THE CHALLENGE
Jerry Shanar of Sixth Sense Solutions got his start in the industry by helping friends and family in the Houston area navigate security and AV technology required for their businesses. He’s now been working with retailers, restaurants, and bars across Southeast Texas for over a decade – and in the process, he’s learned to gently guide clients across they chasm between what they say they want, and what they actually need. So when a new client came to him with dreams of largescale display, he was prepared.
The owners of BarKada had a vision for a sports bar with great food and dynamic game-day atmosphere – they wanted to be a hub for football games and host UFC watch parties. The owners thought projector system would fit the bill. As Shanar and Sixth Sense came onto the project, they looked around at the ambient lighting, the sightlines, and the 35 other direct view displays in the bar, and immediately realized that a projected image wouldn’t have the impact the owners desired. Instead, they were able to convince the owners that a full videowall with commercial video panels would be a better choice to optimize viewing and to blend with the rest of the 35 TVs in the bar.
THE SOLUTION
Knowing that the bar needed to be able to distribute multiple sources, Shanar turned to Vanco’s EVO-IP video matrix.
Shanar chose EVO-IP because of the benefits to the integrator as well as the customer: “EVO-IP’s remote access has saved our company a ton of time and money,” he adds. “It’s easy to hop in remotely to troubleshoot any issues, and it saves us from having to rolling a truck. Vanco’s tech support is also fantastic. Anytime I have hit a roadblock, they’re responsive and work with our team to get it resolved quickly.”
The reward for good work is more work. Six months after finishing the initial project, Sixth Sense was called back. BarKada’s dream of a lively local hotspot had come true: they found that their clientele was enjoying more nightlife at the bar and wanted to expand to accommodate DJs and a karaoke room. They needed the videowall moved into a new location as part of the expansion.
While assembling the video wall again was tedious, adding new sources to the EVO-IP matrix was not. EVO-IP’s built-in functionality made it seamless for Sixth Sense to accommodate the new source needs: the GUI automatically detects new devices in the system. Adding further functionality for both dealers and users, EVO-IP allows for customized labels and names of sources and displays, making the matrix straightforward to navigate.
THE RESULTS
The owners of BarKada love the video matrix so much, they asked Sixth Sense to install a system in one of their other restaurants, which until that point was operating with a mess of HDMI cables and somewhere between seven and eight different HDMI splitters.
