Marine Life Acclimates Swimmingly to Kansas City Thanks to ETC's Paradigm

Last fall, the Kansas City Zoo introduced its newest expansion, the Sobela Ocean Aquarium, to the public. The aquarium exhibits unparalleled environmental control throughout 34 unique habitats housing 8,000 animals in 650,000 gallons of water—all thanks to the help of ETC’s Paradigm control system provided by Mercer Zimmerman.

Mercer Zimmerman’s team knew from the very start that Paradigm controls would take the helm. The biggest consideration that drew the team to Paradigm was its adaptability. “In my 25 years using Paradigm, I can't remember a time where we haven't been able to use it to come up with a solution on a project,” says Brian Diltz of Mercer Zimmerman’s Controls Sales Team. “When you get a request from a client where the answer needs to be yes, if you’re using Paradigm, yes will be the answer.” The project was reconfigured significantly over the course of its evolution, with Paradigm accommodating each new development in stride.

Special considerations had to be made to accommodate the health needs of the aquatic life living in the aquarium. Living outside of their natural environment, animals can quickly become unwell if their internal clocks get out of order. Luckily, Mercer Zimmerman had previous experience using Paradigm to assure the health of some of the zoo’s feathered friends. “Seven years ago, we had to reverse engineer the time clock in the penguin habitat to keep that one part of the zoo on southern hemisphere time,” says Tim McCray, fellow Controls Sales Team member at Mercer Zimmerman. “Penguins are extremely light sensitive, so to keep their shedding patterns consistent, we were able to program Paradigm’s time clock to run backwards.” It wasn’t just penguins, either. Paradigm was able to accommodate the nuanced needs of over 200 animal species, from deep-sea life accustomed to frigid darkness to sea otters who prefer to spend their days playing in the sun.

These ultra-specific control settings also needed the ability to adjust to schedule modifications without any fuss. “It was important that the automatic schedule could be overridden very easily,” McCray mentions. “If they're going to have an after-hours field trip or nighttime event, they needed to have a lot of flexibility for staff to do overrides without needing too much technical knowledge.” That’s where Paradigm Touchscreen stations come in. Paradigm’s Touchscreen interfaces are custom programmed to wrap up all of a zone’s specific controls into a single, approachable package. With the tap of a finger, overrides can be made to the system in clear, approachable format.

Additionally, multiple load types would be running throughout the zoo, combining DALI with DMX, which could spell trouble for less comprehensive control systems. Not a problem for Paradigm, however. “ETC combines all the different load types better than anybody.”

 With a world of powerful controls at their fingertips, The Kansas City Zoo and Sobela Aquarium is equipped to bring joy to the community for years to come.