Voyager School, Peterborough

Feltech Provide Specialist Audio & Video Facilities for Voyager School, Peterborough

The new Voyager School in Walton, Peterborough opened its doors to pupils and teachers the week commencing 10^th September 2007. The school was handed over on the 3^rd September – a week ahead of schedule.

The Voyager School

The School is a PFI project, providing state of the art facilities for pupils and teachers aged 11 to 19. A landmark building, Voyager School has a high level of environmental efficiency combined with flexible facilities, organised around a central ‘street’ which showcases the arts facilities. The school also includes a sports hall, assembly hall, ICT areas, a nursery, along with a restaurant to be open 12 hours a day to encourage wider community involvement.

The school has achieved specialist status as a media arts college, providing pupils with access to Recording, Dance and Drama Studios.

Feltech were awarded the contract after being recommended by Hewshott International Independent Consultants, who put together the initial document for the project. Feltech’s brief was to provide system design, equipment supply and installation for the assembly hall, assembly hall main mixing position, drama, dance, and music performance areas, science lecture theatre, The Street, café/dining area, lobby area, waiting area, a mobile video conferencing system, TV distribution system, sports hall and an outdoor speaker system.

The ‘Street’

Main Assembly Hall

The main assembly hall is used to host large assemblies, drama and dance productions, musical performances as well as local community events such as theatre productions, seminars and DVD screenings. Two control positions were provided to facilitate this. One at the rear of the room was used for large-scale events; where the audio was controlled by an Allen & Heath GL3800 32-Channel Audio Mixer. Comprehensive patch-panels and tie-lines were provided to allow the routing of audio and video to multiple points within the hall. A secondary mixing position was also provided to one side of the hall, to be used for smaller scale productions.

For small presentations and to enable simple operation; the projector, lighting, video and audio systems were all controllable from a Crestron wireless touch panel. This allowed the assembly hall to be used from a variety of positions. A second touch panel was also provided to enable operation of the projector, lighting, video and audio systems from the main control room.

The Main Control Room

The audio needed to be of a very high quality, so Tannoy speakers were chosen to get the best possible result from the versatile number of uses the room was to be put to. The microphone system chosen was Opus 900 from Beyer Dynamic - the first in the country to be installed. As part of the system Feltech specified metal belt packs as part of the wireless system – initially a more expensive option but given the potentially rough handling they receive a wise investment by the school!

Science Lecture Theatre

The Science Lecture Theatre is used for presentations, lectures and video conferencing, providing the lecturer with the ability to tutor other classes over the video conferencing system.

The system was designed around the use of a Crestron control system, two Panasonic PT-D3500E DLP projectors, Polycom Videoconferencing and Extron matrices and infrastructure. A Clearone XAP800 was used for audio-conferencing. A Wolfvision Eye-10 high definition, live-image camera was ceiling mounted to provide close-up, detailed pictures of the bench area.

The two Panasonic projectors were designed to work independently of one another, enabling the lecturer, during video conferencing calls, to view both the far end and local sources simultaneously. The Crestron touch panel was used to control the video conferencing unit and its cameras.

Music and Drama Performance Areas

The music performance area is used predominately for staging musical performances and live bands. This room is also used for live PA work. The audio system that was required for this space needed to be mobile, so Feltech provided a flight-case system, housing the audio mixer, amp and CD-Player. Tannoy Speakers were mounted on portable stands.

Similar systems were also used in the Drama Performance areas.

Portable Audio System

TV Distribution

The school also needed to distribute TV and Video around the building. Feltech recommended the use of Exterity to provide an IPTV solution. By installing Exterity equipment it was possible to take Digital Terrestrial and Satellite TV straight from the broadcaster via the aerial or satellite dish and distribute it over the local area network, to any network point. Users can then view the channel on a LCD or plasma screen using an Exterity set-top box, or directly to a network connected PC using an Exterity software application. In addition other video feeds, such as DVD or camcorder footage, could also be distributed in this way

Café and Other Areas

In other areas such as the Café and Gym, Feltech supplied and installed numerous LCD Screens linked to the TV Distribution System.

Project Valuation:     £396,000.00

Project Director:       Peter Fell

For more information please contact Steve Watson on 01727 834888

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