Bestival Festival is now also held in Canada, one of the centre pieces is the Bollywood Stage which is a huge DJ booth in the form of an ancient temple. We were asked to produce some animated Mandala frames to adorn the outside façade. Mandala patterns are very geometric with radiating arms and repeating detail, these patterns were required to be accentuated with light sources of some type. After demonstrating various alternatives, an RGB intelligent node system was chosen, not only did it look good but it was each node was addressable making the system ultimately programmable – they were also totally waterproof, ideal for outdoor use.

Specialz has developed a custom drive PCB for these nodes so it was just a matter of working out the maximum node quantity per Mandala and working out the load before making some sealed PSU units. The numbers were quite interesting once we got into full swing, the centre Mandala in the shape of a peacock had 841 nodes, that’s 2523 DMX channels! This meant that every single part of the design could be animated in any way and any colour. We were able to send a DMX map to the programmer in advance so that animation could be pre-programmed. The Mandala panels were laser cut aluminium panels mounted into box section frames with additional stiffening bars

Tech Spec

Each PSU provides power and data for 3 Universes of RGB LED Nodes, there is 1 x PSU required for each Mandala and 2 x PSUs required for the Peacock. Each DMX input controls up to 170 nodes, (170 x RGB = 510 channels). Inside each PSU box there are 3 x One Universe Node Controller PCBs to handle the data and a 12V supply that passes through a 32A fuse to provide 12V power. All electronics universal input.