Coachella 2011 Goes Wireless with LumenRadio CRMX Nova

The Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Southern California grows larger every spring. This year, the three-day event boasted over 75,000 attendees each day, and featured headlining acts such as Arcade Fire, Kanye West, and Kings of Leon. Integral to this huge production was wireless lighting control, realized with LumenRadio's award-winning CRMX Nova systems. On 11 generator-powered lighting towers as far away as 2,100' from the control center, LumenRadio controlled four DMX universes of High End intellaspots, PRG Bad Boys, and Color Kinetics ColorBlazes.

Provided by Felix Lighting of La Mirada, California, the LumenRadio units overcame daunting challenges, not only linking several universes of DMX to locations well over a quarter mile apart, but doing so while peacefully coexisting in an environment saturated by other wireless traffic, including life safety, performance, production, and even a temporary Wi-Fi network made available by AT&T to everyone on the grounds.

CRMX (Cognitive Radio Multiplexer) represents the future of wireless lighting control, the company claims. Instead of operating on the principle of just getting "louder" and overpowering other wireless traffic in order to be heard, LumenRadio features pioneering technology that actively listens for "quiet" spaces in the radio spectrum, and transmits in them. Additionally, CRMX software allows the user to block out and not operate in specific areas of the frequency spectrum. Thus, LumenRadio products are able to intelligently avoid interference with other wireless traffic, while simultaneously raising the bar for performance and reliability.

Dave McKinnon, Felix Lighting's president, says, "Previously, events such as Coachella have exceeded the limits of available wireless technology. LumenRadio, with the innovative features of CRMX software, has eliminated the headaches associated with wireless lighting control. This puts LumenRadio far ahead in the field. Also, for such a big project, we appreciated the hands-on technical support provided by TMB and LumenRadio." TMB is the exclusive distributor of LumenRadio products in North America.