iGAD Productions Chooses ECS-Raptor from HRS Control and Lightware HDMI Matrix Router for Exactech Exhibit

	Exactech exhibit at the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgery's 2014 annual meeting

ECS-Raptor from HRS Control, a UDC pro embedded control server, played a key role in the Exactech exhibit at the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgery's (AAOS) 2014 annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Exactech is a fast-growing global innovator of bone and joint restoration products. The AAOS marked the introduction of ExactechGPS guided personalized surgery, the first advanced surgical technology to provide a realtime, patient-specific solution in total knee arthroplasty. The cornerstone of Exactech's exhibit was a surgical skills demo area that allowed surgeons to gain hands-on experience with ExactechGPS.

Grant Gaddis of iGAD Productions, an AV rental house based in Snellville, Georgia, was introduced to HRS Control at an earlier trade show where he found the UDC technology to be "really cool." He remembered it when he was tasked with meeting the needs of Exactech's AAOS exhibit.

"It's the first time I've rolled out Raptor on a show," he says. "It was great for the client and great for me to have such a user-friendly set up in one workstation."

The Exactech exhibit featured two 55" monitors on the show floor and four 40" monitors on a front truss all positioned in a corner of the booth. The Lightware HDMI router's four inputs were from the Exactech computer system, which showed what the surgical instruments were doing; a live camera feed; an animated demo video; and a general marketing video. The Raptor, which provided end-user control of switching the Lightware HDMI router and monitors, interface was an Apple iPad customized for Exactech by iGAD using the UDC software from HRS Control.

"The iPad screen had the company logo on it and five dummy-proof buttons that turned green when selected," says Gaddis. "The button options were a full demo; a limited demo; stand-by mode for in-between shows, a ticker, and the marketing video and animation."

Presenters had mics to talk about the ExactechGPS process and benefits. Thirty to 60 surgeon attendees gathered to watch each demo. "When there was a full demo, the demonstrator switched one big monitor on the GPS product and one on the camera feed," says Gaddis. "We staggered the other monitors with the same two feeds. The presenter, armed with the iPad, could also do short, impromptu demos for attendees configuring them for one monitor while the rest of the monitors showed other feeds. Or, they could press a button to switch all six monitors to show the animated surgery video or the marketing video."

Gaddis reports that the programming interface was "great -- very graphic and command-driven. I really liked the number of preprogrammed command sets. We could network in other display and switching devices, gather it all onto a control server, and have all the control from a laptop and iPad."

Gaddis saved time on site by doing all the programming at the iGAD Productions office. "We came to the show and everything worked. It was great, very solid."

For the Exactech exhibit he also deployed a Lightware 8x8 HDMI matrix router; Lightware U.S.A., a sister company of HRS Control, is the US distributor for Budapest-based Lightware Visual Engineering products.

"It was bullet-proof," Gaddis says. "All the command sets for it are already built into the Raptor and UDC Software. I could just go to a dropdown menu in the Raptor software, pick the router input and output for the macro. No coding had to be done."