Pixel LED Projects We Built Ourselves.

Epic is the largest club in the Czech Republic, opened by the team behind Slovakia's biggest nightclub. Its main room is built around a single object: a circle 5 metres across in the middle of the ceiling, made of 80 addressable strip segments, each 2.5 m long, that run outwards like the rays of the sun.

Every pixel of the circle is addressed on its own, so the sun can show anything from slow colour waves spreading from the centre to full video. The VJ keeps working in Resolume Arena; Spout hands the picture to LED Strip Studio on the same Windows PC, where the 80 rays are mapped exactly as they hang, and LEC3 controllers send it to the strips. Because the sun and the LED walls play from one Resolume session, they never drift apart.

• →80 × 2.5 m pixel strip segments in a 5 m circle
• →Resolume Arena → Spout → LED Strip Studio with near-zero latency
• →LEC3 controllers drive the strips over Ethernet
• →Lesson learned: a pixel floor was later removed after cleaning water got into its profiles

On a stage high in the Austrian Alps, two tall crystals and a hydraulic moving stage carry about 250 m of 12 V WS2815 strip at 60 pixels per metre. Five LED Ethernet controllers with 4,096 pixels each connect the structure to the front-of-house desk. Every Wednesday of the ski season, more than 2,000 people gather in the snow to watch.

We built it in three trips: frames and power in October, strips in the winter cold, then programming. Three versions of the one-hour show run in LED Strip Studio, locked to the music with MIDI timecode and joined by skiers in pixel LED suits, and the resort's own staff start them. After two winters the main structure has had no failures. We explain the cold-weather choices in building an outdoor pixel LED stage in freezing cold.

• →≈ 250 m of 12 V WS2815 strip at 60 pixels per metre
• →5 × LED Ethernet Controller 3, 4,096 pixels each
• →Show synced to music with MIDI timecode
• →Strips in profiles and conduit, controllers in sealed enclosures

Our event agency TRON wanted an act nobody can walk past. The result is a walking robot 2.5 m tall, with almost 2,000 individually controlled pixels on its suit, driven by an LED Ethernet Controller 3. It shows logos, text and video, and at exhibitions and parties it is the thing everyone wants a photo with.

The robot uses two wireless links. Ordinary Wi-Fi is for building and testing the show. For the performance it switches to wireless DMX, which carries sync data: if reception drops for a moment, the robot locks back onto the master computer as soon as the DMX signal returns.

• →2.5 m tall, ≈ 2,000 individually controlled pixels
• →LED Ethernet Controller 3 inside the suit
• →Wi-Fi for programming, wireless DMX for show sync
• →Shows logos, text and video while walking