LightFactory PC based lighting control software used to create two stunning Christmas tree features for the festive season.
The team at ArchiLX Cyprus completed a major Christmas installation for the brand new shopping centre MY MALL in Limassol Cyprus. They designed an extensive package of exterior and interior festive lighting effects including a unique tree of light using nearly 400 LED festoon fixtures from Glasson Electronics controlled exclusively by a 64 Universe LightFactory system and Ethernet to DMX boxes from Cooper Controls.
The LED tree was conceived and programmed by ArchiLX design director Ben M Rogers and comprises 19 strands of festoon harness each with 20 LED globes. Each LED globe offers full RGB mixing and is individually addressed using the Glasson handheld programmer. The Glasson DFS 3000 LED system transmits power and control over just 2 wires allowing the use of standard festoon harness. As Rogers remarks "the Glasson system is effortlessly simple in its installation and offers a dynamic and unique effect with minimal power requirements, in fact the complete LED tree installation consumes just over 800w of power making it a very energy efficient system." In addition to the low power usage the fact that the system runs at a low voltage with minimal heat and robust plastic casings also meant that the safety and practical needs of the installation where met.
The tree which runs for 12 hours a day whenever the mall is open was programmed with a fast moving range of colours and animations. This was achieved using LightFactory’s matrix control system. As Rogers continues “I created a simple pixel matrix definition in LightFactory and then built a looping video of the colours and effects I wanted." Using the built in scheduler in LightFactory Rogers was also able to set times for the system to start and finish it's playback each day. "What we ended up with was a virtually zero maintenance system which fulfilled both the creative and technical needs of the install and received acclaim from shoppers and management alike".
Meanwhile, in New Zealand, LightFactory was utilized in the unique, interactive Telecom Tree.
The Telecom Tree is a 7 story high interactive light sculpture that transports children's wishes to the Santa Claus at the North Pole. The lighting system designed by David Eversfield and implemented by the team at opticshock uses LightFactory, 1 Universe Ethernet boxes and Enntec Datagates to achieve the interactivity.
People that visit the tree at an inner city park in Auckland or on the waterfront in Wellington can use one of the phone booths around the base to ring Santa. The caller’s voice modulates the brightness of lights, carrying the message out of the phone booth and up the tree. David uses a Datagate with a cascading Artnet merge to link several different interactive features into one DMX in for the GrandMA console and Hippotizer controlling the tree.
Good boys and girls keen to decorate their own tree for Santa can visit the Telecom Tree website www.telecomtree.co.nz to create their design.
The key interaction between the website and the GrandMA/Hippotizer control software was made possible by LightFactory. The flexible scripting engine allowed David to send the designs directly from the website to the tree control software. Martin Searancke from LightFactory implemented a number of bespoke variable commands to help smooth the process.