Lighting designers Dave Charman & William Barrett of Liteworx AV LTD designed the ceiling with all equipment supplied by Liteworx AV LTD. The W-DMX System was specified and supplied by Nick Teryll from UK W-DMX distributor Whitelight.
Charman explains, "The W-DMX system was used solely to transmit data to the moving triangle pixel tubes, while the motor data was hard wired. The main challenge was sending 4 universes of DMX to the pixel tubes surrounding the triangles, since we had originally intended using a mechanical mechanism built into an alternative motor to send the data to the tubes but we decided against this for two reasons: reason one being that the additional cost of the alternate motors would have exceeded budget, and reason two that the mechanism built into the motors relies on a mechanical brush arrangement which can cause the data to drop out momentarily when the motors are in motion causing the pixel tubes to freeze and revert to a stand-alone function, therefore we chose the W-DMX system for a solid reliable data transmission to the pixel tubes on the triangles."
He continues, "One issue that we had to work around was that one of the venue's new requirements was to provide a strong wi-fi signal throughout the building for its clientele, and this involved installing around 10 Wi-Fi access points around the venue to ensure adequate coverage and we encountered some interference to the W-DMX system with that heavy use of the wireless spectrum.
"Our worries were very quickly overcome after a phone call to the W-DMX tech guys from Wireless Solution who logged into our W-DMX BlackBox Transceivers on site via a PC and teamviewer and adjusted the parameters of the transceivers to overcome the issues in full, and since the adjustments have been carried out we can happily say that the system works extremely well with zero signal drop outs or data transmission errors."
Charman adds, "The response from the client was extremely positive and the venue has been a huge success since its refit / rebranding. It looks spectacular."
Niclas Arvidsson, CEO of Wireless Solution said, "W-DMX has been used with great success even with moving pieces and heavy wi-fi traffic, but occasionally it requires adjustments, which is exactly what our tech team is for, and we have a worldwide network of trained technicians prepared to go on site if any problems are encountered during set up. But I will say it's rare. Once everything is adjusted it works flawlessly."
(Jim Evans)
