From the DARPA website:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). It manages and directs selected basic and applied research and development projects for DoD, and pursues research and technology where risk and payoff are both very high and where success may provide dramatic advances for traditional military roles and missions.

Every two years this prestigious and cool research institution holds DARPAtech – a showcase for their astounding ideas and projects.  DARPAtech 2007 was in Anaheim, California.  There are 9 different branches of DARPA, each concentrating on different things. Production Plus built 2 of the 9 booths for this year’s show, and developed some new technology of its own to do it.

The DARPA STO booth.

A good portion of the booth, however, was just good old fashioned A/V work.  “About 6000 feet of cable,” asserts Frank Weber, chief sound engineer for Production Plus.  “All in raceways above the booth, in every leg of the booth structure, all over the place.”  This mile of wire connected and controlled 44 plasma monitors and hypersonic speakers in the DARPA STO (Strategic Tactical Office).  In a booth a mere 35 feet square, 44 monitors showing different programs could be a challenge; for Frank, hypersonic speakers were the solution.  “Each of these speakers creates a column of sound, only about 2 feet wide, and it does not spread out,” he relates.  “It can go for about 200 feet, straight.  You could be standing shoulder to shoulder with someone, each of you watching your own video presentation, and listening to something completely different.  You literally can step in and out of a beam of sound.”

Weber dismisses this amazing feat as the easy part of the presentation.  The hard part, he says, was controlling the feeds.  “44 DVD players, 13 computer feeds, a 64 by 64 router, plus a whole rack of custom designed sound processing equipment.  The rack weighed over 700 pounds.  We put it in a control booth on top of the truss structure that formed the booth.  It required its own air conditioning,” he notes solemnly.  “In the end, we could take any feed and send it to any amount of monitors, instantly – ten feeds to four monitors each, 20 feeds to 2 monitors, anything.”  Wire troughs along the top of the booth were built to hide all the cable.  The monitors and speakers all snapped into place on the truss structure and had specially designed connector systems that hid all the wires and kept them organized.

Inside the booth.

The system took almost a month to plan, design, and build.  Part of this time was devoted to getting the best sound and video presentation possible.  “We discovered while experimenting with the speakers that in order to get the best sound out of them we had to compress the signal in a certain way,” says Frank.  “So we took apart a few pieces of equipment, wired them together in the way we needed, patched them into that big router, and built them all into a custom rack for the show.” 

The booth provided a fitting showcase for the bleeding edge surveillance and information gathering technology displayed in the booth.  “We added our Pro Plus level of finish to it,” grins Frank.  Weber and his crew went above and beyond the call of duty even during the three day installation at the venue.  They were able to tie the booth into the venue’s existing network and gather live video feed from the general session room.  “So when one of STO’s presenters was giving a talk we were able to bring the presentation back to the booth and watch it live,” The client didn’t expect it, but when Frank showed that it could be done, they jumped at it.  “It was a big surprise for them, they really dug it,” he grins.  “And it wasn’t easy to impress these guys with technology.”

Next month: Production Plus’ booth for DARPA VSO, and the race for the $2 million prize.