Stage One

Light of the Bumblebee: An R&D Solution

23 March 2015

Early in September 2014 we began development for a custom high power LED light source to be used in the “Hive”, the UK pavilion for Expo 2015 in Milan. The brief was quite straight forward: we were to design and manufacture one thousand, 4 colour (RGBW) custom “pixels”, bright enough to be seen in daylight and each individually controllable. These pixels are now being installed into the Hive, defining the spherical void within the 14m cube. Because the semi-transparent structure comprises a lattice of aluminum plate and rods, the lights will be visible from both the inside and outside.

We trialled various LEDs before settling on a high power 4 watt Cree LED, which gives us the full colour spectrum and, for such a small unit, a huge amount of light output. Working from this, we were able to quite quickly design and manufacture a miniature high power LED dimmer, controlled by the standard lighting protocol DMX. As the project evolved there was also the challenge of making the lighting unit as compact as possible. Several iterations of the pixel were prototyped in various shapes and sizes until we were all satisfied with the final design.

cont’d

23 March 2015

Through R&D we were able to mount the entire electronics and light source on one small printed circuit board. This integrated with a bespoke outer aluminium shell in such a way that the heat is dissipated directly from the rear of the LED to the outer fins of the shell. This means that even though we have the light source and electronics on the same printed circuit board, saving us precious space, we are also able to keep the heat away from the electronics, allowing us to push more light output . The shell case & lid were styled to fit with the design so as not to look out of place in the structure.

In a very short space of time we designed, prototyped, refined and manufactured a custom product bespoke to the UK pavilion project. Parallel to this, we also worked on the infrastructure and control side of things for the pixel. As this isn’t your standard lighting installation, we needed to come up with a custom control solution. This meant developing a piece of software specific for this project, specifically to control each of the 1000 lights individually and/or treat the whole sphere like a video screen. We can visualize in real time the look of lighting effects within the 3D environment in the software, which can save a lot of time on site.

From concept to installation, now currently well underway in Milan, we have managed to turn around a product in super quick time.

Andy Coates, LED Technician