International. The Cincinnati Zoo features a world-class collection of animals from around the world, including lions, monkeys, manatees, and a baby hippopotamus named Fiona that recently stole the hearts of its 1.8 million annual visitors.
Emphasizing the goal of innovation, the Cincinnati Zoo focuses on education, engagement, conservation, and giving every visitor a unique wildlife experience you won't find anywhere else. What the zoo lacked was a reliable audio system to provide messages throughout its sprawling facility.
"Innovation is one of our core values and something we take very seriously," said Chad Yealton, Vice President of Marketing & Communications for Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden. "It serves to inform everything we do, from our sustainability program and green initiatives to how we build habitats, to the people we hire and every event we hold here at the zoo. The desire to innovate led us to the search for a better audio and security solution, and that search led us to DEVA."
In addition to providing immaculate ambient music in every space of the facility, the new DEVA multipoint system also helps with communication and messaging challenges: "With the large number of visitors the zoo attracts, we identified the need for a paging system that could deliver messages in all areas in a clear and effective way," said Dutch Mulholland, IT/AV Director of the Cincinatti Zoo & Botanical Garden. Seeking a practical solution, Mulholland discovered the power of the DEVA wireless multimedia device.
The first time Mulholland saw DEVA was at InfoComm three years ago. "I immediately realized the potential of all this in a wireless unit," he says. "I saw it once again last year and was really surprised by its current capabilities, so we decided to investigate it as a possible solution for our security messaging needs." Mulholland and his team made a risk map of their wireless hotspot coverage at the zoo and related it to a projected DEVA coverage and determined that it would be a viable solution.
Coverage is the key
For the zoo and for Mulholland, coverage is the main thing. "We wanted to have coverage as close to 100% as possible with our audio messaging," he said. This made DEVA's wireless capabilities a key selling point. "With our old conventional sound system for emergency messages, it was always a struggle to assemble the wiring and then we would have to face the squirrels chewing the cables, or even the horticulture destroying much of the cables installed on the floor," he explains. "We wanted to avoid having our signal processing and amplifier separate and use something that was all-in-one and had no wires."
They initially used only two DEVA units to see how they would work within the zoo's existing network infrastructure. "The first two DEVAs were a proof of concept. We operated them for a year and tested them on our infrastructure. They performed flawlessly, so we continued to incorporate more products." The zoo acquired 50 DEVA units, just in time for its big Christmas event Festival of Lights.
Festival of Lights with DEVA
"Festival of Lights is an event we've been doing for 35 years for Christmas," Yealton said. "It started as a small event with some luminaries illuminating the paths and some trees as well. Now we have more than 3 million lights and samples of all kinds." With the expansion of the lighting display and growing audiences, the zoo was eager to improve the way it distributed audio during the event.
"One of the big efforts this year was to ensure sound quality throughout the park," Yealton said. "Having music playback really helps to give that warm Christmas touch, which was very important to us." Playing music with DEVA is much easier to use and more versatile than the outdated playback system they had, which involved distributing separate CD players in multiple locations throughout the zoo.
The future is remote
The DEVA System Manager app is critical to deploying the remote control and flexibility features of the unit. "The app really is great," says Mulholland. "In the past, we had to go to a closet where our switches and amplifiers were just to be able to turn off an area or mute it. If we had a problem with something, we didn't know until it was too late, making it easier for amplifiers or loudspeakers to burn. This app not only allows us to customize our volumes in each zone remotely, which saves a lot of time, but also to monitor the operation of the DEVA units."
Following the Festival of Lights, the Cincinatti Zoo plans to install an additional 50 DEVA units throughout the park, including 10 DEVA HD units. "Distributing the additional 50 units throughout the zoo will allow us to program the base volume of each one even lower, ensuring that visitors do not suffer sensory overload, even if they are standing just below one of the loudspeakers," Mulholland said. "We will use the HD DEVA specifically for some of our key samples."
