The Broadgate project was a major architectural installation in the City of London, involving the installation of 550 colour change fixtures in a new public plaza in Finsbury Avenue Square. The project, which is probably the largest of its type in the world, presented numerous technical hurdles and required some ingenious application of technology. The entire system was custom designed, manufactured and installed by Artistic Licence.
The biggest challenge was also the most obvious: each fixture needs a method of setting the DMX512 start address, and with fixtures embedded in the ground, there was nowhere to put an access panel for the conventional DIP switches. Even if there had been room, putting an access panel on a waterproof fixture designed to last for a decade is perhaps asking for trouble. Artistic's solution was to implement the latest development in entertainment technology - Remote Device Management (RDM) - which allows data to be returned to the console on the main DMX512 wires. An RDM fixture is assigned a unique identification number (UID) during manufacture - similar to the MAC address found on Ethernet equipment. The UID allows the lighting console to discover each fixture and remotely assign a start address - with no need for DIP switches or access panels.
(Lee Baldock)
