At onemedia we are fortunate to represent some of the leading brands in the industry and are very proud of our relationship with each of them.
This edition of our Partner Spotlight features Adam Marsden from Datapath. Datapath are experts in graphics, capture, video wall display and command & control technology.
Tell us about your role at Datapath…
My role is Sales Account Manager for the UK, Ireland, Nordics & Baltics. I’ve been in this role for around two and a half years, however, I have been with Datapath for over 7 years. My previous role was Training Manager, where I would travel the world training Datapath partners on various topics from technical to sales. Nowadays I have a much smaller region and still like to visit customers (here and abroad) as much as possible – which hasn’t been too often recently, due to COVID, so Teams/Zoom has been vital for meeting, demos, training etc.
What’s your favourite Datapath product?
I think my favourite Datapath products is the VSNMicro 600 – It’s such a powerful video wall controller in a smaller sized chassis. Ideal for anywhere where multiple sources (including 4K resolutions) are needed to be displayed on multiple outputs (up to 4K resolutions) where performance and reliability are vital (I even have one under my desk in my home office, which I use for remote demos). Pair the VSNMicro 600 with various sources (e.g. ONELAN players) and then also make use of its ability for local playback of video, images, webpages etc. and you’ve got a really flexible video wall installation!
What’s the most exciting project that you have been involved with at Datapath?
There are lots to choose from, over my 7+ years, but one that stands out is actually a project that the onemedia team were also heavily involved in. This was for two control room environments for driverless vehicles. Each control room had a video wall, I think the largest was a 3×3, where the test vehicles could be monitored; feeds from in-field cameras, GPS data and live metrics were displayed on the video wall for operators to monitor. Types of feeds were HDMI captures, HTML data and the ability to view any of the 270 IP camera feeds. The onemedia team and I were involved in this project from an early stage and so were able to advise on the video wall controller elements. It’s always great to see a project complete that you’ve worked on from such an early stage.
When a video wall is being used for a digital signage application what advice would you give to help achieve the best possible result?
First thing is to understand the customer requirements/expectations, this can be difficult as the customer may not know what is even possible! Making use of the Datapath Wall Designer software can be a huge help with this, it lets you design a video wall setup (even showing content across your display layout), which is a great visual aid. In addition, thought really needs to go into the content, things like what resolution is the content, does it need to be custom designed or not, what’s the best media player etc. Finally, don’t be afraid to ask, if you want/need advice on this type of thing just drop me a line and I’ll happily help where I can.
When would you suggest specifying a video wall controller as opposed to a multi display controller such as the Fx4?
Basically where you require more than one input, at the same time, to be displayed on your video wall you would need to specify a video wall controller instead of an Fx4. The Fx4 takes a single input and outputs to multiple HD outputs (displays, LED, projectors etc), whereas, a video wall controller can take multiple inputs and display them on multiple outputs (including 4K outputs) at the same time. These inputs can then be mixed with webpages, local videos/images, IP cameras etc and they can be flexibility place anywhere across the outputs (whether that be a single display, a video or even multiple video walls).
How do you see the future of the command and control environments evolving?
Flexibility is becoming key in command and control environments. Reliable 24/7 systems are still very much a requirement but people are now wanting more flexibility in where their data is shown and interacted with. Traditionally data/content would be on the large video wall for people to view, however, the need now is for the data to be available to operator workstations, on other video walls (in crisis rooms or other meeting rooms) and also, potentially, outside of the actual control room (securely). It is also becoming vital that operators are not only able to view this data/content at their workstation but also interact/take control of that content. Datapath’s Aetria solution is aimed at exactly this type of thing. Making to sources available to whoever needs access, enabling operators to create their own personal video wall at their workstation and for them to have KVM control of relevant sources. These sources/content could be at varying resolutions so Datapath has design the Aetria solution to make use of 10G networks (for higher resolution content) and 1G networks to ensure quality remains high and latency remains low.
What would we be surprised to learn about you?
Those that knew me during my Datapath training days may not recognise me anymore! A few years ago I went on a health kick to look to lose a bit of weight, I even took up running (although I may have retired from that now)! In under a year I lost around 8 stone, in weight, and was regularly running 10 miles at least a couple of times a week. I had no target, or plans to lose that much, so it cost me a fortune in clothes as I kept updating my wardrobe convinced I’d not lose much more weight! I’ll be honest, I’ve put a little of that weight back on, not too much though!
The best thing about working with onemedia is…
The onemedia team! They’re a great bunch, so always a pleasure to deal with and some of them even know the technical details of our products 😊
