AccessGrid
The LSU Eye Center is a participating institution in the Louisiana Biomedical Research Network (LBRN), a program initially funded by the National Institutes of Health through the National Center for Research Resources. One of the goals of the LBRN is to network research facilities in Louisiana to foster collaborative research efforts. To make this happen, AccessGrid (AG) installations have been deployed in all four campuses participating in the LBRN.
Facility:
The LSU Eye Center has AG rooms located on both the 3rd and 4th floors of the Lions/LSU
Eye Center building, rooms 3B2 and 4D1. AG technology is a versatile tool that allows
true collaboration, from distant learning to virtual experiments, among all LBRN sites
and other AccessGrid sites around the world. There are conference-style chairs and
tables to accommodate up to 50 attendees comfortably.
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| The LSU Eye Center 4th floor AG room. It can comfortably accommodate up to 20 attendees. Also located in the AG room is a Fakespace Immersadesk for data visualization. The room also offers a plasma display outfitted with a whiteboard overlay and wireless internet access for meeting participants. |
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| AccessGrid room display screen. The screen is located on the back wall and it is 18'W x 4'H. Three ceiling-mounted projectors display live video streams from remote sites. |
Equipment:
Display Workstation
Dual 2 GHz Xeon (Next Technologies) workstation, 1GB RAM
36GB U360 SCSI, Zip-250, CD/DVD-ROM drives
Gigabit network card
Matrox G450 AGP video board (2 outputs)
Matrox G400 PCI video board (2 outputs)
AG 2.0 software, MS Office XP, MS Windows 2000
This server is responsible for displaying all incoming video streams. Two outputs
from the Matrox G450 and one output from the Matrox G400 drive the three LCD projectors.
The spare video output is used to drive an internal LCD monitor used by the AG node
operator. The display workstation also serves as the control PC for the new AG 2.0
software.
Audio/Video capture workstation
Dual 1.45 GHz PIII (Dell PowerEdge 2500) workstation, 1GB RAM,
36GB U360 SCSI hard drive, CD-ROM drive
Gigabit network card
Happaupage WinTV video capture boards (3)
SoundBlaster PCI-16 audio board
AG 2.0 software, Red Hat Linux 7.2.
This server is responsible for capturing three video and one audio streams, encoding
them, and multicasting them to all attendees in the session.
Control workstation
Dual 1.8GHz Xeon (Dell PowerEdge 2600) workstation, 1GB RAM
36GB U360 SCSI hard drive, CD=ROM drive
Gigabit network card
Gentner control software, MS Windows 2000
This workstation is used to control the Gentner XAP-800 Echo Canceler unit and for
future AG node upgrades.
Audio Equipment
Gentner XAP-800 Echo Canceler unit
MatchMaker MM100 Gentner - PC Impedance Matching bridge
Three Crown microphones placed on the conference tables
Podium microphone
Countryman Microphone headset
Two Genelec amplified speakers mounted on both sides of the screen
Video Equipment
Three Sony EVI-30 conference cameras
Three ViewSonic PJ1065 LCD Projectors
Pioneer PDP-50 50” plasma display
Other
Two APC rack-mounted UPS backup units
42U equipment rack
1U rack-mounted LCD monitor and keyboard combo to control all AG workstations
Furman PL8 Power Conditioner for powering audio equipment
Wireless Access Point and Wireless Network adapters (802.11B) for internet access
Netgear 8-port unmanaged gigabit switch
Dell 8-port KVM switch
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| AccessGrid equipment rack. All necessary computers to run the AG node are installed on a 42U rack. Uninterruptible Power Supplies are also included to protect the equipment |
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| Schematic of the LSU Eye Center AG node. Video from three cameras is digitized in the Audio/Video workstation. Audio from three microphones is fed to an echo canceler (Gentner XAP-800) and then routed to the Audio workstation where it gets digitized and together with video are multicast to other participating institutions. Incoming video streams are projected onto the display wall via three LCD projectors. Audio streams are fed to a pair of amplified Genelec speakers. The Gentner echo canceler is controlled with a dedicated workstation. |