Overview

Our Virtual Aquarium system provides a colorful and fun atmosphere to various areas in a typical senior type facility and can serve as a simple and cost-effective replacement for actual aquariums.  We feature live cams from national aquariums to help promote and support their conservation missions.  With the live feeds, residents and visitors will see a wide variety of marine life in a live setting.   The atmosphere this system creates is truly unique and can work in a variety of areas in the facility.

Details of How it Works

A tablet is used to access our Coral Reef TV website and the tablet is then connected to a TV with an HDMI cable.  No cable boxes or special equipment is required.  We can provide the tablet or you can use your own and the tablet is connected to the facility guest Wi-Fi system.  Once the tablet is ON, the Coral Reef TV website icon is visible and selected to show the available live feeds.  From there it takes only two clicks to see the live video and it will run continuously.  It's extremely simple to get started and operate.

Content Features

We provide access to multiple live cams such as the famous Monterey Bay Jelly Fish Cam, the Shark Cam From Frying Pan Tower off the coast of North Carolina and the Aquarium of the Pacific Cam in Long Beach California to name just a few.  With the live streaming cams, viewers will always be excited to see what’s new each day.  Works similar to other nature streaming sites except we feature live streams which makes it unique in the industry.

Example of Typical Use

The tablet can stream wherever Wi-Fi coverage exists in the facility and with the provided HDMI cable, the tablet can be connected to an existing house TV through an auxiliary input.  If a house TV is not available, then a new TV can be installed for this specific purpose.  Typical areas where this could be installed is a visitor entrance, rehab area, snack area or wherever a TV would normally be located.  This creates a unique and colorful backdrop to these areas and normal TV functions are still available since the connection is through an auxiliary input.

Health Benefits

In addition to creating a fun atmosphere, a side effect is the proven health benefits that aquariums and watching live nature videos provide.  Studies have found that aquarium-watching helps reduce stress and anxiety, increase feelings of relaxation, and decrease heart rate and muscle tension.  A study, conducted at Purdue University, revealed that aquariums can improve Alzheimer’s patients’ eating habits and behavioral patterns. The results showed that aquarium-watching increased food intake by 21.1 percent and increased the patients’ level of attentiveness as well.  Instead of a live aquarium, we provide a live, real-time based experience that achieves similar results.

Advantages Over Traditional Aquariums

There are three distinct advantages that our virtual aquarium has over standard tank aquariums:  1) Maintenance Costs - Aquariums can be costly to maintain and can cost over $100 per month to maintain correctly.  Our virtual aquarium set-up costs only about $40/year in electricity.  Also, the virtual aquarium does not take up valuable floor space in the facility.   2) More Interesting - Different streams can be accessed so new fish and other nature streams can be changed daily or weekly.  3) Better for the Environment - Most fish that are stocked in aquariums come from coral reefs and the majority die long before they get to your tank.  Harvesting techniques are usually always harmful to the marine environment.  Since we promote national aquariums and their conservation efforts, awareness of marine environment conservation is a side benefit.

Works Together with the Fun Activity Use Described in the Other Section

The virtual aquarium provides all of the benefits without the disadvantages of a live aquarium that we detailed above.  The virtual aquarium operates similarly to the Fun Activity function described in the other section and both of these products can be used independently of each other or combined and used together to provide a video entertainment platform.  

Video

To view a video of how the whole system works, please click on the video link shown in the photo to the left.