Mezzanine Bar

I didn't realize how the mezzanine bar at Que Bueno Suerte was built until I got there. The bottle shelves were blocks of wood with sheet metal stacked on top. I needed to wash the bottles from the front without exposing the wiring. I pre-cut 23 segments of aluminum extrusion and built the strips on a workbench. I soldered and heat-shrunk 3000K RGBW tape inside 45-degree channels, leaving wire whips on both ends.

I stuck the tracks to the top of each metal plate with foam tape. I used Dolphin crimps to splice the segments into four rows. To hide the connections, I ran cables between the wood blocks and sleeved the gaps in wire wrap.

The space under the bar had a different constraint. At night, the staff turned the mezzanine into a dance floor and shoved heavy tables underneath. Knees, coats, and sliding furniture were going to hit the lighting. I loaded more tape into an extrusion and siliconed it directly to the underside of the bar. I mounted it far enough back to survive the room flips.

Every line ran to an Advatek decoder and a power supply hidden behind the bar. I patched the rig in Madrix. Because the shelves were staggered, I had to approximate the empty space in the software patch so effects would travel at the right speed. When the rig fired up, the fire presets moved naturally across the metal plates.