A flat-panel television mounted above the fireplace? Yawn. Seen it, done that. But this one’s an eye opener. In fact, if you were to look at the beautiful woodwork covering the hearth in this Western Massachusetts home, you would ask, where’s the TV?
It’s concealed until the owners want to watch something. Then, when they press an icon on a URC controller, the TV pops out, spins 180 degrees and recesses flush back into the wall. That’s actually the back side of the TV in view when the screen is not, covered in the same millwork that covers the wall so when the TV is off it seems to vanish.
Custom electronics pro Elite Media Solutions of Wellesley Hills, Mass., used a 650-pound Reversica mount—that was installed with a small crane—and a Sanus bracket to mount the 65-inch Samsung LCD TV above the fireplace in the family room. The now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t trick takes about six seconds to complete.
“The air pump that controls the Reversica mount is in the basement, so the entire operation is completely quiet,” says Frederic Paradis, Elite Media Solutions project manager. “This installation was ridiculous. We’ve never done anything like it before.”
The installation, which was part of a nine-month project, took 15 people to come together. Woodwork crafter South Shore Millwork came up with the idea to use Reversica, which had to custom construct the mount as it was the largest they’d ever designed. Elite worked with Industrial Controller Services to design and control the coordination of the mechanism.
“One button fires it up, opens it, spins it and closes it,” Paradis says. “The intelligence lives inside the industrial controller, along with limit switches. As the cylinder is sliding forward, the controller is looking for the next bit of logic: continue on, continue on, continue on and stop when it gets to the end point.”
Between the air pump, the controller triggers and the secure TV mount, everything needed to be precise for the job to operate smoothly. A small adjustment was made to get the timing right. “The first time we opened it, the air was a little high [on the pump] and the TV flew open. Everyone jumped back about a foot,” jokes Paradis. “It’s pretty imposing when it’s coming out of the mantel—the bottom of the TV is about 13 to 14 feet off the ground.”
Here’s a quick video of the transformation, which also gives you a better idea of the project’s scale:
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