Best Auto, Marine, or Aircraft

Liquid Automation

This stunning yacht integration — which the CEDIA judges simply call “a beautiful project” — is a retrofit of the world’s largest catamaran. In addition to the usual challenges presented by marine retrofits, such as working in existing (and usually incredibly tight) rack spaces and ensuring that the gear was weathertight, Liquid Automation had a total of 11 weeks to complete the job. The first five were spent planning the project, then the final six to wrap up the integration. Not to mention the yacht being moored in Malta — a mere 18,000km from Liquid Automation’s New Zealand HQ.

Nine zones of AV and four audio-only zones are featured in the ship’s entertainment upgrades, with room for later expandability and enhancements. Additionally, Liquid Automation notes that “As this vessel is capable of worldwide travel, the satellite TV decoders are designed to be swapped out as the vessel moves to new locations.” The client also needed remote monitoring for the vessel, a complete overhaul of the lighting systems, a robust wired and wireless network with five separate VLANs, and climate control that can handle drawing humidity away from the racks.

Lastly, a big component of a yacht such as this is security: “We installed custom Panasonic PTZ Cameras to the exterior and fixed wide-angled cameras in the engineering spaces. The cameras have full control from the crew touch panels only,” says the integration team.