If you’re building yourself a mansion in the flashy Melbourne suburb of Sorrento you have to have a disco dancefloor, right? And not just any old dancefloor but an LED animated dancefloor!
The architect on the job contacted Daniel Andrews of LED Media to provide a tailor made solution.
“They wanted to be able integrate all of the audio, lighting and vision components so it all synchronised with whatever the music was playing,” explained Daniel. “I only knew a little about coolux so I approached Simon Barrett from Show Technology for advice on whether it was the correct platform to use. As well as bringing the audio, vision and lighting together, I wanted it to be automated too so the client could simply run the system.”
Simon introduced Daniel to the Pandoras Box Compact Player and Daniel soon realized it would be the perfect back-end system to give the client what they required – ease of use. The coolux Compact Player is an extremely versatile hardware based media player that is both small in size and great when it comes to reliability and power.
An audio feed is taken from the audio system into the front end of the Compact Player where coolux is able to detect the bass frequencies and match the dancefloor visuals to the timing. It also controls the movement of the ShowPro coloured strobe light mounted above the dancefloor.
Widget Designer has been added to be the programmable template to set the remote. The client uses an iPad as the main audio visual controller throughout the entire house with a Widget Designer app on the home screen. One click on the app and the Widget Designer remote interface is launched.
The interface has forty abstract visuals loaded and Simon also set up some standard presentations to do with colour.
“We also added some faders so we can turn down the brightness of the floor or the light, plus a fader to switch the light from a standard black and white strobe to a scrolling colour wheel,” said Daniel. “We launched the interface as a standard style whereby whatever you do on the interface you won’t harm the saved presentations. Once you know the IP settings of the coolux Compact Player, anyone with a smart phone or tablet can bring up the Widget Designer app so it’s very flexible in that regard.”
Daniel commented that his team has really enjoyed working with the Show Technology guys on this project and that from the very beginning, Simon has been very enthusiastic to come up with the correct solution.
“There were technical aspects that we needed to ensure were automated so the client did not have to be IT savvy at all,” added Daniel. “It also had to be future-proofed as I’m sure we will add to it in the future.”
