St. Louis Police Upgrade Real Time Crime Center With Giant LED Control Room Video Wall

September 16, 2021 by Dave Haynes

It was not very long ago, at all, that the idea of LED taking over the control room display market from LCD video walls and projection cubes was thought to be an eventual thing, but not until resolutions improved and costs dropped.

Well, both have happened, and we’re now seeing projects light up in command and control environments that use fine pitch LED.

This is the Real Time Crime Center operated by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department in Missouri – which now has a 48 foot wide, 4.5 foot tall 1.2 mm LED video wall that gives first responders a giant amount of situational awareness, at a glance.

The display is from Daktronics, and it was put in by integrator TSI Global. The screen is capable of variable content zoning, allowing it to show one large image or be divided into multiple windows to deliver all the real-time data, live cam streams and information critical to the needs of police and other officials.

It is slightly weird that the room is darkened as it is – necessary with LCD and projection, but not LED. The PR suggests this is an upgrade/reno job, so the room would have necessarily been done as something of a bunker.

This would not work all that well at much higher pixel pitches than this. You definitely need 2mm or less for visuals like text, maps and schematics. Anymore than that and the visuals risk distortion.