ABU DHABI, UAE – The LED-lit "Grid Shell" roof of the Yas Hotel, which opened late last year with the launch of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, works with a custom Rack-Split RDM RJ45 splitter from Artistic Licence that was designed and implemented by e:cue lighting control. Located within Abu Dhabi's Yas Marina Circuit, the Yas Hotel is the first hotel in the world to be built over a Formula 1 race circuit.
Designed by architects Asymptote Architecture of New York, the hotel's exterior surface forms a 217-meter aerodynamic sweep composed of over 5,389 pivoting diamond-shaped glass panes lit by color changing LEDs.
Conceived as an environmentally responsive skin that by day reflects the sky and surroundings and by night is lit by a nearly 5000 RGBW LED fixtures from ENFIS/Cooper Lighting, the Grid Shell is billed as the world's largest LED project to date.
ARUP Lighting, New York designed the lighting for the structure with the RDM lighting control system created by e:cue lighting control, Germany.
The installation uses 20,000 channels of RDM and runs color-changing sequences and low resolution video content across the roof.
Effects range from the subtle and undulating to the dramatic, such as the checkered flag design that flashed as Sebastian Vettel, winner of the first Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, crossed the finish line.
E:cue lighting control, as the main contractor, approached Artistic Licence to create a specialized piece of equipment to help facilitate their control plans.
"We needed an RJ45 1U DMX/RDM compliant splitter for the Yas Hotel LED control," said e:cue lighting control's Gregor Bauer, "so we approached Artistic Licence – who already had a 5pin version – to see if an RJ45 version could be built specifically for this project. Simon Hobday, Artistic Licence Managing Director, agreed to produce a limited run for our purposes in distributing data across this prestigious project."
The new Rack-Split RDM RJ45 has worked well enough for Artistic Licence to adopt it into its DMX Splitter portfolio for the benefit of other clients.
For more information, please visit www.ArtisticLicence.com and www.ecue.com.
