XTREME Solar Challenge
THE PITCH FROM DOWN UNDER
Explains Porro: “The devices enabled you to create one large moveable network that spanned across vehicles, allowing files and media to hop from one car to another until they hit the central vehicle, where we upload them.” Porro adds that the firm also deployed Resillio Sync – a peer-to-peer file synchronisation tool (which he describes as ‘a kind of Dropbox for LANs’) that enabled the files to do the ‘hopping’ between cars. Crucially, these transmitters are able to create a LAN that stretches over a long range – around 10km, or six miles. “It meant that you could be all the way at the back of a convoy – behind the solar car – and still transport files to the central satellite vehicle,” says Porro. LIVE STREAM The central vehicle also doubled as the control room for the live stream. The original plan had been to only stream segments of the competition. However, the LAN and technology mix proved so powerful that Porro and Verdenius decided, a couple days before the race, that it would be a missed opportunity not to step up and capture the whole event, 24/7. All 70 hours of the race was captured by a mix of cameras, including a GoPro attached to the exterior of the satellite car and one remote controlled PTZ Optics camera, situated on the dashboard of the chase vehicle tailing the Nuna X. Silvus Obscura body cams – provided by Amber Technology – were used as well. Stream My Event also installed another computer in the central car, which brought the multiple live feeds from the LAN into a
HOT STUFF A fire put an end to the team’s dream of winning, but a full recording of the event will provide valuable learning opportunities
software-based vision mixer, VMix. From here, using a single laptop, the team could produce a live show with graphics created via the firm’s own software (see panel, left). Verdenius adds that the pair even provided commentary on the live stream when they knew people in Europe were watching. According to Verdenius, viewers included fans, the race organisers, parents of the participants, and stakeholders such as sponsors Vattenfall and Intelsat. Amber Technology also supplied Stream My Event with an Aviwest bonding encoder to upload the show via IP to YouTube. For the Live Facebook talk show, which featured two team members walking around the camp, they used Sony shoulder mounted cameras and Silvus radios. Says Porro: ”We used a Teradek Bolt point-to-point encoder, which is low- latency IP streaming. The great advantage of this is the Sony camera essentially then became an IP cam, allowing us to receive it whenever it was in range of any of the vehicles equipped with a Silvus radio.” UP IN FLAMES Perhaps the biggest challenge Stream My Event met was when the Nuna X car they’d been following for almost 3000km dramatically burst into flames near Mambray Creek, almost 250km from the Adelaide finish. The team cut out the audio as soon as they realised there was an issue, but after discussing it with the Vattenfall Media team they made the decision to keep streaming. Porro explains that there was no danger to team members and the rescue process lasted about ten seconds. So while it might not have been the finish the Vattenfall team desired – Belgium’s Agoria took the title after a chaotic final day – the team does now have an unbroken video record of the 2019 race from start to finish, which the team of 2021 can now study and build from.
STREAMING FROM AUSTRALIA to win a pitch in the Netherlands was a perfect proof-of-concept
Stream My Event used its own graphics package, hologfx.io, on the World Solar Challenge, which they developed in- house as a cheaper and easier way of creating graphics for live events. For the past few months, Verdenius and Porro have been working with start-up accelerator Startupbootcamp to bring this package to market, creating new company, Holographics. However, one of their big investor meetings was scheduled bang in the middle of the World Solar Challenge. Using the moveable LAN they created for the race, they were able to stream their presentation live from the Australian Outback to a theatre in Amsterdam, via YouTube. “Using the LAN, we were able to stream via YouTube’s low latency setting, which cut delay down to less than ten seconds,” Verdenius says. “We also used Whatsapp to align with the events manager on site. It was like having a journalist’s earpiece.” The end results were broadcast on a large screen in front of 30 or 40 investors, and the set-up was perfect for enabling the pair to demonstrate what their live graphics software was capable of during a live stream. “Based on this weird set-up, we came away with quite a few leads without having to actually be there.”
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