At a glance
- Client: Diablo Valley College, a Contra Costa Community College District campus, as AV subcontractor to Oveisi Construction
- Location: Applied Technology Center, 321 Golf Club Road, Pleasant Hill, California — four classrooms including the ATC 108 GIS and geography lab
- Scope: One classroom AV control standard across four rooms — Crestron RMC4 control, HD-PS402 switching, DM-DGE-200-C graphics engines, Bose DM5SE ceiling audio and seven motorized Da-Lite screens, built around projectors the college already owned
- Platform: Crestron room control with Crestron DM Lite signal extension
- Timeline: Contract signed 29 May 2025; install June to August 2025; control programming revised through November 2025
The situation
Diablo Valley College was renovating four classrooms in the Applied Technology Center, and the AV arrived inside the construction contract rather than as a standalone technology project — which is how most community college technology work reaches us. We came in as the AV subcontractor to Oveisi Construction under subcontract D-4032.
The rooms were not identical. One is the GIS and geography lab in ATC 108, laid out around a mobile instructor's desk and clusters of teaming worksurfaces. Three others behave more like lecture halls than seminar rooms and needed two projection surfaces each rather than one, because instructors work from a data view and a discussion view at the same time. That gave us seven projection positions across four rooms, but only four instructor stations to drive them — and every room still had to work as an ordinary training room for whoever booked it.
The other constraint was set before we arrived: the college was keeping its projectors. Every projector in the package is owner-furnished. So is the rack PC in each room, the instructor's laptop connection, and the document camera. We were designing the system that drives equipment we did not supply, specify, or control the firmware on.
What made it hard
Owner-furnished display equipment changes how you design. You cannot guarantee a handshake you have not tested, or pick a switcher around a projector's EDID behaviour when the model reads TBD on the drawings. The design had to tolerate whatever arrived.
Two of the products we specified went end-of-life between the proposal and the install. The Crestron DM-DGE-100 graphics engine and the HD-RX-4K-210-C-E receiver were both discontinued after the 29 May contract and before the equipment shipped. On a public works subcontract you cannot quietly swap parts; each substitution went through an RFI and a signed change order.
And this was a California public works job on a community college campus. That means DAS 140 and DAS 142 filings, prevailing wage, and DIR certified payroll for every technician on site — administrative work that runs in parallel with the install and has its own deadlines.
How we designed it
We built one room standard and applied it four times, varying only the projector count — the same design and integration approach we take to any multi-room build. Each room gets a Crestron RMC4 control processor, a Crestron HD-PS402 presentation switcher, a Crestron DM-DGE-200-C digital graphics engine, and a Crestron AMP-X300 commercial amplifier. The single-projector room runs one Crestron HD-RXC-4KZ-101 DM Lite receiver; the dual-projector rooms run two. Seven receivers, seven Da-Lite Cosmopolitan Electrol motorized screens and seven Peerless-AV PRG-UNV precision gear projector mounts cover the seven positions. The projectors themselves stayed the college's.
Putting the switching and the control processor in the room, rather than centralizing in a campus rack, was the decision that mattered most. With owner-furnished sources and displays the faults are local and electrical — a handshake, an adapter, a cable — and a technician needs to see the signal chain end to end. Centralizing would have made every EDID problem a trip to a closet.
The instructor's desk carries a Planar PLN2501 25-inch confidence monitor so the presenter sees what the room sees without turning around. Audio is Bose Professional DM5SE surface-mount loudspeakers on pan-and-tilt brackets, driven from the AMP-X300 — four channels for a room that needs program audio and speech reinforcement, not a performance system. Screen control is handled by Global Caché IP2CC-P contact-closure bridges and Crestron CEN-IO-RY-104 relay modules, so the screens drop on the same command that wakes the projectors.
Because the projectors are owner-furnished, the design depends on none of them. Each connects over HDMI with RS-232 for control and the program addresses it generically. Swap the projector and the room still works.
Equipment by room type
| Room type | Count | Projection | Control | Switching | Audio | Confidence monitor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single-projector classroom | 1 | 1 owner-furnished projector, Da-Lite Cosmopolitan Electrol screen, Peerless-AV PRG-UNV mount | Crestron RMC4 | Crestron HD-PS402, 1 × HD-RXC-4KZ-101 | Crestron AMP-X300, Bose DM5SE | Planar PLN2501 |
| Dual-projector classroom | 3 | 2 owner-furnished projectors, 2 Da-Lite Cosmopolitan Electrol screens, 2 Peerless-AV PRG-UNV mounts | Crestron RMC4 | Crestron HD-PS402, 2 × HD-RXC-4KZ-101 | Crestron AMP-X300, Bose DM5SE | Planar PLN2501 |
| Function | Model | Qty installed |
|---|---|---|
| Room control processor | Crestron RMC4 | 4 |
| Digital graphics engine | Crestron DM-DGE-200-C | 4 |
| Presentation switcher | Crestron HD-PS402 | 4 |
| DM Lite receiver | Crestron HD-RXC-4KZ-101 | 7 |
| Amplifier | Crestron AMP-X300 | 4 |
| Loudspeakers | Bose Professional DM5SE, black, on 889687-0100 pan and tilt brackets | 7 |
| Confidence monitor | Planar PLN2501, 25 in | 4 |
| Network switch | Netgear AV Line M4250-10G2F-PoE+ (GSM4212P-100NAS) | 4 |
| Relay and contact closure | Crestron CEN-IO-RY-104, Global Caché IP2CC-P | 3 each |
| Assistive listening | Listen Technologies LP-4VP-072-01 | 4 |
| Projection screens | Da-Lite Cosmopolitan Electrol 20892L, 123 in diagonal, 16:10 matte white | 7 |
| Projector mounts | Peerless-AV PRG-UNV with AEC012018 extension columns and ACC-CCP cathedral ceiling plates | 7 |
| Projectors, rack PC, document camera | Owner-furnished | — |
Network and IT
Each room has its own Netgear AV Line M4250-10G2F-PoE+ switch. The AV devices sit on that switch rather than on the campus network: the RMC4, the DM-DGE-200-C, the HD-PS402 and the Global Caché bridges all live on the room's own segment, which keeps AV control traffic off district infrastructure and gives campus IT a single uplink per room to police.
