Crestron Programming for Updated Voting System and Microphone Control

For this project, AVPA was brought in to replace the Nevada Legislative Building’s Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) system. The upgrade was part of a $15 million renovation of a building that was originally built in 1969 and had only gone through one major update since (in 1996). The Nevada Legislature is made up of the Assembly, with 42 members, and the Senate, with 21 members. Both houses use the Nevada Legislative Building, which contains offices, several committee rooms used to discuss issues, as well as chambers for both the Assembly and the Senate.

The aging PLC system that we were replacing had been used for many years to control the voting systems, paging systems, and microphones in the chambers and committee rooms. This type of system utilizes mechanical push buttons, which members used to do things like mute their own microphones, ask for assistance, and vote during chamber meetings. The various committee rooms also used mechanical buttons for microphone control.

Our team programmed a new Crestron system to replace the old PLC system. The new system allows members to use individual TSW-560 touchpanels for tasks such as voting, requesting permission to speak, microphone muting, and requesting assistance. Voting results are available in real time, displayed on overhead projection displays in the chambers.

We used a separate Crestron PRO4 processor for each of the two legislative chambers and were able to utilize the existing PRO3 system for the committee rooms. They interface with a system that has nine monitoring stations that can be used by legislative personnel to oversee the meetings in the chambers and committee rooms. From these monitoring stations, staff can control cameras, microphones, and video conferencing systems.

One of the unique challenges in this project was interfacing with the business logic of the existing system. The building has proprietary systems to manage their meetings, keep order, vote, and log information. We employed C# for many of the business interfaces that are now available on the Crestron platform.

Throughout the course of this project, we worked closely with the Legislative Council Bureau (LCB) of Nevada. The LCB is a nonpartisan agency that serves both houses of the Nevada legislature in a variety of ways—from providing administrative support to conducting policy research. They have their own IT, hardware installation, and business programming services in house, and we were able to form a strong working relationship with their personnel to keep the project moving forward. Our principal contact at the LCB found AVPA on the Crestron website and hired us based on our extensive experience providing Crestron programming for government projects and because of our headquarters’ proximity to the project. Since then, we have been able to provide the LCB with system design, project estimation, as well as programming and debugging services.

Services

• Crestron System Programming
• User Interface Design and Development
• System Commissioning

Project Profile

Provide Crestron programming to control microphones, voting systems, and paging functions in the Legislative chambers and committee rooms.
Type: Crestron Control Programming
Category: Government