As part of the new 650,000 square foot CAT building, officially opened in September of 2016 and located at the NAIT campus in Edmonton, there was a requirement to integrate a Banking & Stock Trading Simulation Lab (BSTL). The BSTL had a requirement to simulate a typical, noisy stock trading floor environment, with 32 trading simulation student desk location and one instructor desk simulation in the centre of the room.

Each of the 32 student desk, and the instructor desk locations would be equipped with a typical dual monitor computer with the stock trading simulation software, with each computer connected to a sophisticated AV presentation system providing the ability to route sources from the instructor desk location, the 'Presentation Wall' input location, the AV rack location, and from each of the 32 student desk computers onto the four video wall displays located around the room.

Each of the video walls consists of four 55" thin bezel displays providing an overall diagonal image size of 110" and the ability to display one source per video wall display, or four sources at the same time, via quad split imaging. Each of the 32 student desk locations is equipped with a button allowing the students to request for their computer content to be displayed on the video wall displays, with the instructor having the ability to approve a request from the AV control touch panel, and the ability to override the image content assigned from a student computer and/or to block all student computers from sending signals to the main room displays. The instructor station also two additional HDMI and one VGA input for movable sources. Additionally, the room is equipped with wireless collaboration capabilities, providing the ability to connect and present content from mobile devices, through the campus wireless computer network.

The ability to route over 50 digital and analog A/V sources to over 30 destination inside and outside the lab required the use of a sophisticated, reliable and easy to upgrade A/V routing and switching system, including a 64 by 64 matrix video switcher! The system needed the ability to accommodate and transport current and legacy signal formats and being fully HDCP (content rights management) and EDID (equipment identification information) compliant. The system selected is making use of the HD-BaseT signal transport protocol with digital and analog audio, video and control signals being transmitted over shielded twister pair cabling (STP).

The sound system is making use of playback speakers located adjacent to the four room video wall display video walls and a distributed ceiling speaker system to provide instructor voice lift in the room. The instructor has the ability to use a wireless lapel microphone for voice lift in the room and for the purpose of the recording on the audio capturing software installed on the computer. The audio system, through a digital sound processor (DSP) and controlled from the A/V control system touch panel has the ability to simultaneously playback the audio from up to 16 A/V sources which can be displayed at the same time on the four video wall displays. The purpose of what seems to be an insane idea is the need to emulate a true banking stock trading floor with all the action and noise for the benefit of the students learning to focus in a loud and challenging working environment.