Mobile World Congress 19 took place in Shanghai
China - Nick Ho and his team put on light shows for some of the brightest minds in tech, surrounded by cutting-edge contrivances like self-driving cars, 5G mirrors and 8K 360° virtual reality experiences at MWC19 Shanghai. Ho navigated his way through time constraint issues to interface on short notice with some advanced laser software. Helping him accomplish this was the ChamSys MagicQ MQ60 console.
“For the past few years of the MWC event, I have programmed the conference’s opening stinger (walk-up music for the speaker introduction) with lights,” explains Ho. “This year, my client decided to build this show around laser fixtures. We had to use Pangolin Beyond software. Now, my MQ60 receives Timecode via SMPTE LTC, but our Pangolin was not able to receive LTC due to the short notice we were given, which left us no time to prepare the LTC convert for Pangolin.”
Ho credits the “ChamSys flexibility” with helping him and his team employ an effective workaround that overcame this challenge. “We used a feature in the ChamSys, called the ‘ArtNet Retransmit’,” he says. “This allowed us to use the MQ60 to transmit the incoming LTC to Pangolin via ArtNet.”
As a result, Ho and his colleagues, Justin Poh the MQ60 programmer, and Wang Jin, who programmed Pangolin Beyond, were able to create a stunning eight-universe show that married the best of lighting and lasers to captivated the tech savvy crowd at MCW19 Shanghai.
“Everyone was very pleased with how this show turned out,” adds Ho. “There was a lot of movement, colour, intensity, and multiple layers of looks. It represented the creative spirit of the conference. To blend laser and lighting with different cues and timing was interesting and challenging. I wrote all the cues, Justin programmed them in the MQ60, and our laser assistant Wang programmed in Pangolin Beyond. I then did the final timecode touch-up and operated the ChamSys console on the show days. It all went very smoothly.”
In addition to the laser displays, the opening day stinger was enlivened by a colourscape created with RGBA fixtures. “Our opening show featured seven different RGBW colours and some LED Ribbons,” concludes Ho. “The MQ60 can easily create a fixture profile within minutes in order to programme the launching device that was built especially for this conference.”
(Jim Evans)

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