We were asked by the London Bridge Experience to replace their old antiquated control system with a new more flexible one, they also wanted us to work with them on creating a new show and show experience for their guests, incorporating in a new Multi-language audio guide that they wanted to work seamlessly within the new system.

Another part of the brief was they also wanted to be able to send multiple groups through the experience without having to wait for a group to finish before sending another party through.

As the London Bridge Experience is split into 6 show areas we decided to create an overall control system that could control each element of each areas lighting, audio, animation and multi-language audio, independently from the other areas.

As each area would needed to know exactly what the other areas were doing, all 6 areas control systems were networked together allowing for communication between them so they knew when to enable or disable break beams, triggers and run effects depending on the progress of party’s through the shows.

At the heart of each areas control system is our multifunctional show control system ANCOS

This controls all of the DMX lighting, Special Effects, Digital I/O and audio guides along with communicating with other ANCOS systems         around the experience.
With this system the London Bridge Experience staff can put a party into the show with whatever language the audio guides need to play and what size the party is. The system then takes over, managing the party’s experience throughout the entire show.
The staff are then notified as to when another party can start their experience, helping to maintain a good managed flow rate throughout the experience.

A start and end of day user control interface has been also included into one of the zones control systems housings located next to the main staff entrance; this allows staff to shut down all the effects, sounds and lighting around the whole show from one convenient location. When they arrive in the morning the system can then also be powered up from this location, running through its start of day show, allowing staff to check all of the lights, effects and sound associated with the show.

Special effects and Set-Works Company SIGA Creative FX asked us to supply a control system for the latest attraction they were working on for the

London Bridge experience called “The Hellevator”

The whole ride is controlled by our control system ANCOS using ANCOS digital units to interface to the solenoid air valves which inflated or deflate 1 of 6 lorry suspension air bags controlling the movement of the lift. Opening, closing of doors, audio effects and lights are all also control as part of the ride by ANCOS.

The whole system was also programmed by Iztech on-site over the course of a few days and is programmed to power-up in the morning, run through a test sequence checking the functionality of the equipment then wait for it first victim…

The design brief was straight forward; DMX control over RGB LED tape, the challenge was that there would be 700 meters of LED tape to be driven. We were able to subdivide the octopus into smaller regions (tentacles, head & skirt), this meant we would have 14 separate dimmer modules, this would allow the lighting designers to have greater control over the lighting effects available (this wasn’t part of the initial brief but as the design developed proved a good move).
The subdivision also helped with a second problem, how to deliver 400A @ 24v to drive the LEDs. For this we went to Stadium Power and opted for 14 of their CSF1500-24 power supplies, which offered 24v @ 63A each.

Three separate mosfet boards drove each of the colours of LED tape; the mosfet boards used 5 paralleled mosfets to provide a capacity of 35A per board.
The dimmers filled two enclosures which were sited under the stage for the performance. Umbilical cables were used to connect to the LEDs on the bus.
The design for the dimmer consisted of a DMX decoder board, based on a Cortex M0 processor, which provided dimmer addressing, channel mimic LEDs, PWM mosfet driver and opto-isolated DMX communication.

One of the two dimmer racks