Las Vegas, NV (April 20, 2009) – The North Penn School District Media Services department has extended the boundaries of creativity to include the engineering side of their television production capabilities. Since incorporating Telemetrics’ Coax Link Camera Control system, the department can more readily capture the action of the school’s activities at every location.

 

“Prior to implementing the Coax Link system, we would use our mobile truck to cover events at the high school, and this meant pulling it up to the nearest outside door to the gymnasium or the pool and running our big multi-core camera cables in the door,” said Bob Gillmer, North Penn School District’s Coordinator of Communications Media Services. “Now, we simply move the cameras to where we need them and connect the coax camera adapter locally to the coax cable.”

 

The North Penn School District is located approximately 20 miles north of Philadelphia, PA. The School District’s Media Services department operates and manages North Penn Television, which is the school district’s 24/7 cable station to the community, offered through Verizon and Comcast. The Media Services Department also has an internal district-wide channel which they run 24/7, through the school’s television program curriculum.

 

Cable programming includes coverage of the monthly school board meetings, most of the high school varsity sports, including football, field hockey, boys and girls soccer, boys and girls lacrosse, wrestling, boys and girls swimming, boys and girls basketball and ice hockey. Middle school concerts and events at the administrative offices or elementary schools are also covered by the Media Services department. The school events are aired live or on tape the next day to the educational access channels.

 

According to Gillmer, the Telemetric Coax Link Camera Control systems are used both in the mobile production truck and in the studio. Each site includes the Telemetrics Camera Control Units, model 55C-BS, to control each of the Hitachi 4000 cameras, which are moved between the two locations as required. The cameras are equipped with the Telemetrics Camera Adapters, model 55C-CA.

 

A snow storm one February prompted a discussion on a new way of covering events at the high school. “I was sitting in 6 degree weather with a snow drift accumulating on the side of the production truck, when it dawned on me that my control was only 900 feet away,” said Gillmer. “It was a heck of a lot warmer inside the school.”

 

Overall, Gillmer reports that approximately 20,000 feet of RG-11 cable was installed throughout the high school, the three middle schools and the administrative building. At each of the remote locations, the junction box is located on the outside of the building and all they have to do is pull up with the truck and plug in.

 

“One of the real strengths of this system is the cost,” said Gillmer. “The triax system was similarly priced but the cost of the cable would have been too much. Damaged cables and ends can be repaired and replaced much more readily on coax.”

 

Gillmer goes on to say that they were also able to reduce expenses when they put the I/O panel on the side of the truck. “Instead of putting an expensive, multi-core chassis mount on the panel for each of the five cameras, we were able to put BNC connectors on the I/O panel,” he said. “The cost savings continued with these inter-connections within the studio and the truck. The system made a lot of sense in so many ways.”

 

The Telemetrics Coax Link Camera Control system uses frequency multiplexing for signal transmission and the single cable connection between the base station and camera adapter provides optimum ease of use. Additional options are available for pan/tilt control, non-docking adapters and HD fiber applications.