A Mattress Store's Unique Showroom Signage & Control

For their new 2,500-square-foot showroom, the owner of a Manhattan luxury mattress store wanted to provide a high-tech shopping experience for customers.

The Tech Decision

In addition to incorporating the latest audio, video, and lighting technologies to set the mood and highlight select products, ease of use for employees was a primary concern.

It was essential that all components be brought together into a unified system that could be operated with a single tap on a touchscreen. To provide this level of control, integrator Mattera Design relied on solutions from RTI.

The Showroom Signage Solution

Highlights of the showroom include two 2×3 video walls at its entrance, in addition to 82-inch 8K, 65-inch 4K, and 55-inch 4K displays located throughout the space.

Video content from a Samsung media player and two local laptops is distributed to the displays via an RTI VHD-4x X-Series 4×4 HDBaseT Class-B video switcher and VDX-14x HDBaseT splitter, both of which provide reliable delivery of 4K video up to 131 feet away.

A Sonos wireless sound system and Episode 70V amplifier deliver background music for the main showroom floor and back consultation area, with distribution to Sonance speakers handled by an RTI AD-4x audio distribution system.

Lighting is managed through a Lutron RadioRA 2 system.

For a seamless control experience, the showroom’s lighting and AV systems — in addition to a Luma surveillance system and Wattbox power conditioner — are integrated with an RTI XP-8v control processor via a combination of RS-232 and IP drivers.

Staff interact with the system using a KA8 8-inch touchpanel located at the equipment rack. They can send any content to any display and adjust volume and lighting levels as needed, while controlling multiple systems at once using one-touch scenes.

“The store owner wanted to limit the need to tweak settings in of the showroom signage as much as possible, which meant it was critical that we create preset scenes for this installation,” says Joe Mattera, owner of Mattera Design.

“That couldn’t be easier with the RTI Integration Designer APEX software, which allows us to precisely tailor the control experience to meet the needs of any client.”

The Impact

At the beginning of the day, pressing the “Opening” icon on the KA8 automatically sets the showroom lights to a pre-determined brightness, turns on music at a specified level, and powers on all screens.

As the day progresses, the “Evening” scene directs the showroom’s lighting towards pre-selected product displays.

At closing time, the “Goodbye” scene powers off the screens and music — saving employees the time of doing so manually and ensuring they don’t forget.

Lighting is turned off in most of the store, while it is only dimmed in certain areas to highlight product displays and pique the interest of passersby when the store is closed.

“With RTI we were able to deliver exactly what our client was looking for and they couldn’t be more pleased with the result,” says Mattera.

“They love the system’s simple operation and the extent to which we were able to customize it. The one-touch scenes in particular have been a big hit, ensuring that employees of any technical skill level can easily operate the store’s systems with very little training.”