The control of lighting, and other systems including animatronics, was the responsibility of Technovations, an Essex-based technical design company that creatively uses sound and light to provide fully choreographed and controlled features to museums, exhibitions and theme parks.
"This type of job, with substantial lighting dimming, isn't exactly unique these days," said Technovations director Graham Owens, "but the way we went about it was probably a little unconventional."
The usual approach would have been to use a show control system, which could be anything from a simple DMX replay unit to a sophisticated multitasking system. This would normally control simple dimmers and other interfacing devices. Alternatively, it could have a number of smaller systems all running independently.
Based on their extensive knowledge of the iLight range and experience with control systems, Technovations decided to adopt a different approach and use an intelligent dimming system from iLight. Their work in the high-end residential bespoke arena has led to Technovations having a good in-house knowledge of the sequence and scripting capabilities of the iLight protocol. This enabled them to write the large number of control sequences required, all of which could run independently with commands interlaced.
The lighting changes specified varied from simple scene control in the main lobby and bar through to complex sequences choreographed to sound, video and animation, and triggered by timed events, buttons and sensors.
Lighting control was required for both themed lighting and work lights, and needed to interface with the fire alarm system. If an alarm is triggered, or during an emergency, the dimmers resort to a pre-programmed event. The system also had to control show power sockets for animations, turntables and AV equipment.
Because of the number of sequences and the frequency of the commands being sent, Technovations decided to install four subnetworks. The iLight programmable bridge still allows commands to be sent globally to control certain sequences and house keeping commands. "I'm not sure if iLight is unique in its ability to do this, but I'm sure glad in can do it," noted Owens.
(Jim Evans)
