During the summer and fall of 2003, the Plymouth State University (formerly College) Meteorology Program created an electronic map wall in the institution's Weather Center to replace the numerous paper, facsimile-type, weather maps that had been used for many years. The concept of the large bank of computer displays evolved because of the reduction in available fax charts, the shift of many such charts over to electronic web-based images, and the considerable in-house capabilities to generate custom images and animations.

The wall itself consists of 32 19-inch flat LCD panel monitors and 2 large 42-inch plasma displays. Screens are fed by nine Pentium-based PCs (some with up to five video cards), which are networked and running FreeBSD UNIX as the operating system. A large custom cabinet was built to hold the display devices and house the CPUs, cables, and electric and network connections. The majority of the monitors run a suite of pre-selected displays that are constantly updated when new data arrive. The plasma displays can run in this fashion or be completely interactive. This wall provides a great deal of capability and flexibility in the area of weather visualization.

This paper will cover the planning, electronic/architecural requirements, display selections, performance, and problems/benefits associated with this project.