"We were very excited to be involved in this nationally-important project," says Phil Haldane, Black Light's head of development, who explains that the company's technicians programmed the advanced eCue Lighting Control Engine that interfaces between the project's various elements. "This work shows our technical expertise at system programming and the way we can slot in as part of a project team no matter how high-profile or technically demanding a project is."
The City Park lighting installation is managed via a central lighting control system, which responds to both the rising and falling water levels in the Park's pools and to artistic requirements. Because of this, the Black Light team faced the challenge of triggering various lighting scenes depending on the water levels in individual pools.
"Pool level data was provided to our system as DMX 512 values," says Haldane. "This information was fed into a eCue Media Engine and we programmed this to the control specification provided by Arup to deliver the desired outcomes. We also programmed wall-mount control interfaces, touch panel interfaces and web access to the system for remote control and monitoring."
Black Light's programmers faced a number of other challenges. For example, they had to set up a number of Interface Software Pages to allow special scenes to be set-up for individual events and also for test functionality. Timing the various features was also a key element of the work and careful integration in the software programming was required to make sure the systems switched on and off when required.
"We programmed switch off times at defined points so that different light fittings would not run throughout the night," says Haldane. "However, enough elements needed to stay on to give general and safety lighting."
(Jim Evans)
