Installed by contractors Alstom Australia, the LED Wall is one of the most ambitious feature lighting installations ever undertaken in Australia. "The magnitude of this project was quite large as a number of electrical connections were required to terminate nearly a thousand luminaires. Therefore good design, planning and documentation were paramount for this project to be on time and within budget" explains Lightmoves project manager, Joe Casamento.
The specification was predominantly performance-based, calling for a weatherproof luminaire that housed red, green and blue LEDs, and a control system that allowed individual control of every LED. The control system had to treat the wall as a low resolution video screen that allowed artists to use the wall as a blank canvas. Programming of sequences needed to include the ability to import images in the form of bitmap and video files. Transducers in the road were placed to monitor traffic levels and trigger the display of various lighting sequences.
The custom LED fitting needed to meet the performance specifications whilst fitting within the relatively tight 40mm diameter area of the acrylic screen fixings. It also had to endure Melbourne's diverse weather conditions and high UV radiation. Lightmoves collaborated closely with Brisbane-based supplier Digilin to develop a suitable LED fitting. Although Digilin is renowned for their range of Fibre Optic lighting products, they also manufacture an extensive range of LED strips and luminaires. Several prototypes were produced in the process of developing the LMCB40 for this project. The finished product is an IP66-rated, stainless steel RGB LED fitting with a UV-stabilised lens. With nearly 3,000 channels of lighting control to contend with, Lightmoves used Dynalite's 48-way constant current LED controllers as the basis of its control solution, using DMX512.
The innovative Colour Tramp system from Artistic Licence was chosen to provide the overall control of the LED Wall. Its ability to control large numbers of LED fittings with a user-friendly graphically-based screen made it a logical choice for the project, say Lightmoves. It's ability to easily import bitmaps and videos simplified an otherwise complex programming process. Joe Casamento said: "Colour Tramp was a great tool for us. It easily enabled us to program the wall by importing the artist's computer bitmaps. And the ability to have a full on-screen representation of the wall meant that a lot of programming could be done off-site."
Colour Tramp uses the Art-Net DMX over Ethernet protocol as output for its multiple streams of DMX data. Datagate, a product recently developed in Melbourne by Enttec, was selected to translate the Art-Net data into standard DMX. The first Datagate off the production was given a baptism by fire for this project, having to process seven streams of DMX information - a task it did with ease. Housed in a 1RU rack-mount enclosure, the Datagate has, amongst its wide variety DMX and Ethernet translation capabilities, the ability to convert Art-Net to eight streams (4096 channels) of DMX.
Finally, an AMX Netlinx NI-3000 was used to process information
