Have a very BrightSign Christmas
The City of Melbourne has stepped up its Federation Square Christmas display in 2017 with the introduction of an eye-catching, 16m Christmas tree.
No ordinary (fabricated) tree, it hosts an impressive synchronised sound and light show controlled and programmed by Sound Environment.
Kicking off at 9pm every night over the festive season, the tree cycles through a resplendent lighting display, with a BrightSign HD223 media player calling the shots.
It’s an innovative use of the industry-standard media player and one necessitated by budget constraints, as Sound Environment director, Bryce Grunden explains: “In previous years we’ve used an AMX control system to manage the Christmas display. The organisers this year sunk more of the budget into the fabrication of the Christmas Tree so we needed to find a reliable but inventive way of controlling the installation.” Usually, the brains behind many of the world’s largest and most impressive digital signage deployments, the BrightSign player’s rock-solid scheduling functionality ensures the Christmas tree lighting programs are reliably triggered. The schedule is set within the BrightSign software, and, when it’s go-time, a stream of linear timecode (LTC) via category cable is sent to the lighting control device, which allows the lighting show to sync with the multi-channel audio stored on the BrightSign player.
Elsewhere in the Federation Square Christmas display, a BrightSign player sends LTC to a JoeCo Blackbox hardware multitrack audio device to sync the 10.1 soundscape with the lighting display in Santa’s Grotto.
Rounding out the Federation Square attractions are a handful of children’s interactive ‘totems’. A BrightSign media players sits inside each totem, triggering audio and syncing lighting changes every time a child activates it.
Up until the time of reporting, the innovative BrightSign-centred design hasn’t missed a beat. Bryce Grunden again: “Using BrightSign HD223 players for the network UTP control of lighting, for scheduling, multichannel audio, and syncing lighting and audio with LTC? Yes, it’s unusual but it’s working a treat.”Like they say, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’!
No ordinary (fabricated) tree, it hosts an impressive synchronised sound and light show controlled and programmed by Sound Environment.
Kicking off at 9pm every night over the festive season, the tree cycles through a resplendent lighting display, with a BrightSign HD223 media player calling the shots.
It’s an innovative use of the industry-standard media player and one necessitated by budget constraints, as Sound Environment director, Bryce Grunden explains: “In previous years we’ve used an AMX control system to manage the Christmas display. The organisers this year sunk more of the budget into the fabrication of the Christmas Tree so we needed to find a reliable but inventive way of controlling the installation.” Usually, the brains behind many of the world’s largest and most impressive digital signage deployments, the BrightSign player’s rock-solid scheduling functionality ensures the Christmas tree lighting programs are reliably triggered. The schedule is set within the BrightSign software, and, when it’s go-time, a stream of linear timecode (LTC) via category cable is sent to the lighting control device, which allows the lighting show to sync with the multi-channel audio stored on the BrightSign player.
Elsewhere in the Federation Square Christmas display, a BrightSign player sends LTC to a JoeCo Blackbox hardware multitrack audio device to sync the 10.1 soundscape with the lighting display in Santa’s Grotto.
Rounding out the Federation Square attractions are a handful of children’s interactive ‘totems’. A BrightSign media players sits inside each totem, triggering audio and syncing lighting changes every time a child activates it.
Up until the time of reporting, the innovative BrightSign-centred design hasn’t missed a beat. Bryce Grunden again: “Using BrightSign HD223 players for the network UTP control of lighting, for scheduling, multichannel audio, and syncing lighting and audio with LTC? Yes, it’s unusual but it’s working a treat.”Like they say, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’!
