First Congrats to the Pittsburgh Steelers as they defeated the Seahawks 21-10 to win the franchise's fifth Super Bowl ring. For coach Bill 'the jaw' Cowher, Jerome 'the bus' Bettis, Ben Roethlisberger, and Hines Ward'MVP' it was a well-earned reward. It was a great game!

Now it's time to take a look at what kind of gear the folks in Detroit were using to keep everything safe, smooth, wired (or wireless), and what kind of shiny equipment ABC brings to the biggest TV event of the year.


The NFL brought in Motorola and Sprint to make sure WiFi, 3G, and voice networks worked unhindered with tens of thousands of people sending and receiving data simultaneously. Moto engineers installed a total of 48 Ethernet switch-linked, dual-radio, tri-mode 802.11 WiAP-200 access points, half in the stadium itself and half in surrounding venues, routing traffic through Comcast fiber. For its part, Sprint beefed up EV-DO at Ford stadium and for Detroit in general, and added 500 base radios to its existing in-stadium infrastructure to handle the anticipated spike in radio traffic. Sprint also ran physical lines out to the security and ticket booths at the perimeter of the event, creating an entirely separate WLAN, because of the several-hundred-foot distance from the stadium itself.

The Feds and Michigan National Guard had all the good toys, including an integrated, autonomous stationary and mobile sensor network. Besides the biological, chemical, and nuclear material sensors located throughout the facilities, National Guard personnel carryed concealed detectors that transmited their readings and GPS coordinates to a central location. This sensor coordination was made possible by Distributed Instruments LLC, which uses Transducer Data Exchange Protocol (TDXP) for plug-and-play sensor compatibility on top of the open-source OSGi Service Platform. Sony and OQO handhelds were also used by several dozen Guards during the game for communications and keeping track of the data flow.


No security regiment would be complete without a plethora of cameras watching everyone's every move. All of these security cameras transmited their feeds to surveillance vans, where software and hardware from Intrepid Defense & Security Systems rendered 3D holographic views from the footage. As you might expect, everyone entering the game was subject to patdowns, metal detectors, and dog-sniffing, and all 16,000 people working at the game were subjected to criminal background checks.


ABC decided to go all high-def this year, filming exclusively in 720p and editing on-the-fly with Final Cut Pro and five Avid Symphony systems. Twenty Thompson Grass Valley LDK 6000 mk II Worldcam stationary cameras with Canon lenses surrounded the field, some with optical image stabilization and a few with 100x zooms. Two wireless HD cams (pictured) also made a debut this year, along with Sony's 180fps 3x Super SloMo camera and two robotic goal line cams; the usual dual-operator SkyCam, goalpost cams, and Steadicams also got in on the action.


Another interesting tech-first this year was the implementation of DNA-infused game balls, which used a drop of the synthetic stuff that glows green under a specific laser frequency, to prevent counterfeiting. Since about 120 balls were used during the game, and each ball is worth over $1000 just for having seen some play time in the 'Bowl, there is apparently a strong incentive to pass off fake balls as the real deal. Thus, the DNA slipped into the balls is "heavily encrypted," with a one-in-33-trillion chance of randomly duplicating the exact sequence.


Once the game is over, fans at the stadium voted for the MVP at Superbowl.com on their cellphones, and Sprint Power Vision subscribers with the NFL Mobile package (which also broadcasts all pre-game press conferences) watched clips and highlights. Plus, everyone can watch those oh-so-entertaining Super Bowl commercials over-and-over on their PCs or wirelessly on their mobiles.