With a population of more than 12 million people over 792 square miles, the city of Shenzhen has the highest vehicle density in China, and city authorities are constantly working to improve traffic and emergency response as well as public safety. To address this need, the city partnered with networking company Huawei to help build a unified, open, and intelligent control system that integrates cutting-edge technologies.
At the heart of this smart city nervous system is the Longgang Operation Centre (LOC), which receives real-time information data for public traffic, emergency management, and public security, before displaying it on the LOC “Smart City Brain,” a gigantic curved LED screen which enables operators to make fast and informed decisions.
Absen LED was responsible for the installation of this display system, China’s largest curved NPP LED screen. With a record-breaking 103 million pixels over 1,796.5 square feet of surface, this 1.27mm pixel-pitch LED video wall features the highest pixel density ever achieved in an installation, according to the company. The screen was installed at the end of last year, and features Absen’s latest CR 1.2 LED series dedicated to control room environments. The CR Series was recently launched to the North American market and featured in the Absen LED booth during InfoComm 2018.
As one of the most important sub-projects in Shenzhen’s Smart City project, LOC required a display that would be big enough to deliver critical content with the highest image quality, while providing comfortable viewing experience and stability. Absen’s CR 1.2 is geared to receive 181 display signals and deal with the sheer amount of data to display them on up to 105 windows at 720p (40 windows at 1080p and 10 at 4K resolution).
“To engineer the world’s largest high-resolution screen in 85 days from production to installation is no mean feat,” said Absen sales director, Zhang Yongfeng, “We had to overcome the difficulties of installing the screen while the center was still being built and therefore full of dust, but the combination of our sophisticated technology and skilled engineers meant we were able to deliver.”
To produce a project of this magnitude, Absen tailored a solution with CR1.2, involving different industry-leading technologies. Each panel is equipped with two power banks and two receiving cards so that the power and signal can be switched to the backup set whenever needed, ensuring continuous operation in such a critical decision-making environment.
Designed with air circulation in mind, each LED module uses a non-plastic bottom case. The panel has convection holes for quick internal heat dissipation. Absen’s TotalPlug Wireless panel design strengthens product stability and performance.
Measuring at 84 feet wide by 21.3 feet high, the 1,796.5-square-foot screen is made up of 798 panels and designed with a curve of 121.7 feet in radius—another challenge that the Absen team had to solve in order to remove any bezel between the panels. This was made possible thanks to Absen’s Precise Align technology, which features 16 screw-holes on the panels for fine tuning and two directions on the Z-axis for precise seam adjustments. In addition to the physical fine-tuning of seams, an added software option offers one-click seam brightness adjustment to create a truly bezel-free screen.
Henan Goldroc Information Technology Co. was among the companies involved in the LOC project, providing a software solution capable of collecting and centralizing the data before displaying it on the Absen screen. “We originally faced a dilemma when looking for the best technology for this project,” said Wu Yanbin, project manager at Henan Goldroc. “LCD and DLP would show gaps of at least one-pixel pitch and up to 3.5mm which is not acceptable in such a demanding control room environment.
“When we tested Absen’s CR1.2 LED display, we were thrilled to see each panel fit seamlessly to the next, leaving no black bezel. The power and signal backup were another advantage for display stability. Technically, the screen will never go black, and that’s what we wanted. This is the reason why we chose Absen.”
In addition to a curved design, content quality was of paramount importance. The Absen CR series uses high quality components and electronics, offering colors at 110 percent NTSC broadcast-level, as well as 255 brightness adjustment levels, which can be set manually or automatically, providing comfort to operators who often work in front of the screen for an extended period of time every day.
Absen’s CR1.2 is also an energy-efficient solution, with an average power consumption of 153W per square meter, 25–35 percent lower than that of normal 55-inch LCD products, according to the company. Furthermore, the use of “lead-free” technology in the Printed Circuit Board Assembly (PCBA) soldering process is not only eco-friendly, but also ensures higher resistance to oxidation and higher product stability.
“The screen that Absen made is stunning,” said Liu Jianwei, the section chief in charge. “We were equally impressed by the Absen’s team working spirit. The site was still a work in progress when the screen was engineered, but the Absen team overcame all the difficulties and put all their heart in the project.”
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