Inflatable Tubes

The centerpiece for Denver Pride was an array of eight inflatable tubes rigged to the ceiling beams. Standard LED tape was never going to cut through a club lighting rig. I ordered custom 24-volt pixel strands with double-sided clear lenses. I inflated the three-foot tubes on the concrete floor, turned the strands on, and crawled inside to tie the wiring down. It was disorienting. The tubes had strange twists in unusual directions, and dragging myself over the concrete hurt.

I ran two strands in parallel inside each tube. Pushing that much load causes voltage drop, so I put a power supply at both ends and severed the positive wire at the midpoint to stop back-feeding. We hoisted them empty and powered the fans in the air. The wireless control system worked perfectly during load-in. Then two thousand people walked into the room. Their cell phones choked the RF environment. Data rates dropped to five frames per second, and the tubes lost connection.

I used wireless decoders to save money. It is a choice I would reverse today. Luckily, I programmed their default state to a static Pride palette. When the signal dropped, the centerpiece stayed on theme. The rig pushed out enough light that another fabricator called me later to ask what hardware I used. I got the venue through the weekend on the fallback palette and told them to hardwire the data next time.