Clinch Valley Soil and Water Conservation District
Located in Lebanon, VA, the Clinch Valley SWCD approached us with a unique project – powering a mobile AR Sand Table to help teach map reading, topography, erosion, and the water cycle.
“Seeing the great contrast between a poorly performing retrofit computer and one built by Velocity Micro to our specifications was astounding.”
-Siobhan Nishida, Clinch Valley Soil and Water Conservation District Education Specialist
Augmented Reality
Clinch Valley Soil and Water Conservation District is a political subdivision of state government, promoting conservational efforts in rural Virginia. Part of their mission is educational outreach on the importance of conserving and protecting our natural resources. One way they do this with a unique, and frankly, pretty incredible tool called an Augmented Reality Sand Table with demanding PC hardware requirements.
“Using data collected from an Xbox Connect Camera, our PC runs a program that uses a short throw lens to project topographic contour lines representing the shape and terrain of the actual sand in the sandbox,” said Siobhan Nishida, Clinch Valley SWCD Education Specialist. “As students build mountains, valleys, and dams with their hands, they see how the features would be mapped. There is also a function to create a rain event, allowing students to see that water runs quickly down steep slopes, flows into valleys, and is stopped by dams.”
Such an inimitable device affords a specialized and powerful desktop to run it. And that’s where we came in. Our sales team worked directly with Nishida to custom design a desktop that was robust in both multi core processor and GPU power, specifically crafted for their Augmented Reality platform’s requirements, all while still sticking to their tight non-profit budget.
“Velocity Micro was able to walk us, non-tech savvy people, through exactly what we needed. We knew we needed a ‘fast computer’ but we didn't really know what that meant. They took control and helped walk us through different options that would fit the need of our program. Most importantly, they gave us what we needed - not too much and not too little.”
When asked why she chose Velocity Micro over the other options available, the choice for Nishida was a simple one.
“Velocity provided the best customer service and support as well as the quickest delivery time. Since we were working under a time limit to have the Sand Table ready for a planned event, we were so pleased to have the computer up and functioning in a couple of weeks from the time we placed our order.”
A smooth, efficient machine.
Ultimately though, for the Clinch Valley Soil and Water Conservation District team, it was the seamless and reliable performance of their new Velocity Micro desktop that really made an impression and helped to better enable their educational outreach.
“The machine runs the program very smoothly and the water event function performs consistently. This was not our experience with the first computer that we were testing. Seeing the great contrast between a poorly performing retrofit computer and one built by Velocity Micro to our specifications was astounding.”