The switch also carries the PoE budget. The Global Caché IP2CC-P bridges and the Crestron receivers run on Ethernet power, which took a set of local supplies out of the ceiling and off the projector mounts — fewer wall warts is fewer service calls.
The rooms' computer network connections stay separate from the AV segment and terminate back to district data. In ATC 108 those cables were reterminated and retested in the final week, after the furniture install disturbed them.
The rollout
Work ran through the summer break, June to August 2025 — the only sensible window on a community college campus. Late June and July handled rough-in and coordination with the general contractor while the rooms were still a construction site; the install itself ran across August, with crews on site on the 5th, 6th, 11th to 15th, 18th and 22nd.
The assistive listening antennas were the last change. The LP-4VP transmitters sit in the room rack, and an antenna inside a metal rack does not radiate, so we fitted extensions in all four rooms to bring it onto the rack's outside face.
Training for the DVC IT team happened on 22 August, in the rooms, on the finished system. ATC 108 was fully commissioned at that point. The remaining three rooms were still showing handshake, HDCP and EDID faults against the college's own devices and adapters — the predictable cost of owner-furnished sources meeting a new switching path. Control programming continued to be revised into November 2025 as those were worked through.
Frequently Asked Questions — Classroom AV Control Systems and Owner-Furnished Projectors
Answers to the questions campus IT, facilities and procurement teams ask most often about standardizing classroom AV control across a college. Last updated: September 2026.
Why put a control processor in every classroom instead of centralizing?
A Crestron RMC4 in each room keeps the entire signal path — source, switcher, receiver, projector — inside the room a technician is standing in. On this project every source and every projector was owner-furnished, so faults were local handshake problems rather than infrastructure problems, and a centralized rack would have turned each one into a trip to a closet.
It also means a fault in one classroom cannot take down the other three, which matters when all four run scheduled classes.
Can a single room standard cover classrooms with different projector counts?
Yes, if you vary only one element. All four Diablo Valley College classrooms use the same Crestron RMC4, HD-PS402 and DM-DGE-200-C core; the single-projector room takes one HD-RXC-4KZ-101 receiver and the three dual-projector rooms take two. Seven receivers, screens and mounts cover seven projection positions across four identical control systems.
One program, one training session, one spares list — the variation sits in the room file, not the architecture. We ran the same pattern across three classrooms at a community college in Hayward.
How do you design a classroom around projectors the college already owns?
You design so no single projector is load-bearing. At DVC the projectors, rack PCs and document cameras were all owner-furnished and listed as TBD at drawing stage, so each projector connects over HDMI with RS-232 for control and the Crestron program addresses it generically. Replacing a projector does not require reprogramming the room.
What happens when owner-furnished devices will not handshake with new switching?
It becomes commissioning work, and it should be budgeted as such. Three of the four ATC classrooms showed HDCP and EDID faults against the college's own laptops and adapters after install, and resolving them meant revising the control programming rather than changing hardware. That work continued past the initial handover.
The honest expectation on any owner-furnished package is that the last ten percent takes longer than the first ninety.
What happens if a specified product is discontinued during the job?
It goes through an RFI and a signed change order, not a quiet swap. On this project Crestron discontinued both the DM-DGE-100 and the HD-RX-4K-210-C-E after contract signature. The receiver was replaced by the HD-RXC-4KZ-101 at no cost impact, and the graphics engine by the DM-DGE-200-C, documented and approved in writing before anything shipped.
Does a substitution change the control programming?
Usually yes, at least in the device drivers. Moving from the Crestron DM-DGE-100 to the DM-DGE-200-C and from the HD-RX-4K-210-C-E to the HD-RXC-4KZ-101 kept the room architecture identical but changed the modules the program talks to, so the Crestron code was rebuilt and reloaded against the parts actually installed.
This is why substitutions get recorded on the as-builts rather than only in the purchase order.
What compliance work does a California community college AV subcontract involve?
Public works rules apply in full. The Diablo Valley College ATC job required DAS 140 and DAS 142 filings, prevailing wage for every trade hour, and DIR certified payroll submitted throughout the install — separate from the AV scope and on its own schedule.
An integrator who has not run certified payroll before will feel this on a campus job. The same rules govern our public sector and government work.
How is assistive listening handled in a renovated classroom?
Each of the four classrooms has a Listen Technologies LP-4VP-072-01 transmitter, added to the project by change order. The transmitter lives in the room rack, but a metal rack blocks the signal, so we fitted antenna extensions in all four rooms to bring the antenna onto the outside face of the rack where it can actually radiate.
Next step
Planning a classroom standard across a campus — especially where the projectors or room PCs are already yours — starts with a site walk. We will look at the rooms, the existing equipment and the network, and tell you what a repeatable standard would look like. Rooms that stay in spec are the ones somebody is actually watching.
Classroom AV · Campus Standards
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Creation Networks, Inc. — nationwide commercial AV integrator, CTS-D certified, based in Concord, CA and Incline Village, NV. Design, engineering, programming, installation, and support from a single point of contact since 2006. Call 888-230-3661 or email sales@creationnetworks.net.
