London’s New Year Eve show powered by LumenRadio’s Wireless DMX technology
London welcomed 2023 with its largest ever New Year’s Eve celebration. An enormous light show using the iconic landmark London Eye as the magical centerpiece for the worldwide broadcasted event. A historical moment, also for LumenRadio, who supplied the wireless DMX technology needed for one of the most challenging projects in our lifetime.
“The wireless system was rock-solid. We wanted a beat-perfect programmed show, so hits and accents needed to be perfect. We had 100,000 people with mobile phones nearby, and the system did not let us down”, said Tim Routledge, Lighting Designer for the With Love from London project.
Produced by Identity, the celebrations included an enormous fireworks display, a drone light show and a large-scale lighting spectacle. With the television cameras in mind, Routledge knew he needed powerful lighting fixtures inside each of the London Eye’s 32 pods to provide the visual ‘punch’ required. He also knew that the luminaires would have to be controlled wirelessly, as this would be the only way of sending control data to each pod.
Neg Earth Lights began testing LumenRadio’s latest wireless DMX control products back in September with help from Jack Moorehouse, representing the lighting supply company AC ET. After encouraging results, followed by a series of successful site tests, the team was confident that the LumenRadio systems would ensure the reliability required for such a high-profile event. The order was placed for three Stardust and 34 Aurora units, along with required antennas.
The moving head fixtures, each accompanied by an Aurora receiver and a strobe light, were loaded onto dollies to be quickly wheeled into the moving pods of the London Eye – which continued to rotate. “The wheel doesn’t stop turning,” said Moorhouse. “You have about 60 seconds to get in and get out before the next pod comes along. So, there’s limited opportunity to troubleshoot or adjust the receivers – it needs to load in and simply work!”
Programming was carried out over three nights, with the dollies being moved into the pods every evening and out again every morning. The wireless RDM facility of the LumenRadio units was used to monitor the signal strength of the wireless lighting network.
“New Year’s Eve, Wireless and no Latency’ were our bold lines for this project. We were looking for a product to deliver a 360° service from support to implementation, and in LumenRadio we’ve seen a partner to embrace this challenge. The Stardust and Aurora products provided a faultless system, with the extreme signal strength, the easy setup workflow, and the Linking Key option, which is very useful for devices to join the network quickly, offering redundancy capability if needed”, said Joao Magalheas, Technical solutions manager, Neg Earth Lights.
More than 100 000 tickets were sold to the public gathering along the bank of the Thames and with millions more watching London’s New Year’s Eve celebrations online and on TV.
