Swansea, Wales (UK), Tuesday 18th October 2005 - The brand new multi-million pound National Waterfront Museum in Swansea, Wales opens today featuring advanced AV and Multimedia systems demonstrating the next generation in public information systems. As part of this, Signwave UK has designed, developed and delivered advanced lighting control systems that run on Windows XP platforms.

Amongst the technology behind the exhibits developed are three Martin MAC250+ moving heads that can be positioned and controlled by a computer using the industry standard DMX protocol. When multimedia developers ISO approached Signwave UK to help them deliver an innovative use of these lighting units, nobody thought it would be possible to do what they wanted in software. "ISO wanted a visitor-controlled trackball to move a spotlight in realtime over a projected map of Wales. Due to the peculiar shape of the map and the angle at which the lights were to be fitted, none of the technical consultants already on the job thought it was possible to do this with any accuracy," says Adrian Ward, manager of Signwave UK. "The fact is though, we love a challenge. After a heavy period of research and testing, we showed that we could precisely position the spotlight on the map using custom software, and give the developers of the multimedia software a way to control the light in their code."

Signwave developed their "DMXBridge" software to bridge the gap between a visitor-controlled multimedia interface, and the moving heads. Typically, such moving heads are controlled by adjusting pan and tilt parameters, but this limits the area and style in which the spotlight moves. Since the spotlights had to move fluidly across the map according to the movement of the visitors' trackball, Signwave built complex realtime trigonometry into their custom show control software that made this possible. The software runs on Windows XP hardware, and communicates with the moving heads via a USB-DMX controller from Sunlite.

In addition to providing a working solution to the pan/tilt problem, Signwave was able to build in extra functionality to their software. Ward continues, "the multimedia developers were using Macromedia Director for the touch-screen interfaces, but couldn't get close to controlling the moving heads. So we got DMXBridge to do some extra networking stuff, and suddenly they were able to control the spotlight from their code. The clients were amazed it was even possible!". The result is a remarkable exhibit that allows visitors to explore an interactive map of Wales by navigating coloured spotlights over hotspots that reveal more information on touch-screen displays.

Damien Smith, director of ISO, agrees that leveraging Signwave's expertise in custom show control software was the right decision. "Without Adrian's work on this we were faced with having to commission the building of untested solid state solutions - a route that was proving daunting and expensive to both us and the hardware installation team". Signwave's development of this robust show control software means that the National Waterfront Museum now features an exhibit that is both captivating and unique, as well fulfilling the educational requirements of the museum.

For more information on Signwave UK and the custom software solutions they can offer, please see
http://www.signwave.co.uk/go/hardware/lighting

For more information on the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea, please see
http://www.nmgw.ac.uk/nwms/

Founded in 1998, Signwave UK specialises in writing bespoke software for installation-based systems, and has a proven track record in providing stable multimedia and hardware control systems, especially where the final requirements are anything but conventional. Their products range from consumer software utilities through to corporate back-end systems, and at the core of the company runs a commitment to innovation in exciting technology.