderly fashion.