Wireless Spectacular at Marina Bay Singapore

	Marina Bay New Year's Eve celebration in Singapore with W-DMX

It has become tradition to celebrate New Year's Eve at the Marina Bay in Singapore -- in fact, each year it attracts 100,000 people to this festivity. For 11 years it has been Esplanade's job, together with the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore, to organize and facilitate this massive event -- last year alone it included eight minutes of firework displays and 20,000 "wishing spheres" along the river. Each sphere was signed by several people during previous months, with messages expressing wishes and hope to the upcoming year.

The organizers tasked local rental company Showtech Communications to provide a solution in integrating the existing lighting installations surrounding the bay with all the extra equipment for these celebrations. In total, Showtech used 48 Robe luminaires, 45 Clay Paky luminaires, plus 300 LED fixtures to cover the whole area.

Under the guidance of Heryadi Mohd Yusof and Ismahadie Putra Ishak as the responsible lighting designers, a six universe of W-DMX from Wireless Solution Sweden was specified -- this system bridged the 400m of water (from front-of-house to the luminaires' area). Project manager William Ang, along with lighting chief Jorden Lee and assistant Kiat used 12 Blackbox F-1 transceivers with outdoor dual band antennas to setup the link between the two sides of the bay. "The plug-and-play approach of the W-DMX transceivers provided instant connectivity across the water, which in itself is a difficult task due to the reflective nature of the water surface," said the experienced techs.

During the setup process, the team found it useful to change the transmission mode to 5.8GHz: "There was an undetermined radio source at the receiving end giving us a slight interference. We decided to move to 5.8GHz before, not to put the job in jeopardy and to guarantee a secure connection."

With the aid of the co-existence dongle (the W-DMX configuration tool), specific frequency channels were selected for each transmitter to eliminate interference. This configuration took less than 30 minutes and it guaranteed a smooth operation. In the end, the signal never dropped below 80%, even after reducing the output power on the transmitters.

"W-DMX proved its invisi-wire philosophy -- it worked as reliably as a cable would've worked!" said the team participants after a very successful show.