Pontificia Universidad Catolica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM) is a private university in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic. In 2017, the university began construction on a new building to house its faculties of Health Sciences & Sciences and Engineering. Featuring 22 classrooms and a telepresence room, the 12-story building was designed to provide an environment of active learning and problem-based teaching, delivered via the latest AV technologies.

To fulfil PUCMM’s vision, Santo Domingo-based integrator Musitempo equipped the building’s classrooms with Optoma W316ST short-throw projectors and Da-Lite projection screens. The telepresence room features Samsung 40- and 70-inch LED displays, a Shure DIS discussion system, and Vaddio RoboSHOT cameras. Video sources are distributed in the classrooms and telepresence room via Atlona video matrixes. Audio is provided by Soundweb London networked audio systems.

A key element of equipping the classrooms and telepresence rooms with this high-end AV equipment was providing teachers and students with an easy way to control it. The university wanted to be able to power on components and select sources at the touch of a button, while allowing for easy changes on the fly. Budget was also a concern, so these capabilities needed to be delivered by a cost-effective solution. To meet both requirements, Musitempo turned to RTI.

“We’ve been an RTI distributor and integrator for over a decade and knew they had the right solutions for this project, in terms of both price and functionality,” said Fernando Hernandez Voigt, CTO and Project Engineer of Musitempo. “The RTI platform is compatible with a wide range of devices to deliver a more outstanding user experience, and the company’s Integration Designer programming software is exceptionally easy to use. It allows us to seamlessly integrate a variety of components into one unified system, and easily create macro commands to set complex scenes with the push of a button.”

Relying on a mix of IP drivers, RS-232, relay and IR, the RTI systems in the classrooms and telepresence room are powered by RTI’s XP-8s and XP-6 control processors, respectively. Students and faculty interact with the systems using keypads and touchpanels located throughout the spaces. The classrooms feature a total of 19 RK1+ 8-button in-wall keypads, two KX2 2.8-inch in-wall touchpanels, and one KX7 7-inch in-wall touchpanel, while the telepresence room features two KX7 7-inch in-wall touchpanels.

“RTI has flawlessly met the university’s requirements for simple, yet powerful, control on a tight budget,” said Voigt. “Furthermore, compared to the university’s other buildings, the new control system has greatly increased efficiency, leaving more time for learning.”