Brisbane City Hall has just completed a $200 million refurbishment with the main auditorium revolutionised to meet the demands of the 21st century while remaining true to the original building design.

The copper dome over the room spanning 31 metres in diameter is the largest in Australia and is supported on a brick base that allows the interior of the main auditorium to be unobstructed by columns.

Located within this dome is a computer to monitor the loads on all of the chain hoists suspended from the roof structure. The structural engineers on the job had specified particular load ratings on the roof trusses and roof quadrants, which had to be followed. Unfortunately the people on the stage who were operating the chain hoists couldn't see the computer’s screen and hence couldn't see what load was being applied to the structure. 

Jands was asked to solve the problem of getting the computer screen down to the stage level, 180m or more as the cable runs.

Jands’ Electrical Engineer Simon Steinfurth explained that they had a spare 80m Cat 5 cable running from the equipment rack containing the computer in the roof space down to the control room on the other side of the building on level 2. There was another Cat 5 cable currently in use for Ethernet running from the control room on level 2 down to a position at back of stage on ground level, which was approximately 110m long.

The solution was to use two mating pairs – a transmitter and a receiver - of Aurora DXE-CAT-S2 units to bridge the gap. The first set went from the roof space to the control room and converted an HDMI signal from the computer into an HDBaseT signal and back again into HDMI in the control room. 

This HDMI signal was connected to a second DXE-CAT-S2 transmitter in the control room to send the HDMI information and the currently used Ethernet information down the Cat 5 cable to the position back of stage. It was then split back out to the original Ethernet cable and an HDMI signal for the remote screen located back of stage.

Being able to use the existing cable with transmitter/receiver pairs instead of installing new cabling meant the job cost about a third of what it would have cost. 

The DXE-CAT-S2 is part of Aurora's expanding Digital Xtreme Series, and the first of the new HDBaseT CAT extenders. The DXE-CAT-S2's powerful patent-pending design provides usability and features not found anywhere else. 

Single-sided connections for LAN, HDMI, control and power provide a cleaner wiring and rack mounting solution, with the design allowing the system to be powered via POE or AC adapter from either side. With a single CAT 5e/6/7 cable, the DXE-CAT-S2 can go up to 330ft at 1080p 60Hz 48bit colour depth with bi-directional RS-232, IR, and LAN (up to 600ft with CAT 6a shielded cable at 24bit colour depth).