W-DMX Saves Season of LightOver 4,000m of Cable

The third Season of Light event in Helsinki recently wrapped up to huge critical acclaim, with Wireless Solution's W-DMX playing an integral part of one of the major installations. The event, organized by the City of Helsinki, was held from December 31 to January 9 and showcased lighting designers Martin Kuhn of Germany, Per Sundin of Sweden, and Tulay Schakir and Mikki Kunttu of Finland, who each created lighting installations for some of the main buildings around the city.

The City Of Helsinki considers Season of Lightto be one of its major annual events; this year saw more than 50,000 spectators walk along the light path from the Senate Square to the Parliament House during the 10-day showcase. The project was covered by CNN International news, as well as every major Finnish TV channel and newspaper.

W-DMX was used for Kuhn's design on Unioninkatu (Union Street), entitled 100 Years. The installation used 126 pieces of Laser Imagineering Sunbeam 100cm full color LED fixtures. Each piece used 60 parameters for a total of 7,560. The W-DMX system handled a total of 18 universes at distances up to 1,475'.

The site's technical manager, Eero Helle, of Noise House Ltd. Finland, said of W-DMX, "The whole system was up and running from the evening of December 29. It performed under very harsh weather conditions with snow and temperatures down to -25 degrees C [-13 degrees F]. In the same room where we housed the transmitters, Finnish broadcast company, YLE, put their digital link to broadcast the live show from Senate Square on New Year's Eve and there were no interference problems whatsoever. YLE also used two wireless cameras on that show approximately 200m [656'] away from our transmitters, and there were no interference problems with those either."

Technical production manager Jussi Kallioinen remarked, "Had we used actual DMX cable, the installation would have required somewhere around 4.5km [2.8 miles] plus splitters, repeaters, etc. By using W-DMX, we only used 250 meters [820'] of cable and that was only to find a better place for the receivers. It saved us not only loads of cable but loads of time and energy."

Kuhn added, "The W-DMX was reliable, that's true. This was not your ordinary venue either but I have used it before and it was always rock solid, so I had no worries. I was concerned beforehand about the heavy traffic on 18 lines of 480 channels of DMX controlling LED and potential lag time, but that was totally fine. It was all good."

Lighting designer Mikki Kunttu, one of the chief organizers of the event explained, "With all the technical challenges involved with the harsh weather conditions, our technical production was able to overcome every obstacle and literally no major problems occurred. The most important factor in these conditions is the choice of equipment that goes hand in hand with the maintenance and service work required to get the production up and to keep it running. W-DMX was one of these products that stood up to the test and helped make the project a success."