Amongst the technology behind the exhibits are three Martin MAC250+ moving heads that can be positioned and controlled by a computer using the industry standard DMX protocol. "Multimedia developers ISO wanted a visitor-controlled trackball to move a spotlight in realtime over a projected map of Wales," says Adrian Ward, manager of Signwave UK. "We love a challenge and after a heavy period of research and testing, we showed that we could precisely position the spotlight on the map using custom software, and give the developers of the multimedia software a way to control the light in their code."
Signwave developed its DMXBridge software to bridge the gap between a visitor-controlled multimedia interface, and the moving heads. The software runs on Windows XP hardware, and communicates with the moving heads via a USB-DMX controller from Sunlite.
Damien Smith, director of ISO, comments: "Without Signwave's work on this we were faced with having to commission the building of untested solid state solutions - a route that was proving daunting and expensive to both us and the hardware installation team".
(Jim Evans)
